Fisheries Bill [Lords]

Chris Loder Excerpts

Ways and Means resolution & 2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Tuesday 1st September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Loder (West Dorset) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax), in this debate. I rise to speak in support of this Bill, because we can now look forward to becoming an independent coastal state. This Fisheries Bill gets us out of the EU common fisheries policy. A policy that has constrained and betrayed the fishermen of the United Kingdom for 40 years will finally be no more. The same, I am afraid, is true of the Fishery Limits Act 1976, which was passed by a Labour Government and which put the anchors down on our fleet of British boats in favour of EU-registered fishing vessels.

Our fishermen have looked on in despair for decades at this gross injustice, resulting in the number of working fishermen in the UK falling by 40% since the mid-1990s. It is the same despair that I and my hon. Friends from along the south coast experienced in October when the second largest trawler in the world, the Margiris, was trawling our coastline. This 465-foot floating fish factory dwarfs our own fishing vessels. It is capable of catching 250 tonnes of fish a day, in stark contrast to West Bay, in my constituency, which lands 250 tonnes a year.

This Bill removes the automatic fishing rights of foreign vessels and supertrawlers to our waters and it is this Conservative Government who will be able to return to our fishermen their fair quotas, which they rightly deserve, and should never allow these supertrawlers into UK waters again let alone into marine protected areas.

I should like to say in response to the SNP’s contribution a little earlier—forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker, but it all smelled a little bit fishy to me—that its reasoned amendment is a damp squid! Why? It is quite simple and straightforward. Not only do more than 92% of the fishermen in Scotland believe that we should leave the EU and want to be out of the common fisheries policy, but where is that second largest trawler in the world right now? It is off the coast of Scotland, due east of Aberdeen, trawling thousands of tonnes of fish from Scottish seas and from its fishermen. I regret to say that the SNP is out of touch with the fishing community and I am afraid that, on this point, it is like a fish out of water when it comes to this Bill.

In recent months, the coronavirus has demonstrated the strength of local producers to step up and feed local communities when it was needed the most, and no more so than in West Dorset, but people are demanding more. They want to know where their food and their fish are coming from. Leaving the common fisheries policy will enable our island nation to put more fish on British tables. It is good for our health, good for our economy and good for coastal fishing towns.

In coastal constituencies such as mine in West Dorset and that of my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax), the small fishing communities of Lyme Regis and West Bay, home to just 24 fishing vessels, will greatly benefit from this Bill. It will restore to them and to our fishing communities around the country not only the prosperity of times past but even more in the future: hook, line and sinker.