Fisheries Bill [Lords]

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 13th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) on an excellent speech. She spoke on behalf of not just her constituency but fishermen across Northern Ireland. She put her case and their case across very well in the House tonight. I echo what my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann) said. It is a pleasure and a privilege to be in the Chamber tonight, as we debate such an important piece of legislation for our own constituencies, the communities we represent, the whole of Scotland and the United Kingdom. They are looking to this Parliament to finally take back control over our fishing industry. It has for too long been dominated by decisions in Brussels, rather than here in our Parliament in the United Kingdom.

This is very much a framework Bill. It is supported by the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation and it allows us to do far more back here in the House of Commons or in the devolved Administrations. This legislation and the proposals put forward by this UK Conservative Government respect devolution. It looks for and enhances the sustainability in our seas, but also the sustainability in our fishing communities. For so long—decades—fishing communities in Moray such as Cullen, Findochty, Buckie and Burghead have suffered from a reduction in fishing right across the country through the straitjacket of the common fisheries policy. It has done so much harm to our industries, which were crucial to towns and villages right across the country. Many of those areas have been decimated, but now we can start to build back again: build back our fishing industry, our fleet, our crews and our catches, and what they mean to individual communities, what they meant decades ago, and what we can do to revitalise those areas when this industry gets back up and running because of the legislation that this UK Government and this Parliament are looking at, debating and taking through now.

Positive as I am about the Bill, I have to pause for a moment and stop that positivity to discuss the contribution from the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock). [Interruption.] She laughs about her contribution. I wish I could laugh at it. I really wish I could find it funny. I watched part of her speech on the screens outwith the Chamber and, when I was able to come in, I listened to it further. Watching it on television I thought it was bad enough, and then I looked in. Sometimes we say things in the Chamber and we reflect, because we are not reading a pre-prepared, scripted speech, that maybe we could have said something different and put it a better way. I watched the end of the hon. Lady’s speech and she was reading it out. I thought, “What kind of individual sits at a computer and types such a bitter, twisted and misleading statement, reviews it”—I presume she writes it herself, but I cannot guarantee that—“and stands up in the Chamber of the House of Commons and reads out such a poorly crafted argument that does not represent what Scotland is looking for from this Bill and does not represent what fishing communities right around the country are looking for from this Bill?”

I do not believe the hon. Lady’s speech represents the Scottish National party position on this. If you listen to her, there is nothing good in the Bill being brought forward by this Government, but her own party in the Scottish Parliament has given a legislative consent motion for it. So just once I would ask her to look beyond her blinkered vision of separatism, assuming everything done in this UK Parliament is bad, and consider for a moment that the 1 million people in Scotland who backed Brexit and the almost 50% of voters in my Moray constituency who backed Brexit, might actually look at this as an opportunity—an opportunity for this UK Government to take control back from the European Union over fishing and devolve further to our devolved Administrations right across the country. She would do herself, her party and Scottish politics in general a service if she looked at that and that argument from a more positive angle just once—to look at the positivity, rather than always the negativity.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

I think I heard the hon. Gentleman correctly when he said that there was almost 50% support for Brexit in his constituency, so he lost the Brexit argument in his constituency. Is that right?

--- Later in debate ---

[Douglas Ross]

The coastal communities on the coastline of Moray provide great opportunities for fishing in my constituency and, indeed, right around Scotland and the United Kingdom. In case I have potentially misled the House, I think there is some coastline in the hon. Lady’s constituency, so before the tweet goes out, I have corrected the record and I apologise for that. We all come to this House to represent our constituents and the areas for which we are elected in order put forward their views. I think it is right that the representative for Moray is able to outline how important this Bill is, and how important it is that the Lords amendments, which could cause some difficulties and troubles for the Bill, are not taken forward, because they would be wrong for the industry both in Moray and right across Scotland.

We have left the European Union. When we leave the transition period at the end of this year, we come out of the straitjacket of the common fisheries policy—the hated CFP that has done so much to damage our industry over the past 40 years. Our fishing communities have decided to leave the European Union and have voted to come out of the common fisheries policy. Why would the Scottish nationalists ever say that, having taken the decision to leave, we should go back into a policy that has done so much damage to our communities and to our industry? I relish the bright future that is ahead of us now with this Bill and look forward to developing it further with communities in Moray, right across Scotland, and across the UK. This is a positive time to be in the fishing industry. This is a positive Bill from the UK Government—one that will deliver right across the country and one that I am pleased to support.

[Dave Doogan]

I am very happy to follow the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross).

I am extremely fortunate to represent Angus, the garden of Scotland. Our bounty extends well beyond our exceptional farmland, over our cliffs, and into our abundant seas—the North sea. After all, we have in Arbroath the home of the Arbroath smokie—a taste sensation that I know for a fact the Minister regularly enjoys. Not only that, but in Ferryden and Arbroath harbours we have a thriving inshore fleet fishing creel for crab and lobsters primarily for the EU market. This is where my concern lies. The shellfish trade in Angus is an outstanding success story supporting many jobs and underpinning the thriving buzz in Arbroath and Ferryden harbours. These boats have little to gain from Brexit in their fishing operations, but much to lose if the Government will not or cannot secure a deal for unfettered and tariff- free access to their EU markets.

I remind Ministers that livelihoods and jobs depend on these last-minute negotiations, and fishing businesses, like any other, need clarity over future trading conditions. Even with a deal, fishermen from Angus exporting into the EU will be subject to a regime from 1 January that threatens cost and delay for their businesses. These burdens include the requirements for an export health certificate, a validated catch certificate sent to the importer hours before the lorry arrives, a storage document if the catch was stored, and a processing statement if the product has been treated. They must import their product through an EU border control post and the importer must be notified in advance of the arrival. Notification periods vary so they will need to check with the border control post in question to find out how much notice they can give.

This is a far cry from the seamless process undertaken currently by crews and hauliers supplying markets in the EU today. I seek the Minister’s assurance that due consideration will be given to those lorries loaded up with live catch from multiple vessels in respect of the effect of this new bureaucracy on my constituents in Angus.

There exists a seemingly simpler process for UK vessels landing directly into UK ports. They must land into a North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission-designated port with a prior notification form, a catch certificate and a pre-landing declaration. That is onerous, but not insurmountable. Direct landings into the EU should be seen as a sub-optimal opportunity. It seems clear that we need to secure as much value add in the commodification of marine product in Scotland, and the rest of the UK of course, as possible, thereby exporting a higher value product to market rather than exporting the unprocessed product to have the value added abroad. National landings will deliver that, and to that extent I have some sympathy with amendment 1 tabled by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock). However, as she will be aware, it is England-only so I will be unable to support it. I encourage the Minister, if not in this iteration of the Bill then in future policy, to consider the ambition of a national landing requirement. I know that that is an important element that all devolved Administrations will be taking forward.

We heard the hon. Member for Moray speak at length about the importance of coastal communities and reversing the attrition that was wrought on them in recent decades. This is an element that we may seek to exploit to achieve that. Ridding our fishing fleets of the thoroughly discredited CFP will of course have an upside for crews and skippers, but we need to ensure that we are more ambitious than that. We need to maximise and disaggregate the dividend as far and as wide onshore as possible. To do so will benefit precisely those coastal communities that we have heard discussed earlier this evening, with consequential benefits to local services, driving greater investment through higher populations in rural schools, and increased use of transport and connectivity.

A new future based on zonal attachment holds much promise for our fleets and for the gross value of the industry going forward. This will do much to correct the basic fairness of access to marine harvest. We should feel duty bound to attach any new prosperity widely to coastal communities and exploit every opportunity to secure marketing, processing, fuel supplies, services, installation, plant sales and haulage jobs on these shores and in our coastal communities rather than elsewhere. This is not protectionism, it is pragmatism.

I understand very well the need to ensure the most profitable and expedient routes to market for crews, but let us be clear that the damage that Brexit will do to our broader economy and economic prosperity outside fishing will be severe and in so far as fishing will benefit from Brexit, the industry should maintain an obligation to support the onshore economy as much as possible in management, processing and the wider supply chain.

[Douglas Ross]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He just said that fishing would benefit from Brexit—those are the words that came out of his mouth, and I absolutely agree with that. Can he explain how fishing would benefit from the SNP policy, which is to go straight back into the European Union and the common fisheries policy?

[Dave Doogan]

I am happy that the hon. Member for Moray is so quick to tell me what SNP policy is. Perhaps he will yield to my knowledge of such matters. I think I am probably on fairly solid ground as an SNP politician in saying what our policy is. I will be taking no lectures from a Conservative politician on how to access the EU in the interests of fishing. We have seen how badly it was done by the Conservatives in the early 1970s. We will not be making any similar mistakes with Scotland’s reaccession to the EU after independence, but I do not want to fall foul of Madam Deputy Speaker. 



Home landings have their limits, such as with the pelagic catch, which can be so vast and so rapid as to overwhelm the local capacity to process, and there can be no argument with that reality. However, the principle of shared benefit remains intact if domestic capacity is by default exhausted first. I am confident that my colleagues in the Scottish Government are sighted on the national landings priority. The best interests of our Scottish fleet in coastal communities will be served by that devolved Administration, but we should in all four nations work in support of this ambition as maritime neighbours, where we remain subject to the same jurisdiction.