Fishing Quotas

David Amess Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

Southend and the sea enjoy a symbiotic relationship; of that there can be no doubt. It gives us our character, our image, even our name—it is why we are called Southend-on-Sea. For many locals and tourists, the sea offers leisure, providing chances to enjoy our historic seafront, our pier—represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge)—and our arcades, known as the golden mile, which the Queen had the privilege of driving past some years ago.

For others, the sea provides employment and opportunity, and that is the purpose of this debate. Nowhere is that more true than in our historic fishing community at Leigh-on-Sea and Old Leigh. Boats there have been working the waters for centuries. Indeed, boats from the local fishing community were used to rescue injured people from Dunkirk. The fishermen and the wider community have a long history of patriotic support. The utmost respect has always been given to one of mother nature’s most powerful forces, but now the industry, which has adapted and survived through the ages, is facing its greatest ever challenge. The threat comes not from our old friend the sea but from within our ranks, and it threatens to strike at the heart of Britain’s ancient fishing fleet.

Let me say immediately to my hon. Friend the Minister that there is no point in any Member of Parliament having an Adjournment debate for the sake of it, for press releases or for various people to observe. I always see a purpose in an Adjournment debate. However, I understand entirely that for all sorts of reasons, he will be constrained in responding, given matters pending in court. If so, I ask simply that he reflect on what I will share with him and consider whether something can be done in the fullness of time to help.

The Marine Management Organisation is, in its own words, supposed to make a “significant contribution” to the marine area, yet for many fishermen, it has become an increasingly vindictive organisation managed by people with no practical knowledge of the industry that they are regulating. Astoundingly, only one member of the board and executive committee has any physical experience of fishing. I would have thought that that alone would be cause for concern. The MMO’s implementation of law is inconsistent and draconian, particularly in regard to small inshore fishing boats. I refer to the under-10-metre fleet, which is subject to the harshest possible sentences for minor offences. Sentences can be so extreme that some fishermen receive the same punishment as drug dealers and gang members.

[Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that part of the problem was created by the last Labour Government when they underestimated the catch of the under-10-metre fleet? The quota available to that fleet is disproportionate compared with the quota for larger vessels, most of which is held by producer organisations.

[Mr Amess]

I welcome my hon. Friend to the debate. She has much more expertise in the sector than I do. I agree with her point about the last Government’s responsibility, which is why I say to my hon. Friend the Minister that I understand that he is constrained by current regulations.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. The points that he has raised alarm me. It is the proverbial sledgehammer used to crack a nut. It is like sending in the SAS when a bailiff would do. We need to get back to common sense in regulatory matters, on sea or on land.

[Mr Amess]

I will call the hon. Gentleman my hon. Friend, and I know that I speak for everyone in wishing his father a return to rude health. He must have read my speech, where I have used the expression “a sledgehammer to crack a nut”. I agree completely. The issue centres around what I believe is a complete misuse of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. Worryingly, those who speak out against the MMO seem to be dealt with the most severely. That is totally unacceptable.

I will personalise the issue by talking about a constituent of mine whom I regard as a friend. His court hearing was held on Christmas eve, with all the stress that that involves, and he was recently fined £400,000. Although I was not there to hear the judge’s summing up—I am not criticising the judge; he was only interpreting the law as it stands—he apparently said that if not for my constituent’s references, the fine could have been as much as £600,000. The fine was for bureaucratic offences relating to his catch, the majority of which concerned offences relating to sales notes.

The gentleman to whom I am referring is Paul Gilson. Like generations of his family before him, he has fished the waters of Leigh-on-Sea since childhood. He is a highly respected member of the local community. In the late 1990s, I went with him, the gentleman who was then running my office, Lionel Altman, and the then Member of Parliament Bob Spink to do battle with the famous fisheries commissioner Emma Bonino. It was game, set and match to the Paul Gilson contingent. He is skipper of the historic boat Endeavour, which I am delighted to tell the House will be travelling in the flotilla for Her Majesty’s diamond jubilee. A seat has been reserved on the boat for me, but as I suffer from seasickness, I will be giving the opportunity to someone else, however flat the River Thames is on that day.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

Take pills.

[Mr Amess]

Unfortunately, pills do not work with me.

Paul Gilson is so highly thought of in Southend that he was awarded the freedom of the borough, which says everything about him. He is an honest, hard-working man, and such a sentence is an outrage, especially given that two other recent sales note offences received sentences of £3,500 and £6,000. I know that my hon. Friend the Minister cannot comment on that or whether the sentence should have been appealed, but how can two people be given sentences of £3,500 and £6,000 when Mr Gilson was given a sentence of £400,000? That is absolutely not acceptable. It is a coincidence that if someone is a critic of the MMO, they seem to be dealt with particularly harshly.

I am not denying that if an offence has been committed, a punishment should be given. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) said earlier, this is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. The punishment should fit the crime. The 2002 Act, under the right circumstances, is an effective deterrent, but Paul Gilson is neither a gangster nor a drug dealer. The judge even conceded that there was no evidence at all to suggest that Mr Gilson had enjoyed a lavish lifestyle—indeed, if he had done so, no doubt I, as a friend, would have expected to have benefited from it to an extent—or had been motivated in any sense by greed. There is clearly an abuse of the 2002 Act by the MMO, and Paul Gilson is not the only example.

A number of colleagues have sent me briefings on the matter. In particular, three fishermen who are constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) will appear before Colchester magistrates court on 29 February—obviously, I will not go into the details, as the case is before the courts and the Minister cannot comment on it. Apparently, in a similar case, while a judge recommended a fine of £2,000, the MMO pushed for a prosecution, again under the 2002 Act, to the tune of £156,000. That is absolutely outrageous.

A fisherman from a historic fishing town is being harassed at every opportunity, while three men from the Colchester area are about to appear in court charged with similar offences, and they fear for their livelihood. That is simply vindictiveness beyond belief and a serious waste of taxpayers’ money. As we found out only too well with the Harry Redknapp trial, which cost about £8 million, the money is all coming from the public purse. Money should not be wasted in criminal proceedings unnecessarily, and the case is a waste of taxpayers’ money. Departments are supposed to be making significant cuts, and I respectfully ask my hon. Friend the Minister to reflect on that. Money is being wasted in the pursuit of small-scale fishermen, largely guilty of nothing more than omissions in paperwork. My goodness, if I was to be looked at by how some of my paperwork is dealt with, no doubt I would have something to answer for, so I have tremendous sympathy for Paul Gilson and the other small fishermen.

The problems run deeper. The whole issue with the cases of Mr Gilson and others like him results from mismanagement in the industry and archaic, impractical laws regarding quotas, which my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) has brought to the attention of the House. I have been reliably informed that fishermen are losing out on their catches. Fish are being left uncaught but are not being replenished in the quotas for the following year. For example, Dover sole and skate in the North sea are being under-caught by hundreds of tons. There is also inconsistent implementation of quotas in the industry.

Two excellent articles appeared in The Times on 14 February. One of them is titled, “All at sea: historic fleet that can’t catch its own cod”, and I refer to my hon. Friend the Minister the circumstances of the Hastings fishing fleet. The other article was about a cartel on fishing quotas. My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), who is the Chair of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said that it was astounding that the Government did not know who owned the quotas that they handed out, while my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) described it as an absolute scandal.

The current system of quota allocation has resulted in fishermen with boats less than 10 metres long being denied access to the seas. Those boats comprise 85% of the UK fleet, yet receive only 4% of the annual quota. That just cannot be acceptable. If owners of smaller boats want a share of the quota, they usually have to rent it, but many cannot afford the price demanded. They claim, rightly, that the system forces them to discard tonnes of fish.

Government figures suggest that larger boats are fishing less than a third of their quota and renting more than half to smaller vessels. That leaves up to a fifth of quotas left uncaught. Why are they not passed on to the struggling under-10s, or at least replenished in the pot? The system forces smaller boat owners to discard tonnes of fish to comply with regulations. Such practice is ludicrous and wasteful.

I read recently about the privatisation of the seas, whereby private producer organisations manipulate the market to boost their profits, despite being given 90% of quotas for free. Those organisations are on the verge of securing personal control of Britain’s fishing rights. Worryingly, it has been confirmed that the Government do not know, as I have already said, who is profiting from the arrangement—an admission echoed by the MMO. The quota cartel hits the under-10-metre boats particularly hard, as I have mentioned. It leaves men and women struggling to make a living. It is well to remember that they are fishermen, not bureaucrats, and it is madness that they spend as much time doing paperwork as they do fishing.

All that is killing our historic fishing industry, overseen by an apparently vindictive organisation that has no experience or understanding of the industry. Fishermen are rapidly and quite rightly losing faith in the MMO. Add on top of that the absurd, restrictive laws on quotas and the anonymous cartel that manipulates the markets for its own gain and it is easy to see the terrible state the under-10-metre fishing industry finds itself in.

Fishing is an art as old as man itself. It has survived everything that mother nature can throw at it, but it seems that it might just be defeated by our own ludicrous legislation and pointless policy-making. Something has to be done, to help not only my constituent Paul Gilson, but the constituents of all Members present and in the rest of the House.