UK Fisheries Policy

David Duguid Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I will try to keep my speech as brief as I can. Fortunately, many hon. and right hon. Members have already said a lot of what I was going to say. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann) on securing today’s debate. It is great to see such a large turnout.

Now is an exciting time for British fishing. As we move through the process of leaving the EU and the CFP, Brexit provides a sea of opportunity for the fishing industry, but we need to maintain stability and security for our fishermen in the short term. Any radical shift in policy taken at this stage must be very carefully considered, and we should look to best practice abroad when deliberating on the way forward.

It was interesting to hear the example of the Faroe Islands, which I understand are moving away from the current effort-based system because they believe it has proven to be a contributory factor to the decline of their stocks. As I understand it, they depart from the effort-based system on 1 January 2019, as agreed by their Parliament last year. The Faroese Government stated:

“Small fishing vessels which conduct coastal fisheries on a smaller scale will, however, continue to base their activity on annually allocated fishing days.”

It is a hybrid approach that might be appropriate in some cases.

It is worth noting the great success that the Scottish fleet has had recently in rebuilding the number of stocks, including North sea cod. That has all been achieved within the current quota-based system. There has been broad agreement over the past few months on both sides of the debate that if we are to move towards an effort-based system, it should be piloted first on a small-scale fishery. If that shows promising results, it would surely confirm once and for all whether that is a way forward.

Iceland uses an effort-based system only for some stocks, specifically lumpfish and sea urchins. All other fishing is operated on a rights-based system. Effort-based systems are viewed over there as a useful way to manage small-scale targeted fisheries, not large-scale mixed fisheries. Of course, around the United Kingdom we have one of the largest, if not the largest, mixed fisheries in the world. Because of that, it is important to recognise that not all fisheries are made equal. Mixed fisheries in the northern North sea are vastly different from fisheries in other parts of Scotland, let alone the rest of the UK.

I want us to continue with the drive towards regionalisation that the UK Government have previously supported in a European context. Why stop at Edinburgh, for example, when it comes to Scotland? Where exactly we draw the line is something we will have further discussions about as we go through the process of leaving the EU and the CFP, but ideally the resource should always be managed by those closest to it, and, as other hon. Members have said, with the input of those who know the fisheries best: the fishermen themselves. I would like to see all fisheries managed at the point most local to the fishery, with the exception of some high-level decisions that will need to be taken at a UK-wide level, especially as we become a fully independent coastal state.