Fisheries Bill [Lords]

Debate between Douglas Ross and Deidre Brock

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

[Douglas Ross]

I was not in the Chamber when the Minister made her opening remarks. I think she may have thought that it was a probing amendment, but I am sure that she listened to the points made. The right hon. Gentleman has now suggested that he will at least press either new clause 11 or 12 to a vote, and I am sure that she will respond to his points. I also listened closely to the heartfelt speech by my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray) on not only her own experience of a tragic family bereavement but the representations that she has heard from fishing communities in her long career advocating on their behalf. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say, but I accept the constructive way in which the right hon. Gentleman has put his case.

Since the right hon. Gentleman has intervened, I can now mention Shetland. An organisation in Shetland has today published the opportunities for the United Kingdom to race up the global rankings in terms of what we can do as a country regarding our share of catch from UK waters. At the moment, about 70% of the fish caught and landed in our waters is caught by foreign vessels. If we compare that with Norway, 84% of the fish and shellfish caught in its waters are caught by Norwegian vessels. I think it is 95% in Iceland.

That is the opportunity that is available to Scotland and the United Kingdom, and that is why many of us in this Chamber are excited about the opportunities for this country, our fishermen and our fishing communities. That is why I had to briefly take a moment to call out the, yet again, negativity and pointless point scoring from the Scottish National party on this issue.

[Deidre Brock]

rose—

[Douglas Ross]

I will gladly give way to the hon. Lady, and hope that she has listened to my constructive criticism, will look at this afresh and suddenly decide that the SNP Members are not here just to be bitter and twisted, and for petty point scoring; they are here to work for Scotland’s fishermen.

[Deidre Brock]

There are always conditions attached to interventions when the hon. Gentleman allows them—very male, Madam Deputy Speaker. He clearly has ambitions to one day lead in the Scottish Parliament and become the First Minister of Scotland. He always references his constituency and the fact that a large percentage of his constituents voted for Brexit, but when will he accept that Scotland voted 62% to remain, and rejected Brexit? If he has ambitions to be the First Minister, how will he reflect that when he is making his pitch to voters?

Covid-19: Future UK-EU Relationship

Debate between Douglas Ross and Deidre Brock

Wednesday 15th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Douglas Ross]

I am always happy to agree with my hon. Friend. Let me add that Scottish Conservatives in the Chamber today would outnumber, if he were here, the one Scottish Labour Member by five or six to one. We continue to be a strong force in Scotland and in this Chamber.

Let me return to the title of this debate and what we are discussing generally this afternoon, because there have been a number of omissions in the SNP speeches we have heard so far—I am sure this will be rectified later. We have not heard the F-word at all during this debate. I represent Moray and the Minister on the Front Bench represents Banff and Buchan. In a debate about the EU, I expect to hear about fishing, particularly from the SNP. So why, would we surmise, would SNP Members and their leader here, who represents a constituency that has many fishing interests, not mention fishing once during this debate? Is it perhaps that they are ashamed of their policy towards Scottish fishermen?

During this debate, we are speaking about an extension, but what the SNP have not spoken about is what they would do at the end of that extension, because of course they just want to prolong this period of instability for our businesses, communities and individuals. At the end of it, they do not want another extension or a deal with the EU to be granted by the UK Government; they want to stop us leaving the EU. That is a perfectly acceptable policy for them to hold, but they therefore have to explain to fishing communities in Moray, in Banff and Buchan, and around Scotland, including those that they currently represent here and at Holyrood, what their plans are for the fishing industry in Scotland. It is very clear: they would say to the 1 million people in Scotland who voted to leave the European Union, many of them in fishing communities: “We don’t need you, we don’t trust you, we think you were wrong, and we’re going to take you straight back into the European Union and straight back into the common fisheries policy, which you have campaigned against throughout your lives and has been damaging to your business, because we don’t trust the result you gave in 2016.” That is a shameful position for Scottish National party Members to hold. Maybe it is not surprising, then, that they have not once mentioned the word “fishing” in this debate.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

I would very much appreciate it if just one Conservative Member could explain to me why Conservative Members suggest that there would be total control of the seas around the UK in the event of Brexit when UNCLOS—the United Nations convention on the law of the sea—makes it very clear that that would not be case, and, based on historical fishing rights, the other countries in the EU will be challenging this in court? I never hear Conservative Members talk about that—all they say is that UK waters will be completely controlled by the UK, and it simply is not true.

[Douglas Ross]

I would say to the hon. Lady that I am her one Conservative Member, because I can explain it to her. When we finally leave the transition period on 31 December, we will become an independent coastal state controlling who fishes what, where and when in our waters—a proud independent state. There are examples of others that are able to do that, and we will follow suit.

Something that is not often considered in this debate is how big a difference a short extension to the transition period would make. Fishing leaders in Scotland have said that a one-day increase in the transition period beyond 31 December this year would be a one-year increase for their industry, because we would go into a whole new round of talks. When the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber suggests that we as a Government and a country should have two years of extra negotiating during the transition period, we should ask what that would mean for our fishing industries, which I am not willing to accept.

I represent the constituency in Scotland that came closer than any other to voting leave in 2016: just 122 votes separated leave and remain. So while I know it is very convenient for Scottish National party Members, the Scottish Government and others to say that Scotland voted to remain, not everyone in Scotland did. One in two people in Moray voted to leave and one in two people in Moray voted to remain. This argument does foster great passion, understandably, but it is not as black and white as the SNP would often like to make it.

I also want to focus on the points about leadership that we have heard during this debate. I tried to intervene on the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber when he highlighted poll ratings that suggest that Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership has been positive during this pandemic. I was going to ask him: was it leadership when Nicola Sturgeon chose not to inform the Scottish people of the first case of covid-19 being identified at the Nike conference? [Interruption.] I am sorry if the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) thinks it is funny that the Scottish Government, the First Minister and Scottish Government Ministers withheld information from the Scottish people about the first case of covid-19 in our country, but I do not believe it is a laughing matter. I hope that he will reconsider his actions when I am discussing an important matter about people who have lost their lives.

Is it leadership when the UK Government are carrying out more covid-19 tests in Scotland than the Scottish Government? I am happy that our broad shoulders of the United Kingdom can help the UK Government, but I would have thought that the Scottish Government would be ambitious enough to have the testing facilities in place to do more than the UK Government. I am extremely grateful that the UK Government are there to support the Scottish Government.

Is it really leadership when we have senior members of the Scottish National party, and indeed the First Minister, threatening to put up barriers at the border to stop people coming into our country? Given that the Scottish Tourism Alliance criticised those comments by saying that 70% of tourism in Scotland is from the rest of the United Kingdom, any signal from the First Minister, the Scottish Government or the SNP that we are closed for business is unacceptable. It is not a political issue—it is a financial issue for bed and breakfasts, hotels, restaurants and all those who rely on investment and money from people across the United Kingdom to support them. We need to send an unequivocally clear message that Scotland is open for business. I was grateful to hear that from the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber today. Sadly, I would say that the message has come too late.

Fisheries Bill

Debate between Douglas Ross and Deidre Brock

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Wednesday 21st November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Deidre Brock]

It certainly points to some short memories in this place.

Secondly, in March, the Secretary of State said that the Government had accepted a sub-optimal outcome for fishing in the Brexit negotiations. Will he tell us whether he still thinks that is so, and whether that view is reflected in the Bill? I look forward to that being addressed in the Minister’s closing words.

[Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)]

Could the hon. Lady give us a history lesson about what a former Member of this House did? Does she agree with me that my predecessor as the Member of Parliament for Moray, in the most recent general election campaign—[Interruption.] I notice she is getting a whisper from the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie). In the general election campaign last year, when asked umpteen times on the BBC whether the Scottish National party would agree to go back into the CFP if Scotland became independent and wanted to get back into the EU, my predecessor said yes. The party’s sole aim is to go back into the CFP.

[Deidre Brock]

On our terms, of course. That is the point the hon. Gentleman is leaving out.

If we are looking for a history lesson, let us remind ourselves about the Tories, who have been selling out Scottish fishing for nearly half a century. Under Ted Heath in the 1970s, fisheries were considered expendable. In the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher, the UK Government signed us up to the original doomed common fisheries policy, which consigned our fishermen to decades of mismanagement. John Major’s Tories signed up to a revised common fisheries policy in the 1990s, which scrapped vessels and destroyed livelihoods. In the 21st century, the Tories were attempting to enshrine the common fisheries policy in European treaties, while the SNP was trying to return controls to the fishing nations. Let us not forget that, very recently, Ruth Davidson was reported in The Times as calling fisheries a red line issue, and a Scottish Tory source was quoted as saying:

“We won a lot of votes in the northeast on the back of our stance on fishing and wouldn’t be able to show our faces in Banff and Buchan if we renege on this one.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)]

It is a pleasure and privilege to speak in this debate. Similarly to when we considered the Agriculture Bill earlier in the Session, this is the first opportunity for this Chamber of the United Kingdom Parliament to debate a future policy—this time for our fishermen and fishing industry. Communities such as Buckie, Cullen, Lossiemouth and Burghead do not have the same number of fishing boats as they once did, but they still have an extremely strong link to the fishing industry and they look at our debates in this Chamber very closely.

I very much support this enabling Bill, which has widespread support throughout the industry. The Ministers and their team have done a good job in bringing it to this stage. We all want to ensure that we have control over our waters and regenerate the coastal communities that have suffered in the past. There is a great deal to welcome in the Bill.

I want to spend a bit of time looking at the utter tosh—that is the only way I can describe it—that we have heard from the Scottish National party during this debate. We heard from the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O'Hara), who is not in the Chamber. He took us back to 1972, 11 years before I was even born. The hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) took us back a number of years ago when Alex Salmond was putting forward legislation. The SNP has not mentioned him recently, so it is interesting to hear his name used again. In an intervention, I took the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith back to last year’s general election—the most recent election—to find the most recent credible position of the SNP. The SNP’s position then, on which all their candidates stood for election, was to go back into the common fisheries policy, and she confirmed that in response to my intervention.

[Deidre Brock]

rose—

[Douglas Ross]

I am sorry, but because of the time—[Interruption.] I will come to the hon. Lady, who confirmed that the SNP’s position—

--- Later in debate ---

[Douglas Ross]

The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) has a deaf ear, because I said I would let the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith intervene. I will come to her in a minute, if she has patience.

The hon. Lady confirmed that the SNP’s position is to go back into the CFP on re-joining the European Union but, she said, in their terms. I would like to give way to her so that she can tell us what those terms are. What is the SNP going to tell the EU that it would like to negotiate on the CFP, and what is it going to give away? A negotiation needs give and take, so what would it give to the European Union on that?

[Deidre Brock]

I would just like to quote directly from page 29 of the SNP’s 2017 general election manifesto:

“We will continue, in all circumstances, to demand the scrapping or fundamental reform of the Common Fisheries Policy and support Scottish control of Scottish fisheries, as we have done for many years.”

[Douglas Ross]

That is page 29, but there is absolutely no information on how the SNP would do that or what it would do. It is absolutely farcical—you have no plan for how you will go forward on the CFP; you will simply go back into it and do as you are told.

Other things we have not heard are—[Interruption.] Oh, come on, please. The hon. Lady mentioned nothing about the Scottish Government’s report that says that the fishing industry will benefit from £540 million and see an extra 5,000 jobs in Scotland as we come out of the CFP. The SNP will not mention that, because it wants to go back into the CFP.

I agree with a lot of things said by a number of Members—including the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar, my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (David Duguid), the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael)—about the problems that the Government’s immigration policies are causing for fishermen. I held a Westminster Hall debate on the matter at which a number of Members spoke. [Interruption.] If SNP Members would stop barracking me, I may be able to answer their questions. This is something for which I believe there is cross-party support. I believe that the Government could make small changes to ensure that we get the right people into our—

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Douglas Ross and Deidre Brock

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Deidre Brock]

Which is of course the very point we are making. I thought that everyone would welcome the opinions of the Scottish National party and the people of Scotland, because of course in this precious Union surely we are all equals, although I will come to points that directly affect Scotland shortly.

DEFRA admitted to the NAO that it will be unable to handle the increase in export health certificates needed for farmers to carry on exporting their produce to the world’s largest single market because it is currently done on a spreadsheet that only one person can operate at a time. The Department’s long-term ambition is to get up to the same standard of e-certification that other nations use, but the Treasury has not yet seen the business justification document in order to approve it. I will lay odds that the costs of sorting that out will be more than the spare change down the back of the DEFRA sofa.

If anyone thought that animal exports getting done over was enough bad news, they had better not look at animal imports. The UK will lose access to the EU’s TRACES, or trade control and expert system. Data on animal imports will have to be entered manually at border inspection posts, so we can expect higher error rates, delays at borders while manual checks are carried out and an increased biosecurity risk, according to DEFRA’s report card from the NAO. Potentially, we will have high-quality beef sitting on one side of the border waiting for its turn on the spreadsheet to get a health certificate for export, while the supermarket lasagne is sitting on the other side waiting for a border guard to punch its information into the system. In the meantime, farmers will be watching their livelihoods disappear, while every truck in the game is held up at the border.

There are two points, parallel to those issues, that are vital to Scotland’s food production and marketing. The first is the need for seasonal workers. My hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) will go into our concerns about that at length, but I will quickly add that the pitiful pilot scheme announced recently for seasonal workers would have been laughed at, had we not already seen crops rotting in the fields this year for want of workers to pick them. The other issue is the need for protection in global markets. Those needs are being ignored in Whitehall.

The position on geographical indicators and other protections is similar. The EU currently protects Scottish produce in international markets, including Scotch whisky, Scotch lamb, Scotch beef, the cheeses, Stornoway black pudding, and so on. There are similar products elsewhere—the Melton Mowbray pork pie springs to mind, along with Fenland celery and Yorkshire rhubarb. The Minister of State for Trade Policy gave evidence to a Committee of the Scottish Parliament last month, and said that Scotch whisky would continue to be protected because of the importance of Scotch whisky exports to the UK economy, but that the others were basically up for grabs. He said:

“PGIs present quite serious difficulties in free-trade negotiations because some nations regard them as unfair protection or non-tariff barriers to trade.”

He went on to say that the issue is not straightforward in trade negotiations because we would have to demonstrate market penetration or recognition. In other words, protections in international markets for goods produced here will be negotiating chips on the table in each new trade deal that the UK looks for. Scotland’s farmers, having built a reputation for quality and traceability that helps to sell their products across borders, are about to see their market share threatened, even if they can get through the border posts, because they will be losing easy access to the world’s biggest single marketplace, but also because the protections that the machinery of the EU afford will be stripped away as the UK struggles to learn once again how to negotiate trade deals and negotiates away any protection that our unique products might have had.

It is notable that the briefings on the Bill that I have received from organisations in England are broadly in favour of it, while the briefings from organisations in Scotland are not.

In this, as in so much else, Scotland and England are different, and the differences cannot be easily reconciled. There was a time when Ministers in Whitehall acknowledged and accepted those differences and to an extent celebrated them as part of the diversity of the UK they sought to govern. Acknowledging that diversity and respecting its history could be achieved by respecting the devolved Administrations. There is no need for a power grab. There is no need for the centralisation of responsibility in Smith Square. Indeed, we know, and I am sure the Secretary of State will concede, that the plans being made for agriculture in England and the policies already being implemented would not suit Scotland; they will be harmful to Scottish food producers.

[Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)]

The hon. Lady speaks about briefings. Does she agree with the National Farmers Union Scotland, which said in its briefing that the Scottish National party Scottish Government should accept the offer from the Westminster Government to include a schedule for Scotland? Why is the SNP refusing to do that?

[Deidre Brock]

I note the selective quote from the hon. Gentleman. The NFUS also said that any such schedule should be one that comes from the Scottish Government. One could ask whether the DEFRA Secretary would be willing to accept Scottish Government amendments.

Unauthorised Encampments

Debate between Douglas Ross and Deidre Brock

Thursday 12th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Deidre Brock]

Members frequently referred to the Irish answer, but may I commend the Scottish Government’s answer, which is to work with the communities to develop an overarching strategy to reduce discrimination against Travellers, improve their quality of life and outcomes, increase understanding through a national action plan, and work towards an increase in mutual understanding and respect in the settled community?

[Douglas Ross]

The hon. Lady will be aware that that document was introduced in 2004, updated in 2014 and again reviewed in April 2017, but we still have problems in Scotland with unauthorised, illegal encampments in the communities we have talked about today. That document is not working for local communities.

[Deidre Brock]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point, but the Scottish Government are clearly willing to work with those communities, and that approach will bear fruit.

On the question of dialogue with the communities, I urge the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills to join the all-party parliamentary group for Gypsies, Travellers and Roma, which I sit on, so that she can learn about travelling people’s culture, history and way of life. Alternatively, she could do the cultural competency training on the Friends, Families and Travellers website—I recommend that all Members in this debate do so—and perhaps learn to be part of the solution. We must ensure equality, end discrimination and give Travellers access to education, training and employment, health and social care services—they do not have that at the moment—and enough proper sites to camp on. Members of Parliament have a duty to seek to understand all of the people who live in the UK, and that duty is seldom observed. Perhaps it is time that it was.

The hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) spoke of appointing representatives of the travelling communities to create opportunities for dialogue. In Monday’s debate, groups such as the Traveller Law Reform Project, the Traveller Movement, Friends, Families and Travellers, and London Gypsies and Travellers were mentioned. Extend the hand of friendship and those groups will jump at the opportunity for dialogue.

I am sad to see such a high turnout for a debate that, in my view, calls for the persecution and punishment of a minority group, whereas for debate after debate on subjects such as the Government’s shameful treatment of the disadvantaged and disabled, the Conservative Benches are largely empty.