Fishing Industry

Eilidh Whiteford Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs McGuire]

I hear what the Minister says.

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

I do not know how accountable an unelected Member of the House of Lords can be. However, does the right hon. Lady share my concern that the issue—for once—is not that he is unelected, but the effectiveness of his contribution and his lack of experience to represent the industry? It is a bit like playing the sub and keeping the star striker on the bench.

[Mrs McGuire]

When he winds up the debate, I hope the Minister will clarify the situation. Will the noble Lord be part of the discussions? Will the Minister be leading the delegation? I know he has great experience of, and takes a great interest in, the fishing industry, but in some circumstances it would be appropriate for a Scottish Fisheries Minister to represent the UK. The Minister has to prove that a Scottish Fisheries Minister cannot represent the views of the whole UK industry. Under the Labour Administration in Holyrood and here, the Scottish Fisheries Minister occasionally led those discussions. In the interests of mature partnership within the UK, and given the significant interest of the Scottish fishing industry in these discussions, he should tell us why the lead is not being taken by the Scottish Fisheries Minister. There might be a straightforward answer, but I think we need to be more mature in the way we co-operate across these islands in representing the UK in these discussions.

I will not be here, but I hope the next time we have a fisheries debate in this Chamber, it will be in Government time. It should not be the subject of a Backbench Business Committee decision, although the Committee has always been very supportive of holding this debate. The fishing industry is too important for the Government not to take responsibility for holding the debate in their own time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George). This afternoon, in common with others, I want to open my remarks by remembering all those lost at sea in the last year, and in particular by paying my respects to James Noble, the skipper of the Fraserburgh-registered Ocean Way, and crew members Jhunitzo Antonio and Michael PulPul who were all lost off the coast of Northumberland just a few weeks ago. My thoughts are with their families, friends, and the surviving crew members, and all those who have lost loved ones in this most dangerous working environment. In common with others, too, I would like to pay tribute to the men and women of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, who voluntarily risk their own lives to save others, to our coastguards, and of course to the Fishermen’s Mission and other welfare organisations that do so much to support our fishing communities.

I would also like to put on record my thanks to the hon. Members for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) and for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) for all the work they have done as chair and secretary of the all-party group on fisheries. Even though we have not always agreed, it has been a pleasure working with them on behalf of our fishing and processing sectors, and as they both step down from Parliament next year, I wish them the very best for whatever comes next.

This time last year I highlighted some of the challenges we face in relation to the implementation of the landing obligation. Those problems have not diminished over the last 12 months; they have become more pressing, as the discard ban comes into effect for our pelagic fleet in the next three weeks. The pelagic sector has not had an easy run in recent years. Although we saw some progress in resolving the protracted mackerel dispute with Iceland and Faroe earlier this year, the trade sanctions imposed on the EU by Russia in response to the political situation in Ukraine have hit our pelagic exports disproportionately hard, and I know that the Scottish Government and indeed the UK moved very quickly to help the industry identify and develop new export markets. Although our mackerel saw a 9% fall in value last year, it remains our most valuable stock, and it supports hundreds of onshore jobs in my constituency in addition to those at sea.

Arguably, implementing the landing obligation should be easier for the pelagic fleet than anyone else because of the nature of the stock and the fact that there will not be much by-catch, but I understand that there are still contradictory regulations in force, and these regulatory inconsistencies do not look like they will be ironed out in time for the first phase of the landing obligation on 1 January. I understand that the so called “omnibus process” has been stuck in co-decision-making, and it would be helpful to get an update from the Government on where that has got to today.

Now, we could say that the sky is not going to fall in because the revised regulations are not fully signed and sealed, but I think it sends the wrong signal to our fishermen and undermines the discard ban before it has even got under way. That undermining of confidence is also relevant to the issue I raised with the Minister earlier this morning about enforcement and the lack of a consistent compliance regime that applies to all vessels fishing in our waters. It would be wholly unacceptable for our boats to be working to one set of rules, and third party states fishing in our waters to be subject to another—potentially less stringent—set of rules.

I was pleased to hear from the Minister this morning that some progress was made on this issue at the recent EU-Norway talks, and I hope he will take the opportunity today to spell out the detail and clarify whether it will actually deliver the level playing field that the industry is demanding.

The problems with implementing the landing obligation will get more acute when it is introduced for the demersal fleet in 2016, which is probably the source of the greatest concern. Progress has, I think, been pitifully slow over the last year, and time to develop workable solutions is now running out. It is going to be a whole lot more complicated to implement a discard ban for the whitefish fleet simply because it is a mixed fishery, and our fishermen are working in a context of quota shortages, choke species, lack of flexibility and a system of single species quotas that is simply no longer fit for purpose.

I raised the issue of choke species at the last fisheries debate, and the situation has not really changed. A good example that Peterhead fishermen have raised with me is saithe. They are seeing a lot of it, they do not have much quota for it, and it is low value, with no big market, but it is also quite a big fish, so selective gear is not going to help. What do they do? They cannot land it; they cannot discard it. Will they have to stop fishing for everything else? That would cripple the industry—and very quickly.

My hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) has on previous occasions raised similar concerns about dogfish on the west coast of Scotland, with the one difference that there might actually be a market for that. If we are to have any hope of making this landing obligation workable, we absolutely need to move away from single species quotas. We need flexibility between adjoining ICES areas where there is evidence that it is the same stock, and that an appropriate quota is available. After speaking to industry leaders yesterday, I wonder whether we really need to look at some sort of phasing-in, because this process is not currently on track. I will be interested to hear the Government’s perspective on that.

I have focused on the landing obligation because it will present serious challenges to the industry a year from now if we do not get it right. We need to be absolutely clear about the fact that discarding is a symptom of poor fisheries management. It is not the fault of the fishermen, and it needs to end. We are in danger of making parts of our fleet unviable, with untold consequences for our processors, our supply chains, our exports and our fishing-dependent communities, such as those that I represent. Discarding has been caused by poor political decisions, not by fishermen, and it is incumbent on us to find solutions to it that are workable and do not jeopardise people’s livelihoods.

Let me end by saying a little about the December Council, and emphasising to the Minister that there must be no cuts in effort for the Scottish fleet next year. I hope he will assure me that the Government will make that a priority in the negotiations. I am very glad to learn that he will be at the Council meeting; given the severity of the issues affecting the south-west of England, it would be a dereliction of duty if he were not there. However, I fear that the spirit of the 2012 concordat with the Scottish Government has been lost in DEFRA’s revolving doors over the last couple of years, because it is not working as it should. Given that 87% of the United Kingdom’s key stocks are landed in Scotland from Scottish vessels, we ought to recognise that Scotland has an important interest. The Government need to work with their counterparts in Edinburgh—and, indeed, in other parts of the United Kingdom—to make the concordat operate much better than it is operating now.

[Sheryll Murray]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Dr Whiteford]

I will not, because Members behind me who represent big fishing interests are waiting to speak, and the hon. Lady had a fair amount of time in which to do so.

Our fishermen do a difficult and dangerous job in circumstances that are quite challenging enough without our making them worse. We need a workable discard ban, and we need it very quickly. This is the biggest challenge that the Scottish industry is currently facing, and Ministers have an opportunity to step up to it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Whiteford]

rose—

[George Eustice]

I want to carry on because I am conscious of the time.

The hon. Member for St Ives asked about the roll-out of the discard ban. I think that fishermen sometimes forget about the various elements, and flexibilities, in the discard ban. If there is high survivability, fish can be put back. There is inter-species flexibility whereby someone who has, for instance, a lot of cod that they do not have quota for can count it as haddock. We start with the fish that define the fishery and finish with the smaller species. There is a de minimis exemption for people who cannot avoid doing anything else. We can borrow and bank quota from one year to the next.

The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) talked about the omnibus regulation. The legal position is clear: the new regulations take precedence over previous ones. The omnibus regulation was supposed to deal with that. As she said, there has been a bit of a problem in getting agreement between the Parliament, the Council and the Commission, and that is now at the stage of trialogues.

The hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) asked about The Hague preference. We plan to invoke that in the usual way. We have also secured extra whiting from Norway through the EU-Norway deal. In recent years, we have diverted an extra 300 tonnes specifically to the north-east. The quota uplift that he mentioned will be finally decided in the December Council.

I hope that I have covered as many of the issues raised by hon. Members as possible. As I said, this is a challenging December Council. These meetings have a habit of going late into the night, although last year’s was an unusual exception. There are many challenging issues to address. I hope that I have managed to assure hon. Members that I am fully conscious of their concerns and will be going there to get the best possible deal we can for our fishing industry in the context of the science.