Fisheries Bill [Lords]

Eleanor Laing Excerpts

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

[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?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. We will be rather careful here. This is a narrow Bill, specifically about—

[Deidre Brock]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have just had to endure a personal attack from the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross). I was making the point that if he wants to make those sorts of attacks, he has to be prepared to take it.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

That is not a point of order for the Chair. I assume that every Member can take it when they are having an argument. Let me just take a step back to the hon. Lady’s intervention. It was an interesting political point, but I want to ensure that in answering it the hon. Gentleman does so in terms of the Bill that is before us tonight.

[Douglas Ross]

Of course I will, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I will make a couple of points, if I may. The hon. Lady said that my allowing her to intervene, or her taking an intervention from me, always comes with conditions. I hope that she goes back and looks at the previous debate we had in this Chamber about fishing, because I was sat about a couple of metres along from where I am now, and on 12 occasions I tried to intervene on her but she would not let me in once. So I have to say that my generosity is far more generous than hers.

The hon. Lady seeks to criticise me for mentioning Moray. I am from Moray. I am proud of my roots. I was born and bred in my constituency, which I now have the honour to represent in the House of Commons, so I will never shy away from mentioning Moray and what a great place it is—Moray with its great coastal communities and great coastline, a little unlike Edinburgh North and Leith, which has neither.

I will now get back to the point of the debate.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I just want to check, in order to keep within my rules, that Moray does have fishing.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

In general, there are substantial opportunities for fishing in the new reality that our fleets face and for our coastal communities, and I look forward to witnessing that renewal, although in closing I remind Ministers of my concerns over inshore fisheries in Angus and across these isles. I will be supporting the SNP’s new clause 3.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Before I call the next speaker, may I explain something, because there seems to be some confusion, perhaps among new Members who do not know how normal Chamber procedure works? If I impose a time limit, this debate will end at 10 o’clock and there will be several votes at 10 o’clock and Third Reading after that. Anyone can work out how late that will be. If I do not impose a time limit but appeal to Members, for the sake of all their colleagues, to speak for about three to four minutes, and thereby prove that brevity is the soul of wit, the debate will finish earlier, and those who are taking part will have the eternal gratitude of those who are waiting to vote.

[Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

I will try to speak clearly with my new self-imposed time limit. It is a pleasure to follow right hon. and hon. Members, particularly the hon. Member for Angus (Dave Doogan), and here we are going straight back down the line to Cornwall, which just shows what an important issue this is for the whole United Kingdom.

Despite being the great-great-granddaughter of a Scarborough fisherman, I had no idea as a young girl that I would grow up to become a Cornish fishwife, but here I am. Actually, I am very proud to be so. It is a privilege to be married to a fisherman, because it gives a great understanding of what a scary but wholesome living it is. It is absolutely necessary for the health of our nation. I mentioned in my maiden speech some time ago how precarious a living it is, especially when one is on the end of the phone and the weather turns and they cannot get back, so I will not go into that again.

One thing I have to say is that the fishing industry does not speak with one voice, and that is important to remember. To stand up for the fishing industry means giving our fishermen their voices back, and that is what this Bill absolutely does. It takes a first important step, and that is what we have to remember about this framework Bill.

I will speak briefly to the amendments. I do not think that the Bill is the right place for them, but I understand why they have been tabled. I believe they are well intentioned, and I know that Ministers are listening. In terms of amendment 1, I welcome the Government’s consultation, and I urge anybody involved to make their representations known before the closing date, which I believe is 10 November.

I would like to see more support from Ministers for direct-from-the-boat sales. When people go to London and eat a nice plate-sized piece of fish in a restaurant, the price can be eye-watering. Let me tell the House that at the other end of the scale, when the fisherman gets his price from market, that can also be eye-watering, but for a different reason. Somewhere along the way, somebody is making a lot of money out of it, but it is not the fishermen, and we need to put that right. I know there are voices in the Treasury who are sympathetic to that, and I make a plea to urge those conversations forward. A business in Falmouth that has just opened has as one of its unique selling points the fact that it wants fish that has never touched land. That sort of business should be encouraged, particularly in Cornwall.

Amendment 2 is about sustainability. One of the main reasons I came to this House was for the sustainability of our oceans and sustainability on land, but when we talk about sustainability in the fishing industry, we cannot talk just about the oceans; we have to talk about the coastal communities as well. Take bass, for example. My hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann) and I have spoken at length about bass and recreational angling versus the commercial fishermen, and I want to try to bridge the gap tonight if I can.

I absolutely get the reason why we need to have a sustainable bass fishery. The angling economy in Cornwall is growing and is worth a lot of money, but if that bass fishery is suddenly taken away from an under-10 metre boat, that fisherman cannot feed his family. We cannot just expect these fishermen one day suddenly to have to go out to fish for something else—it does not happen like that. I am not prepared to make people suddenly do that, so we have to have a long consultation with the industry, the fishermen and the conservationists before we come up with a plan. That is why this amendment is misplaced. We have to go with the framework and see where we go from that.

Amendment 3 deals with supertrawlers. Again, I understand why it has been proposed, but I am reassured by Ministers who say that we now are in control of those licences, and pressure will be on our Front Benchers to make the right decisions there. I will not go on for too long, I promise, but let me deal with a couple more things that I want to see, if we can do them.

The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) is no longer in his place, but I have sympathy with him on the enforcement argument, and not just on the outrageous incidents to which he refers. We see daily off the Lizard Point that French fishermen are within our waters and they should not be there. Even in the spawning grounds in the estuaries we need to make sure that anglers are not going up and taking undersized fish. There should be enforcement from one scale down to the last, and we need to make sure we are properly prepared to have enforcement here.

I am a big advocate of labelling—everyone in Devon knows how I feel about that—and it is vital that we get some clear labelling on our fish. The technology is there now to put the boat name on anywhere that that fish ends up, be it in an expensive fancy restaurant or in one of our supermarkets; we can see what boat that fish has come off and how it was caught. The fisherman who is fishing hook and line should get a better price than the one who is using the nets. The fisherman will then suddenly become responsible for his catch, in the same way as farmers are responsible for the high standards of their animals. That is important and it means that the consumer starts to become king—I hope that Ministers are listening.

We have a great opportunity for a culture change in this country about what we eat and why we eat it—that was mentioned earlier. The new Cornish residents, our TV chefs, who have moved down to the south-west have an important role to play in this. If we suddenly start eating wrasse, which they do in Japan, in sushi, or whatever else it might be, we can start making this a good thing to eat and consumers will follow.

I will conclude because I do not want to take up too much time. This Bill is a great first step, from which we have learned lessons from the CFP. We are finally starting to release our fishermen from the shackles of the CFP, which is vital. What we can achieve for the industry is endless because we are now an independent coastal state. I am reassured that future consultations will benefit our industry and I look forward to plans that come forward next year.