Oral Answers to Questions

Eric Ollerenshaw Excerpts

Thursday 26th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)]

Suppressants are used as part of a wide strategy for dealing with pollution, and if the hon. Lady believes they are only used around monitoring stations, she is entirely wrong. They are used at pollution hot spots as a temporary measure, and as part of a wider strategy. The Mayor should be applauded for the measures that he is bringing in.

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

T3. Broadband for the Rural North is a community group in my constituency dedicated to bringing superfast broadband to a neglected part of our rural uplands. It is a real example of the big society in action, with hundreds of people coming together, putting their own money in, digging their own trenches and laying their own cables. What further help could DEFRA give, and will a Minister come to see what the group is doing to see how we can support it in fulfilling its potential?

[Richard Benyon]

I have heard of that noble initiative and many others, and can confirm that DEFRA has allocated £20 million as part of its rural broadband fund precisely to support such communities. I am keen to ensure that local initiatives fit in with Broadband Delivery UK and DEFRA’s role to ensure that we get superfast broadband to the hardest-to-reach communities. I praise my hon. Friend’s community for what it has done thus far.

Common Fisheries Policy

Eric Ollerenshaw Excerpts

Thursday 15th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) for the report and for the way in which she introduced the debate, and I thank the Minister for his support in the past.

I am in a somewhat different situation from other hon. Members in this regard. My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) talked about the cuts in Lowestoft. In Fleetwood, we already have hardly any boats left as over time there has been virtually a complete destruction of the fishing fleet. I remember as a child on holiday in Blackpool, because my father would only take us to Blackpool— [Interruption.] Well, he always used to say that Blackpool has got everything you want—it has got the sand, it has got the sea, and there is always something to do when it rains. On some days, we used to go to Fleetwood to see the fishing boats coming in. For 100 years, that was the core of Fleetwood’s very existence. It has been sad to see, now as its Member of Parliament, the heart almost ripped out of it over the years.

To be fair, that was not just due to the common fisheries policy: it began with the cod war. I thank the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell), who is in his place, for giving me an induction lesson in cod war compensation schemes when I first entered the House, as well as teaching me how to deal with fishermen. I thought that dealing with farmers was complex, but dealing with fishermen is certainly so—and, one hopes, rewarding. I have certainly learned a lot.

Every hon. Member has referred to the failure of the CFP. The hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) talked about mismanagement of fish stocks by coastal communities, but the mismanagement of this policy has been much worse. Anyone can go to Fleetwood and listen to people’s stories about seeing boat after boat disappear and trying to deal with the quota system, and then the disgrace of the discard system, which has finally come to the fore publicly. The CFP has been an absolute and utter failure that could have resulted in the destruction of the town were it not for the resilience of Mr and Mrs Fleetwood in getting on and doing other things, although they still feel the loss when they see the harbour. I think that we have 27 licensed under-10-metre boats that go out part time. The number of boats that fish full time is probably fewer than the fingers on my hand, and they are usually fishing for shellfish, particularly Dublin Bay prawns. I thank the Minister for ensuring that there were no cuts to the quota for Dublin Bay prawns in the Irish sea in 2012. That was extremely welcome.

Unless there is some chance of bringing home these powers, and therefore some possibility that we might get new Fleetwood people going into fishing, this is, for them, an intellectual debate that they have heard many times before. Perhaps understandably, their distrust of politicians of all persuasions is massive. As the Minister secured the quotas, it would be fantastic if he could come home with some other measures showing that there might be a possibility of British ships and British seamen fishing in British seas. That is what people are after.

We have discussed the worry about regionalisation, which has been mentioned by the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations and by the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford), who is not in her seat at the moment. Are we going to end up in a similar situation to that under the cod management plan, with the appearance of regionalisation but still with all the rules set centrally so that all that is left for the region is to try to deal with that while seeing more people go out of business? As a north-west MP, I have to ask what will happen in the north-west if we get proper regionalisation? What will that mean on the ground? Presumably we will still have to deal with the situation in the Irish sea. Perhaps there could be an Irish sea forum between us in the north-west, the devolved Scottish Parliament, the devolved Welsh Assembly, the Isle of Man Government, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. I am sure that common sense could prevail in terms of what the fishermen of all those countries know and do.

Again, I take issue with the hon. Member for Brent North. Conservation is the sole interest of all the fishermen I have met, because they see it as vital to their future business. They want to do it, but they distrust all the scientific evidence because it has often come from Europe and resulted in scientists telling them to follow the policy of discard and throw back healthy fish that they could have landed. That is what has taken away their belief in any so-called scientific analysis of what is going on.

[Barry Gardiner]

I do not want to take up time, but does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that it is the scientists who have been pressing for the discards to be landed so that they can make a proper assessment of the biomass and look at the ecology as a whole?

[Eric Ollerenshaw]

I do acknowledge that. However, I am trying to explain how a Fleetwood fisherman who now has to fish part time sees a wealth of different evidence and wonders who pulls the strings on the evidence.

I want to introduce another matter—one which I know will delight the Minister. Once he has dealt with the problems of the common fisheries policy, another issue that we face is that of wind farms and wind farm applications in the Irish sea, and the compensation for fisherman resulting from those developments. We have to deal with the Department of Energy and Climate Change on that matter and on new transmission lines, with the Department for Transport on ferry links, and with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the so-called common fisheries policy. This might sound revolutionary, but perhaps we need a Secretary of State for the Seas to bring those issues together so that fishermen can go to one door and find out what is going on.

I do not want to detain the House any longer. As I have said, I feel as though I am in a different position from other Members. To people in Fleetwood and beyond, this is a test case of whether the coalition Government can deliver. They are enthusiastic about much that the Minister has done. I am grateful to him for the extent to which he goes out to meet fishermen. However, this remains a test case of what is possible. People in Fleetwood hope to see the day when one or two more people can at last take up fishing in what they regard as their waters.

Fisheries

Eric Ollerenshaw Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I will try to keep to my limit.

I add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) on securing this debate, particularly for the way in which it has been conducted and the experience that has been brought to it. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), I do not claim to be an expert in this field, but I do represent the town of Fleetwood. This year marks 175 years since its foundation, and for all those years it has been synonymous with the fishing industry. Indeed, in the 19th century Fleetwood was at the end of the west coast main line, principally to enable fish landed there to get to Billingsgate as fresh as possible. Being new to the fish world, as I call it, I have had to learn at first hand the stories and legends from fishermen. Believe me, some of those are long and involved, but I sat there listening patiently. As other hon. Members have said, the hurt that they feel at the tragedy that they have endured through the devastation of their once-proud industry is very apparent.

Fleetwood, more than most, has seen its fishing industry destroyed in the 20th century. The port is now down to a few dozen registered boats with perhaps two or three boats landing fish, mainly shellfish. The crazy irony of the history of fishing in this country is illustrated by the fact that Fleetwood’s success still lies in fish processing. Hundreds of tonnes of fish now arrive in Fleetwood by truck from every port in England because of the large scale of Fleetwood’s fish processors, which are still on the docks, but the docks do not land any more fresh fish. That is what we have come to. It is difficult to explain the impact that this decline in fishing has had over the years on the morale of a town where most people claim descent from the original dozen fishing families around whom it developed. These intricacies go back years. Indeed, with the good advice of the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell), for which I am very grateful, I am still dealing with compensation claims that go back to the Icelandic cod wars.

Like other Members, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) on the record for her advice. She has been unstinting in her help, and in sharing her knowledge and passion for the subject. She has taught me a great deal.

This debate is rightly focused on discards, an issue that has united fishermen and the public like no other issue in recent years. It is incredible that from primary school children through to politicians, everybody sees the sense of the argument about the scale of the discarding, the moral condemnation of it, and the economic wrongs it has created. As an ex-history teacher, I compare it to prohibition, because it is a policy that has been so counter-productive in terms of its original aims that it will go down in the history books. I fully support the motion, given that discards in the North sea alone equate to some 500,000 to 800,000 tonnes a year. That is waste on an incredible scale.

Discarding is also wrong because there appear to be solutions, and I am pleased that the Government have supported some of those. My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park mentioned the pilots for cod quotas, which have prevented discards. My hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall mentioned the intricacies of net size, which again have prevented discards. I have looked at the 50% scheme in Brixham, which has received widespread praise. All those solutions have presented incentives to fishermen, as conservation is in their interests.

I believe that this campaign has demonstrated, once and for all, that fishermen and the public understand the need for managed conservation. I hope that the success of the pilots and the public support will provide the Minister with backing when he goes to Brussels. He might not achieve the scrapping of the common fisheries policy, which many of us want, but he will now go armed with the support of this House and of a country united in a demand for real reform.

As hon. Members have said, discards are just the tip of the iceberg of things that have wrecked the fishing industry. Fishermen in my constituency are fighting for realistic compensation for the increasing areas of Morecambe bay being filled with wind turbines, with the support of the Department of Energy and Climate Change. It has amazed me that there is no statutory compensation, and that every fisherman has to fight individually for compensation. At the same time, as the hon. Member for Great Grimsby reminded us, marine conservation zones are spreading, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is on the fishermen’s backs, fishermen are involved in consultation, and they are fighting for compensation and quotas. One sometimes wonders what time fishermen have left actually to go fishing, in between all the demands placed on them.

We are getting to the point where so many Departments have a slice of our seas that perhaps we need a Secretary of State for the seas. Perhaps I would not be as radical as my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal, but something major needs to happen if we are to alter the decline that we have seen, and the casual treatment, by previous Governments of all parties, of the great seas around us. My hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) talked about farmers. I have always wondered how we can manage to protect the environment in national parks successfully, and to sustain real business in which farmers are a fundamental part of saving that environment, when we cannot manage to do that out at sea.

The Fish Fight has brought together fishermen, processors, retailers, consumers and—dare I say it?—politicians of all parties, as we have seen today. Its success may well be the signal that we can finally start on the long road back to protecting one of our greatest resources: the seas that make these islands to which we all belong.

Shoreline Management Plans

Eric Ollerenshaw Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

May I add to the congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) on securing this important and timely debate? It is important because Britain has, I am led to believe, 11,073 miles of coast, and, although I do not have “coastal” in my constituency name, the longest boundary I have is part of Morecambe bay on the west coast on the Irish sea. The debate is timely because the shoreline management plans are due for completion in the next few weeks. They will be delivered through the Environment Agency and local councils. In the longer term, my hon. Friends have hinted at concerns about erosion and about which parts of England are going up and which are going down. When I learned geography at school, I was always told that the east was going down and the west was coming up, but now I am told differently. However, hon. Members will be pleased to know that I do not want to go into that kind of science; I was not the greatest geographer, although for a time I did manage to teach the subject. [Interruption.] Well, I always thought that geography was an easier subject than history.

Thurnham parish is in my patch. It is a rural parish with no particular centre. It is not a village; it is an area comprising scattered farms and caravan parks and caravan developments by the coast. The people who live there are retired couples and those who want to bring up their children in a rural area. It lies between the villages of Cockerham and Glasson Dock and it is part of Lancaster city council district. It is Thurnham parish’s experience in this process that I want to highlight.

Unlike most of England’s coastline, Thurnham has been protected by a “hold the line” policy, which means that it has a system of hard defences—in this case a sea wall and vast numbers of drainage channels. However, according to the Environment Agency, such defences have been thought to be inadequate for future years and the whole area is being reassessed as part of the shoreline management process.

We then come on to the interesting concept of managed realignment, which is a phrase that sounds almost Orwellian. The Library briefing says that

“managed realignment is still in an experimental phase with research showing many uncertainties in outcome.”

My concern is that we are basing many of our shoreline management plans on something that is experimental, and that is impacting on people’s lives and livelihoods. If a new experimental system is to be used, where has the effort been to explain the benefits of the scheme or to convince and win over those who will be affected? At the moment, the people in Thurnham believe that this is part of a cost-saving exercise.

Let me turn to the consultation on the second phase, which my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) mentioned. Yet again, my constituents have had the same experience of consultation. There were two public meetings and a 12-month consultation in which everyone in this country, from the Ramblers Association to English Nature and English Heritage, was consulted—apart from the residents who live in the area. I am told that it was only when a district councillor asked a parish councillor why no one from Thurnham had been turning up to meetings that it was clear that no one had actually been told to turn up.

Eventually, the residents were involved in the process. We secured another couple of meetings to try to understand what was going on. The challenge from residents was, “Why are you just considering managed realignment?” That was after a long explanation of what managed realignment might involve. Again, the issue of compensation—or lack of compensation—arose. Some residents were even told that if this happened, they would have to demolish their own house to allow the sea and salt marshes to encroach. It almost seemed that the habitat of birds was far more important than the generations of people who had lived in the area for hundreds of years and who had invested a great deal of money there—some had done so just a few months before they found out about the operation.

We finally get to a stage in which the council recognises the residents and the residents are talking to the Environment Agency. The agency finally walks the sea wall and finds that it is in far better shape than it first imagined. Now it has been agreed that there will be a further look at the cost-benefits of managed realignment and of holding the line. The agency says that such a policy will involve £100,000, for which it hopes to bid centrally. If it does not get the money this year, it will try again next year. The completion of this process will take five years, but if it does not get the money this year it will take six years. In the meantime, that whole area is blighted in terms of the ability to sell property or invest more in thriving businesses. Farmers wanting to invest are lost in the whole process, wondering where to go from here.

On consultation, as other hon. Members have said, can the details of how the costs and benefits fit together be supplied to me and residents of the area, so that we can understand how the processes work? So far, the new Government have pushed for transparency and clarity on what the Government spend and how they operate, so it is not asking a great deal to see the spreadsheet analysis and the cost-benefit formulae behind it, so that residents of Thurnham can have some grasp of the process, even though they will now sit there for five, six or seven years with that blight on them.

In conclusion—I realise that other Members want to speak—my constituents’ experience of the SMP process has not been good. They were ignored at the start, and they have been treated as though they do not understand their own area. They are now asking the new Government to supply them with information and to treat them as the grown-ups they are by helping them to understand all the pressures on the Government in dealing with the coast. They live and work there, understand the coastline and have a contribution to make, and they are asking the Minister to let them.