Fishing Industry

Jayne Kirkham Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)]

Fishing is such an important part of Cornwall’s history and its future—as you can probably tell, Mr Efford, because half the MPs from Cornwall are here today. We are surrounded by the sea on three sides. Fishing has been integral to us for centuries: Cornish people have fished for pilchards for hundreds of years in Newlyn, St Ives, Mevagissey and Portscatho, among other places in my constituency. Oysters in the Fal have been farmed for half a millennium with traditional methods that are still in use today because of a byelaw dating back to 1876 that outlaws mechanised dredging—an early example of legislation that promotes sustainable fishing. That makes the oyster farms on the Fal one of a kind in Europe, if not the world.

Fishing in Cornwall is not just about the past; it is also about the future. Our fishing industry is vital for our food security, jobs and tourism. We need to preserve the knowledge and skills that have been passed down through fishing families in Cornwall for generations. The industry contributes more than £170 million to Cornwall’s economy directly from fish landed, and we have 500 fishermen at sea and 8,000 jobs in the supply chain. There are 15 jobs ashore for every one at sea. It does have a future and it does have profit. We need to make sure that the conditions are right and we protect it.

How do we do that? I repeat the points that have been made about the ongoing EU-UK negotiation process to set the fishing quotas for next year. In previous years, reductions to some quotas have been too large for fishers to adjust to: for example, the pollack quota last year was set at zero with no warning, and Cornish fishermen ended up being compensated. The past two years of annual negotiations have led to a £20 million reduction in fishing opportunities for the Cornish fishing fleet, so we need a long-term approach to quotas that is based on scientific evidence and that balances food production with protecting the environment, promoting sustainability and supporting the industry. As a result of the EU-UK trade and co-operation agreement, under Boris Johnson’s Government fishing was basically sold down the river; Boris Johnson’s name is sometimes not spoken kindly in Cornwall. In the renegotiation, we need to be careful to ensure that our Cornish fishers do not lose out like that again.

I have mentioned Fal oysters, which are a vital heritage industry in my constituency. To protect the population, there is an ongoing review looking at the size of the oysters that are caught. I would like the Minister to pay close attention to it; I think it was passed up to DEFRA in April or May. Central to that is clean water. Sewage dumping is destroying the shellfish industry. In May 2003, 11 shellfish sites in Cornwall were forced to close because of high levels of E. coli. I welcome both the Water (Special Measures) Bill, which will crack down on water companies that dump sewage, and the coming review. Agriculture will have a part to play as well.

Shellfish was an afterthought in the Brexit negotiations. There was extra red tape and there were reduced markets: as the UK is now a third country, we cannot export unprocessed oysters, scallops and mussels to the EU. That is a massive loss of market.

In conclusion, we need to look carefully at how we balance fishing, marine protected areas, sustainability, nature recovery, the environment and floating offshore wind. As an MP in Cornwall, I am a great supporter of floating offshore wind and would love to get it off the ground in the Celtic sea. We still have not quite got there; I want it kick-started, but it is important that everything has its space and that consultation is wide and is carried out with all of the industries.

Equally, we need a strategy for the ocean. We do not have one at the moment: we have a local plan for the land, but nothing similar for the ocean. It is important that there is a long-term strategy that looks at protecting certain areas and our ambition for zero-carbon electricity by 2030, but that still maintains profitable and vital heritage industries such as fishing, so we can carve out a place for everything as we go forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Torcuil Crichton]

That is true. Our problems are not uniquely island problems, nor are they uniquely Scottish problems: they are demographic, economic and social problems for coastal communities around the whole UK. I know that that is not entirely the responsibility of the Minister.

Having risked the ire of the Home Office, rather than the Minister, I will carry on and risk the anger of my hon. Friends the Members for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham) and for South East Cornwall (Anna Gelderd), and possibly of the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George). I am after their tuna, or rather our tuna. One quota for which the Minister does have responsibility is the bluefin tuna stocks, which have increased significantly. Thanks to climate change, bluefin tuna are roaming far north and wild in the Atlantic. There has been a great decade-long catch-and-release scheme around the British coast. The catch is by rod and line, so the catches are selective, of good quality and of the same stock as those caught in other regions of the UK. They have the potential to be a great home market and export market.

The UK was allocated something like 39 tonnes of bluefin tuna in 2023, but so far none of those commercial licences has been granted to a Scottish boat. All 13 were granted to the south-west of England; none of them has come to Scotland, far less to the Hebrides, where operators have set themselves up not just as rod-and-line operators, but potentially as smokers and exporters to the domestic and international markets.

For all the quota to be allocated to one area seems very odd. It is not what we would expect. We might expect weight to be placed on geography and on socioeconomic impacts: a bluefin tuna fishery in the Western Isles would be economically significant. For rod-and-line operators and others who have prepared themselves to turn commercial, it is deeply frustrating to be turned off in that way.

[Jayne Kirkham]

I do not wish to make too much of this, but looking at the other side of it, Scotland has been lucky enough to get the headquarters of GB Energy. Maybe we could think about the alternative as well.

[Torcuil Crichton]

I will turn my attention to GB Energy in a moment. First, I make another appeal to the Minister that from next year onwards the UK ought to allocate commercial bluefin tuna licences not on a “first come, first served” basis, or however the system works, but on a geographic and socioeconomic basis.

While I have the Minister’s ear and we are talking about quotas, let me make an appeal for spurdog fishery, which is managed by the UK Government and allocated on a monthly quota basis to all vessels. Due to the introduction of a management measure banning the landing of individual fish over 100 cm in length, fishermen have been unable to develop a market. All buyers who show an interest in spurdog indicate that they would far rather have spurdog over 100 cm. As a result of the measure, local fishermen end up dumping large fish, which could secure—and, prior to the ban, did secure—higher prices. Some relaxation on the question of permitting the landing of spurdog over 100 cm would at least open a limited marketing opportunity for fishermen on those vessels.

I do not want to wade into the big debate on quotas, on total catch allowances and on 2026—or perhaps I do. I will just wish the Minister well and ask him to consider some of the ideas that my hon. Friend the Member for that famous fishing port Brent West highlighted in his contribution. The quota should belong to no one. It should not be used to enrich those who are already rich from our seas; it should be treated as a national resource and a socioeconomic asset to be distributed according to port, postcode and socioeconomic need. As I say, there should also be a system of community quota, whereby excess quota or new quota is allocated to municipalities or regional development agencies to ensure that it is attached to landing ports and that it creates local jobs in coastal communities.

There has been a lot of talk about GB Energy, spatial squeeze and the conflict between the fishing industry and the new offshore wind farm industry. I understand why the conflict exists. The developments are somewhat controversial, but they would be less controversial if the offshore industry, like the onshore industry, were forced to provide a community benefit or community share or to pay more to the Crown Estate Commission for permission to make wealth from wind, which should, of course, belong to no one. If those funds were allocated regionally and locally, we could address the data deficiency to which the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland and my hon. Friend the Member for Brent West referred. We could create our own marine research centres in our coastal communities—not necessarily run by the Government, but certainly run by those communities—so that in the competition for data and in arguments with environmentalists and with Governments, we can have the science, we can tell what is in the waters around us and we can tell how the environment is shaping up.

These are leaps of the imagination, perhaps, for the quota system, but they should be considered seriously by the Government and by the fishing industry itself, if fishing is to have a future as well as a past.