Recreational Sea Bass Fishing

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

And ladies—account for 25% or 30% of all the hundreds of thousands, the millions, of bass that are taken. There they are, those recreational anglers, filling up their wheelbarrows and taking them down the high streets of our fishing communities! What a load of rubbish that is. It defies belief that organisations that pretend to be serious expect us to swallow such utter nonsense.

Let us be clear about this. The value of a bass on the dock is about £3.50. The value of that same bass to recreational angling is about £100. It is worth 28 times more to recreational anglers than it is dead on the slab, going to market.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very good case for getting out of Europe. Does he feel, as I do, and as many other Members in the Chamber do, that it is about time we had control of our fishing grounds around the shores and in the seas of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? We make the decisions, and let us do it ourselves.

[Mr Walker]

Of course I agree that we should have control of our fishing grounds, which is why I shall be voting to leave the European Union, but that is an argument for another time. I do not want to stand here and attack commercial fishermen who fish for bass, because I think that there is a golden opportunity here. As was pointed out by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox), there are very few fish left in the sea for inshore commercial fishermen to target.