Fishing Industry

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Miss McIntosh]

The hon. Gentleman does the House a great service by pointing that out. I had understood that regions would relate to borders contiguous to the sea within which there would be fishing. We cannot get away from the fact that Spain had historical rights to fish in our waters before 1973. That is something the Minister will have heard about, and I am interested to know how Spain manages to muscle in. I pay tribute to my Spanish friends, in case they are reading this or watching it on television—we have an agreement not to discuss fishing, Gibraltar or Las Malvinas.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

Is the next logical step to make the regions the traditional fishing waters of each member state?

--- Later in debate ---

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I shall not speak for too long, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray). She has lived her life at the heart of the fishing industry, and it is obvious from what she has just been saying, with which I strongly agree, that her heart is still with the industry.

Hon. Members will appreciate that Luton North is not a maritime constituency, and I have to say that the Luton North fishing fleet is not large. Nevertheless, I have spoken many times on fishing policy, and I have strong views on it that I think some Members share. The CFP was a terrible mistake, and it has been a disaster for Britain and for fishing waters around the coasts of the European Union. The reforms come and go, and we have seen some improvement: the movement towards regionalisation is a tacit acceptance that we have to have some local control. The obvious local control should be national local control, which, in effect, means the abolition of the CFP, in time. I have suggested that we ought to give notice—perhaps five years’ notice—that we will withdraw unilaterally from the CFP if we cannot get agreement within the European Union. That should be one of the prime negotiating planks when the Prime Minister is renegotiating our relationship with the EU. The CFP would be my No. 1 policy to dispose of.

Fish stocks have suffered terribly as a result of overfishing, and that has occurred because all member states can plunder other nations’ waters without having any responsibility for what happens. We know that at least one nation has indulged in “black fish” landing in considerable quantities, and if it cannot be trusted to fish in our waters, perhaps it should be restricted to fishing in its own waters, and restoring the 200-mile limit or 50:50 limit would be the sensible way forward.

Britain has large traditional waters; it is one of the largest maritime nations in the European Union in terms of its seas. It is completely daft and unacceptable that a number of land-locked nations in the EU can vote on the common fisheries policy. Many of them will vote slavishly for what the Commission suggests, because that is what they habitually do, so the Commission can always rely on a block vote of land-locked nations and nations that have no interest in fishing to act against what our interests might be.

The first-class example of a nation that manages its fish stocks extremely well is Norway, because it is not a member of the common fisheries policy—it is outside the European Union. Norway monitors every boat and every catch within its waters. I have just seen a quote today from an article in The Guardian of 14 February in which Fiona Harvey talks about a Norwegian trawler skipper, Egil Skarbøvik. She quotes him as saying:

“In Norway we have been able to build up the strongest cod and haddock stock in the Barents Sea ever, thanks to strong regulations including closed areas, sorting grids and a strict coastguard.”

If every nation did that, we would not have a problem with overfishing or with fish stocks diminishing, and we would not need such nonsense as discards, because we would all be managing our fish stocks and our fishing, and we would all benefit.

If all foreign vessels were excluded from British waters, I feel confident that there would be plenty of fish for British fisherman—there would not be a problem. With the existing fishing industry continuing to fish in our waters, we would see the fish stocks recover, because other nations’ fishermen would be outside. Over time, if it became possible, we could do what Norway does, which is to license individual fishing boats from other nations to fish in its waters. We have seen the boundaries of the CFP being pushed by Sweden and Denmark, and we ought to move in that direction, too. They are inching closer and closer to having real control of their own fishing waters, and I say hooray for them. I think we should do the same. They are smaller nations with smaller fishing grounds—nothing like ours—but we would benefit enormously by adopting such an approach. That is not just a nationalist policy; it is about saving fish stocks for everyone. If we had good fish stocks, we would be able to eat fish comfortably, without having to worry about the long-term future viability of our fishing grounds.

I have made my point many times, and I shall no doubt make it again until I win the argument. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), who negotiated quite hard on our behalf and did a good job, and I have complimented him at a personal level, too. However, we still have a long way to go. We have regional areas, but a region that covers Britain and Spain is nonsense. Having Spain as one region and the UK as another would make more sense. That would be a step towards the abolition of the CFP and the restoration of the management of fishing to member states, which is the sensible way ahead.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Barry Gardiner]

Very briefly, because I do not want to deprive the Minister of time.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

My hon. Friend has made a very powerful point about the number of fish being caught. Surely excluding from our waters the vessels of other member states that overfish, which we cannot control, has to come first before we start to manage our own fishing industry.

[Barry Gardiner]

I am afraid that my hon. Friend was out of the Chamber when I responded to that point, which he made earlier. Perhaps if he wants to catch up with that in Hansard we will not delay the proceedings further.

We must take a science-based approach to quota allocation and we must have a clear goal of delivering a diverse and abundant marine environment that can sustain stronger economic growth and deliver more jobs for Britain’s fishing community. It is essential that fishers are able to respond to the changes in the abundance of their quarry. The quota system can clearly create barriers to more sustainable, responsive fishing practices, but I am not persuaded that calls for an increase in total allowable catch and quota are based on adequate evidence or are compatible with the recovery of Britain’s fisheries and the long-term economic health of Britain’s fishing communities.

The hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) stated the need for a greater share of the quota for the under-10 metre fleet. He made that case absolutely superbly. Although I have screeds that I would wish to have said about it, he has made the case and I do not need to do so.

The hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) spoke of the science base. Everything comes back to that: we must follow the science. The difficulty is that often proceeding on the basis of anecdote and surmise is the only thing that we have. There are very few examples of scientific evidence being gathered both pre and post-fishing activity. A happy exception is found in the study, “Long-term changes in deep-water fish populations in the northeast Atlantic”—a paper published in the proceedings of the Royal Society in 2009.

This week, unfortunately, the proposed European ban on deep-sea fishing, which aimed to phase out trawling below 600 metres, was defeated. Trawling below that level is recognised by scientists as being by far the most destructive fishing activity. In line with its work on a more sustainable EU common fisheries policy, this matter has been very much on the European Parliament’s agenda. The Minister may care to explain why his Conservative colleagues in the European Parliament joined forces with other groups to vote down the ban and also voted to delay progress on the draft legislation, meaning that better conservation measures for deep-sea species are unlikely to be taken forward until after the 2014 European elections.

Deep-sea trawlers are catching top predators first and then moving down the food web. Taking away the top predator from an ecosystem risks a significant, possibly irrevocable, destabilisation because it removes species that play a regulatory role affecting the entire food web. The key target species in deep-sea fisheries include round-nosed grenadier, black scabbard and orange ruffy, but for these three, and up to perhaps another seven, target species for deep-sea trawlers, some 78 species are being caught as by-catch. These deep-sea species tend to be longer lived. The orange ruffy lives for up to 100 years and reaches maturity only at the age of 30. Catching these species can completely destabilise the ecosystem.

The science shows that before commercial deep-sea trawling commenced, the abundance of fish per sq km was 25,000 fish, but afterwards it collapsed to 7,225 fish per sq km. Equally of concern is that the decline was not localised in the fished area of 52,000 sq km but extended to 142,000 sq km—an area two and three quarter times that of the area that had been fished by deep-sea trawling. This is a desperately serious problem.

Finally, I want to talk about marine conservation zones, because they have been—