Fisheries Policy

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2015 Westminster Hall

[Calum Kerr]

I may be a new boy, but the hon. Lady cannot trip me up so easily. No, it has not changed. I am sure that, over the coming months, we will have considerable debate on this. In fact, I see fellow members of the European Scrutiny Committee here who do not share all of my views. The EU’s role in fishing will be a key part of that debate. In this debate, it is important to focus on our own interests and regional interests, because a wider discussion will follow.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

The reality is, if we gave notice that we as a nation wanted to withdraw from the common fisheries policy, we might be thrown out of the EU. I tested that with a member of UKRep, the UK Permanent Representation to the European Union. It is a bit of a contradiction to be in favour of the EU but want to get out of the CFP.

[Calum Kerr]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution; I always enjoy them. [Interruption.] I am still to develop that skill. We are at a point where the issue is not whether we should be in or out of the CFP, but how we can make it better, more effective and work for all our communities. I look forward to sparring with him when we come to the EU debate.

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[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Nuttall. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) and my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray) on securing the debate.

Last month, I attended the annual festival of the sea service at Christ church in Lowestoft, which is the most easterly church in the UK. That was an opportunity to acknowledge and thank fishermen and their families. When we eat our meals, we should not forget the risks that they take to put fish on our plates. We should also acknowledge, as many Members have, the work that the RNLI, the Fishermen’s Mission and other support groups do around the coast of these islands. Our coast is one of the British Isles’ main assets, but at times it can be unforgiving.

Our current fisheries policy is set out in the CFP, which was reformed in 2014. The reforms consisted of three parts: first, a legally binding commitment to fish at sustainable levels; secondly, more local decision making; and thirdly, the phased ban of discards. If those policies are implemented, they can bring significant benefits to the coastal communities we represent. I represent the port of Lowestoft, which was once the fishing capital of the southern North sea.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I used to know Lowestoft well in my youth—[Interruption.] It was a long time ago. When I was a youth we used to go to Lowestoft, where there were many fishing boats. Would the hon. Gentleman like to contrast the number of fishing boats in Lowestoft now with 50 years ago?

[Peter Aldous]

Indeed I would. Although the hon. Gentleman casts his mind back to his youth as being a long time ago, he must have extremely good eyesight, because he has read what I was coming on to.

In days gone by—I will not say anything about the hon. Gentleman’s youth—it was possible to cross from one side of Hamilton dock in Lowestoft to the other by walking from boat to boat. Today, that same dock is virtually empty of fishing boats. The trawlers that underpinned the industry have gone. The vessels in the Lowestoft Fish Producers’ Organisation are now largely based in the Netherlands. Their fixed quota allocation of 79,000 units is landed elsewhere, not in Lowestoft. The industry that remains in Lowestoft is an under-10 metre inshore fleet of 10 to 12 vessels.

When we have debated this subject previously, I have been pretty pessimistic and said, “Time is of the essence. We’re at one minute to midnight. We have very limited time to save the industry in Lowestoft.” Today, I am more optimistic. I can see a light at the end of the tunnel, although I am conscious that it might be an oncoming train. I believe there is a real future for the industry in Lowestoft, and not only because of the announcement about CEFAS that I mentioned.

We can build a new, 21st-century fishing industry in Lowestoft. The future of the port is beginning to become clear: it is a sustainable and exciting future, involving offshore wind and fishing working together. Two weeks ago, it was announced that the construction base and the operations and maintenance base for the East Anglia One offshore wind farm would be in the port of Lowestoft. It has also been announced that the construction base for the Galloper offshore wind farm will be in Lowestoft.

The fishing industry, through Associated British Ports and other interested parties, is now providing us with the opportunity to work together to invest in the fish market and to secure a long-term future for fishing in the port. My vision is of an inshore fleet of approximately 25 boats that can help to underpin the processing businesses and smokehouses that remain in the town to this day. It will not be easy to achieve that vision, and I will outline the five challenges we need to address in order to deliver that goal.

First, the Government need to honour the legally binding commitment in article 17 of the reformed CFP to encourage sustainable fishing that has the least possible impact on the marine environment and that maximises economic and social returns to coastal communities such as Lowestoft.

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[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. I shall be considerably less than 10 minutes, I hope. It is something of an embarrassment that I speak from a non-fishing constituency; the fishing fleet of Luton North is not large. On the other hand, I have spoken in fishing debates many times, and on every occasion I have spoken about the nonsense that is the common fisheries policy. I have consistently argued for the abandonment of the CFP, or the UK’s unilateral withdrawal from it, which would allow us to re-establish the limit of 200 miles, or 50%, for Great Britain and, I would hope, the British Isles in general.

I applaud the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray), who put in her own very fine words what I am saying, and the hon. Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay), who spoke in similar terms. If we withdrew from the CFP and permitted only UK fishing vessels to fish in our home waters—with possible licensing for a small number of foreign vessels, where appropriate, on an individual and carefully monitored basis—I think we would see a massive revival of the British fishing industry and of fish stocks across our waters. If all member states and, indeed, all nations operated under similar arrangements, they would all have a powerful vested interest in managing and monitoring their own stocks and fisheries. There would surely be plenty of fish for all British fishermen working under such arrangements, and stocks would be sustained at appropriate levels for the long term.

I recently had the pleasure of meeting representatives of the Government of Guernsey, which is not in the CFP. They showed me what could be done if we managed our own fishing stocks. They have their own 12-mile limit, and they are not governed by the CFP quota limits. They manage their fishing stocks extremely well. They are, in microcosm, what we could become. They are concerned that the British Government might give away control of their fishing areas to the CFP, and they have asked me to urge the Minister to take note of their case and be sympathetic to them. They manage the number and sizes of their boats very carefully. All the fishermen involved make a good living and fish stocks remain buoyant, if that is not a contradiction in terms. That is what we should become, with our 200-mile limit.

The representatives from Guernsey contrasted their experience with that of Jersey, which has seen its fish stocks disappear because it does not have the same control over its own fishing grounds. We should give notice now of withdrawal from the CFP and make Britain another Norway—another Guernsey writ large. The CFP has been a disaster, and it should be abandoned. That would be to the benefit of all fishing nations in the European Union, not just to us.

The appalling insanity of discards has been the most grotesque feature of the CFP. Discards are supposedly being phased out, but they continue for the time being. The excellent Library note on this topic states that according to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee report published in February 2012, in European fisheries, 1.7 million tonnes of fish were discarded annually, with some discards being up to 90% of catches. That is a complete nonsense. It will be to the benefit of us all—not just fishing fleets, the fishing industry and people who fish, but the whole country—and our diets if we maintain good fish stocks and a healthy fishing industry. As a great lover of fish, I hope that we will do so.