Recreational Sea Bass Fishing

Kevin Foster Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Scott Mann]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Locally caught sea bass has a premium price. It can be sold in local restaurants, and local businesses can make a profit from it.

I want to point out the madness of the current situation. Recreational sea anglers are members of the public who equip themselves with the tackle and knowledge necessary to access and enjoy public fishery resources. They selectively retain some fish for their own consumption, just as other members of the public enjoy Dartmoor, the New Forest or the Forest of Dean to forage for wild mushrooms, nuts and so on for their personal use. I believe that the EU is preventing our UK anglers from exercising their right—the right of our ancestors—to claim fish for the table, which is very wrong.

My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) made an interesting point about tourism, something I want to comment on. The Invest in Fish project, which was funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, was launched in 2004 and ran until 2007. It was a multi-stakeholder steering group that included fishermen, restaurants, fishing producers, merchants, recreational anglers and a number of other organisations. The objective was to examine ways in which fish stocks might be restored. In the south-west, it covered Bristol, Cornwall, Weymouth and Dorset.

The project involved numerous work packages, one of which was a study of the demographics and economic impacts of recreational sea angling. I will give some of the figures. The south-west has 240,000 recreational anglers, who cumulatively spend £110 million on their pursuit. In addition, some 750,000 days are spent at sea and the visitor spend is about £55 million. Recreational sea angling across the south-west therefore generates a total of £165 million of expenditure on bait, clothes, charter boats, boat ownership, fees, travel and accommodation.

Some places have recreational angling only, and I want to outline the benefits that that has brought. In the USA, the striped bass recreational fishery attracts anglers from all over the world and makes an estimated economic contribution to the country in excess of $2.5 billion. We must learn from the good practice in the USA and elsewhere, which delivers agreed resource sharing by species in line with fishery management advice, the best scientific evidence and economic objectives, as was said earlier.

There are jurisdictions in the British Isles, such as Ireland, that have fishery management policies that operate in favour of the most sustainable forms of bass fishing and the conservation of stocks. Bass has been a recreation-only species since the 1990s in Ireland, as was illustrated by the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards). That delivers an estimated €71 million to the Irish economy annually and supports 1,200 jobs. The Isle of Man is about to change the legislation covering sea bass to include a ban on all commercial bass fishing within 12 miles of the coast. Changes are happening around the world and we seem a bit slow to keep up.

Many of the fishing ports of north Cornwall used to be utilised regularly for fishing. In Padstow, back in the ’80s and ’90s, many people used to sit around rodding and lining off the pier. We do not tend to see that as much nowadays.

There are huge economic benefits to recreational angling. There are almost 900,000 recreational anglers in the UK and they pump £1.23 billion into the economy. There are almost 11,000 full-time jobs in sea angling alone. The “Sea Angling 2012” report found that the direct expenditure of sea anglers, after deductions, was £831 million. English anglers pay as much into the Treasury as the entire value of English fish landings, but receive no consideration in the reallocation of resources.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Does he agree that we must consider not just the direct value of angling, but the wider impact on the economy? For example, those who come to Torbay for the sea angling will not only stay in a hotel, but buy a scone done in the correct way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

I shall be brief. It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. Being on the Backbench Business Committee, I learned a lot about sea bass reproduction, when my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann) regaled us all with the reasons why we should have this debate.

I am grateful to my constituent Chris Packer who wrote to me yesterday setting out the impact in Torbay, where there are about 3,000 recreational anglers. My constituency, like that of my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), is one of the most beautiful coastal parts of the whole country and has a thriving seafood industry, as well as a commercial fishery. I have the waters of Brixham harbour in my constituency, and my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) has the harbour itself in hers, so there is a strong interest.

I agree with the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) that the question whether this is a “leave” or “remain” debate is a red herring. Whatever our position in relation to the European Union, we will need to have an agreement with other nations.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray]

rose—

[Kevin Foster]

I apologise to my hon. Friend. Her intervention will have to be very brief, and I will not take the extra minute.

[Mrs Murray]

If the UK were not part of the CFP, our UK Minister could make the rules that apply to our waters.

[Kevin Foster]

We would still almost certainly end up having to co-operate with the countries that border the channel and the North sea to ensure that we had a coherent fisheries policy.

There should be no distinction between recreational and commercial fishing. Instead, we should focus on the science and the methods. In my constituency the rod-and- line commercial fishermen came to lobby me. They catch relatively small numbers, and do so in a way that allows them easily to check the size of the catch they are landing and return to the sea immediately any fish that do not meet the requirements, meaning that they are likely to survive. If we debate whether this is commercial or recreational, we get into the position outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall. In theory, a recreational boat could go out and have to return, whereas a commercial rod-and-line boat could be beside it, using the same method for catching. That is bizarre.

I welcome the debate. The importance of the industry should be recognised, not just on account of those who participate directly in it, but as part of wider tourism and visitor attractions, particularly for constituencies in Devon and Cornwall, and certainly for my own. I welcome the contributions we have heard so far. There are real concerns about the system currently in place and they have been well explained during the debate. Whatever system we have, we will end up with some restrictions. Nobody here today is suggesting that we should not preserve the stocks and build them up, but we need to do that on the basis of science and evidence. There has been a slightly false division between commercial and recreational fishing, when the important issue is what we are taking out and what methods we are using to do that, based on clear science.