UK Fishing Industry

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr Campbell), and, like him, I am going say a few words about my local fishery in a moment. We have been the beneficiaries of the expertise of my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), and I agreed with the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) and, indeed, the right hon. Member for Tynemouth when they pointed out that fishing is a dangerous profession. Every year, lives are lost at sea. The fishermen in our constituencies are going out, day after day, in some of the most demanding conditions imaginable.

Before I come on to the CFP and the future, I would like to say something about the Wash. The Wash fishery is one of the most successful in Europe. More than 100 boats fish out of King’s Lynn, Boston and the smaller ports such as Brancaster and Wells. About 40 boats fish out of Lynn, and for every job on the boats, there are probably five onshore—engineers at a small boatyard, for example, and specialist businesses dealing with re-equipping and re-fitting fishing gear. Some engineers specialise in hydraulics, but there is an entire onshore industry that supports the fisheries. There are some important fish processing businesses, as well, including John Lake Shellfish Ltd and Lynn Shellfish. Between them, they employ a significant number of people.

Fishing is very much part of Lynn’s heritage, as superbly portrayed in the True’s Yard Fisherfolk Museum in King’s Lynn, which depicts the story of the old North End fishing quarter of Lynn. It was, of course, Queen Elizabeth I who granted Lynn fishermen the right to

“free and uninterrupted use of the Fisher Fleet for ever and ever”

and a day. King’s Lynn was, in fact, the first port in the UK to join the New Hansa, a consortium of ports in Europe that were originally members of the Hanseatic League.

Fishing is thus an incredibly important part of my constituency, and the mainstay of the Wash shell fishery is the shrimp harvest. There are other target species, including cockles, whelks, mussels, some crabs, lobsters and some whitefish. Let me say a few words about the shrimp fishery first.

Shrimp is an all-year-round fishery, so it is incredibly important to keep the processing plants open all year. One of the leading fishermen in King’s Lynn is John Lake, who said to me the other day that it was “the glue” that holds “the entire fishery together”. The Minister will know that the 2016 harvest was a record one. There were superb catches. The Wash shrimp fishery is now the best in Europe, and quite a lot of the catch is exported, so the lower pound has been highly beneficial. On average this year, exports have been between £350,000 and £400,000, which is obviously good for the balance of payments. This is bringing in a great deal of resources and money to the fishermen.

As the Minister also knows, a potential crisis is looming. Already 40% of the original fishing grounds in the Wash are no longer available because of the RAF bombing range and the exclusion zone around the 1,000 or so offshore wind turbines. The number of conservation areas has been increased, and there has been an increase in sand extraction. For those reasons, fishermen have lost 40% of the fishing grounds that were available about 20 years ago. That makes it even more remarkable that we have had a record shrimp harvest.

There is a potential problem coming our way, and I should like the Minister to look into it. The Eastern Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority is consulting on the introduction of a permit scheme that could lead to a significant reduction—about 14%—in the shrimp grounds. There have been suggestions of possible damage to soft, muddy or mixed sediments. However, one fisherman told me that beam trawlers have been going out into that part of the Wash for 200 years, and one really strong north-east gale will do far more damage in one day than they could do in a year.

This is coming from the European Union: EU regulations are putting pressure on EIFCA. I urge the Minister to look at this matter urgently, especially given that we are leaving the EU. Perhaps he could call a meeting with members of EIFCA and talk it through with them. We want proper evidence. We want a peer-reviewed survey, and we want a proportionate, common-sense approach to the problem. The Minister has already made a pledge to look at it, but I urge him to look at it again, because the fishery will be under a great deal of pressure if that does not happen. One of the great jewels in our crown will be lost, and that is an incredibly important consideration in my constituency.

The cockle fishery has a shorter season, but the stocks have been prolific recently, and the fishermen have been helped by the fall in the pound. In this case EIFCA raised the quota from 2 tonnes to 3 tonnes per vessel, which has been beneficial. We have therefore had a good season. However, there has been an ongoing debate about methods of cockle fishing. The suction dredging technique is preferred by the bigger commercial fishermen, but the artisanal fishermen use prop washing: they anchor the boat and turn the engine on, and the boat then goes round in a circle stirring up the sediment. When the tide goes down, the boat will alight and the hand-raking will commence. That is the traditional artisanal way of fishing, and because it is successful and is popular among the artisanal fishermen, suction dredging has been banned for the last few years.

However, there are parts of the Wash where prop washing cannot take place, because the stock of cockles is too sparsely distributed. The technique only works in areas where there is a concentration of cockles that can be stirred up. In recent years, significant amounts of stock have simply gone unfished. Let me give the Minister an example. Fishermen told me the other day that in the Boston main fishery, on the western side of the Wash, between 9,000 and 10,000 tonnes of large cockles—which are worth roughly three times as much as the smaller ones—went unfished, and went to waste. That is between £9 million and £10 million worth of stock, at about £900 a tonne, so it was an appalling waste. Had suction dredging been permitted on an ad hoc, one-off basis, the harvest could have been extended and a great many extra cockles could have been brought in, to the benefit of the fishery.

I hope that the Minister will deal with those points when he winds up the debate, but if he does not have time to do so, perhaps he will write to me.

Let me end by saying that I think there are massive opportunities post-Brexit, although things will not be in any way easy. As my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton pointed out, difficult and challenging negotiations lie before us, but surely, with a certain amount of imagination and innovation, we can ensure that those bilateral and trilateral arrangements are put in place, and we can reset our fisheries policy so that we have a UK fisheries policy and can get the best possible deal for UK fishermen, particularly those in Scotland. I remember that, in my youth, every single port in Scotland had a fisher fleet. The CFP has been a disaster for UK fisheries. We now have a huge opportunity to reconfigure it, and rebuild fishing policy for the future in the interests of UK fishermen. I know that the Minister cannot give away his negotiating position, but I hope that today he will spell out his vision of the future of UK fisheries. We wish him well.