Fisheries Bill [Lords]

Martin Vickers Excerpts

Ways and Means resolution & 2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Tuesday 1st September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Lia Nici (Great Grimsby) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) for her comments. She is very passionate, and it is fantastic to know that landlocked Luton is as passionate about fishing as we are in Great Grimsby.

I am very happy to be contributing to today’s debate because, as most hon. Members will know, Grimsby has a long and important historic and current link to fishing. It is a real pleasure to be able to speak here on behalf of the people of Grimsby. I believe that it is because of fishing that over 70% of people in Grimsby voted to leave the EU and, importantly, that historic numbers felt able to support this Government at the last election, to make sure that we leave the EU and get back our fishing waters. When I am out and about in Grimsby, the most commonly asked question I get is: “When are we going to get our fishing waters back, and are we going to get them back?” I say to my constituents: “Yes, absolutely.”

Grimsby’s association with the fishing industry goes back centuries, but the modern industry started in the 1800s. By 1900, 10% of all the fish eaten in the UK was landed in Grimsby. In the 1950s, Great Grimsby was the UK’s and the world’s premier port. What fishing brought to Grimsby was wealth, investment into the docks and a direct train link to London. That was the power of the fishing industry to us. Unfortunately, that industry has been taken away from us, first because of the cod wars with Iceland, which rendered us unable to fish in Icelandic waters, because Iceland wanted to be a sovereign fishing state, and secondly because of the impact of the common fisheries policy, which gave foreign trawlers more and more power to plunder our fishing waters.

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

My hon. Friend and I have met our local fishing representatives on a number of occasions. The point that comes over time and time again is the lack of fairness in the present arrangements. The other point that I think needs emphasising is that the EU’s attempts during the current negotiations to link trade to fishing quotas is totally unacceptable. Would she acknowledge that?

[Lia Nici]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. What the industry has been telling us for the last few years, and for the last few months that I have been working with him to ensure that we are listening to it, is that although we hear the EU talk about reciprocal arrangements, there is nothing reciprocal about the current arrangements. The fish that the EU catches in our waters is eight times the value of what we can catch in EU waters. We talk about the common fisheries policy following sustainability, but it does not. It does not do what we need it to do it all. To take a particular cod species, under the common fisheries policy we can currently catch 20% of the North sea saithe. If we had zonal attachment where the fish are actually in our waters, we could catch 75%, but at the moment our fishers have to steam away from our own fish. It is therefore absolutely vital that we are able to build on that.

The common fisheries policy, as we all know, is not fit for purpose. We need to make sure that we change it so that we are in control of what we want. The common fisheries policy is what really tore the heart out of Great Grimsby. For 40 years we have struggled to recover from that. The decline in the fishing industry in Grimsby is because we are not able to catch in the way that we want to or do what we want to ensure future sustainability. The reason for a decimated fishing industry in my town is not that we were not efficient in catching or because our customers did not want to buy fish from us.