UK Fishing Industry

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

May I associate myself with the remarks of the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray) about marine safety organisations and fishermen’s welfare organisations? I am thinking particularly of the Fishermen’s Mission, in a year which, thankfully, has been one of the better ones in terms of fatalities at sea.

I do not know whether you have had an opportunity to watch the wonderful BBC series “Blue Planet II”, Madam Deputy Speaker. If you have, you will have been inspired and moved by the wondrousness of our marine environment, but also by its vulnerability and fragility. While environmental degradation on land is visible to us—we see forests and species disappear, and we see desertification—what has been happening in our oceans for far too long has remained invisible to all except a dedicated band of marine scientists and divers, but now, thanks to that fantastic programme, it is there for all of us to see.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

When my right hon. Friend watched that programme, was he as concerned as I was by the amount of plastic being ingested by some of the marine life that later goes into our food chain?

[Mr Bradshaw]

Indeed I was. Thankfully, plastics are one of the more visible aspects of marine pollution, because we see them washed up on our beaches and the Government are taking action, but a great deal else that goes on is still invisible.

There is another big difference between land-based and sea-based environmental degradation. The sea is a place where the ancient human activity of hunting and gathering continues, and continues apace. As has just been pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn), other human activity, such as the use of plastics, has its impacts, but much of it is invisible. Man-made climate change is leading to the warming and acidification of our oceans, with yet unknown consequences. It does not affect just marine life—including fish, as an edible resource—but the roles that the oceans themselves play in regulating our climate, our oxygen levels, and basically everything that makes human life on earth possible.

For most of human history, oceans and fish were simply plundered. That did not matter when there were relatively few human beings and fishing technology was relatively antiquated, but in the last 100 years or so, population growth and technological progress have completely changed that equation, with, in some instances, devastating consequences. We all know the story of the near eradication of bluefin tuna, turtles, cod off the north-east coast of the United States, and, in our own case, cod in the North sea. However, things have changed. Because of what was going on in the early noughties, politicians began to take notice and take action. There was collective endeavour, and it has worked. North sea cod has made a fantastic recovery, thanks to the difficult measures and decisions that I took as a fisheries Minister, which were massively criticised by the fishing industry at the time. There has even been progress on the high seas, which is much more difficult because of the lack of an international legal framework.

As anyone—I hope—can appreciate, managing our seas and fish stocks sustainably demands that countries work together. As has been said so often during our debates over the years, fish do not respect national borders; they swim about. Unlike the hon. Member for South East Cornwall, I have real concerns about the potential of Brexit to reverse the welcome progress that we have seen in the last 15 or 20 years. Let us be honest: the status quo is not a disaster. The hon. Lady herself spoke of recommendations for increased catches at this year’s meeting of the Council of Ministers. I wonder why that is the case. My local ports, Brixham and Plymouth, have just reported their best years in terms of the value of their catches. Species such as cuttlefish are doing incredibly well, and are being exported straight to markets in Italy, France and Spain. Our crab and lobster are also valuable exports.

--- Later in debate ---

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray) on securing the debate and on her excellent work with the all-party fisheries group, of which she is chairman. I also echo her sentiments about the Fishermen’s Mission and its continued good work supporting fishermen and their families and local communities, particularly those in my constituency.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray]

I do not want to leave out my hon. Friend—the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn)—who is the joint chairman of the all-party parliamentary group.

[Melanie Onn]

A rare moment of cross-party agreement around fisheries. I thank the hon. Lady for those comments.

Today, I want to focus my remarks primarily on the processing side of the fisheries industry. However, before I get on to that, I want to mention the case of a former fisherman from my constituency. In the debate last year, I raised the case of James Greene, and the issue of fishermen missing out on their pensions unjustly, with subsequent Governments failing to properly compensate them for that. Sadly, James Greene passed away last year, but his widow is still waiting for his full entitlement from the fishermen’s compensation scheme. The ship he worked on for 20 years was wrongly omitted from the scheme’s list of eligible vessels. That list has been corrected, but the payments owed to James have still not been made in full.

I have been dealing with this matter through the parliamentary ombudsman, but the most recent correspondence I have had sight of says:

“The matters you have raised are not new as they were not in the scope of the investigation. We did not look at the department’s decision to pay for work on the Thessalonian at the reduced second scheme rate even though it had mistakenly been excluded under the first scheme…As the Ombudsman has already given this matter her personal attention earlier this year and with no new information provided, we would not look at this matter again.”

That is extremely disappointing. For the sake of his widow, for just £3,000—that is all we are talking about—and for the peace of mind of those at the Great Grimsby Association of Fishermen and Trawlermen, who have been fighting for decades for justice, will the Minister please meet me to see whether there is anything more that can be done to bring this matter to a satisfactory close?

The demise of the fishing industry since its peak in the middle of the 20th century has hit my town particularly hard. What we have seen in Grimsby is the transformation of the sector. While catching has severely diminished, in the way the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) discussed, we are now a hub for the processing, manufacturing, and packaging side of things. We have 75 food sites within a radius of a couple of miles, employing 5,000 people in landing the fish, selling it, smoking it or turning it into fish cakes.

This is necessarily an international industry. The fish caught off our coasts are often not the kind that people in Britain want to eat. Depending on where a catch is landed, the fish that ends up in Grimsby may have crossed the borders of three or four countries on its way to us. Some 270 tonnes of imported fish passes through our market every week, and these are perishable goods. Anything that makes trading harder could compromise the viability of the main source of employment in my constituency.

[Mr Bradshaw]

Do those potential obstacles to the frictionless trade my hon. Friend talks about include the loss of regulatory alignment, which is the topic of the week?

[Melanie Onn]

Yes. I will come on to regulatory alignment and the variance thereof.

I want to talk briefly about Norway, because it has been mentioned in the debate, and it is often cited as an example of how Britain’s fisheries sector could thrive outside the common fisheries policy. However, what is not mentioned is the effect Norway’s position has had on its seafood processing sector. By opting out of the CFP, Norway has had to accept losing market access in fisheries. According to the CBI, this trade-off has seen the majority of its seafood processing sector relocate to the EU, with Britain being a substantial winner from that situation. Under that agreement, Norway can sell fresh fish to EU countries with a minimal 2% tariff, but with 13% on processed fish.

Similarly, while we can currently buy fish from Norway and Iceland tariff-free, that may not be the case in just over a year’s time. The Minister must fight to ensure that this is not the outcome waiting for Britain after we leave the EU. It would be absolutely catastrophic for jobs and industry in Grimsby.

[Mr Bradshaw]

And it would mean more expensive fish and chips.

[Melanie Onn]

And more expensive fish and chips, as my right hon. Friend says.

I met the Minister with a delegation from Grimsby’s seafood processing sector last month to discuss ways to ensure that our ports and industry could continue to grow post Brexit, so I recognise that this issue is on his agenda. However, perhaps he could just update the House on what work he is doing to prepare the sector for the changes coming down the line.

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

The fishing industry in my area, the south-west of Scotland, is very much lobster and langoustine-based. Eighty-six per cent. of that goes to Europe, so my industry would be decimated if we had barriers.

[Melanie Onn]

I thank the hon. Lady for sharing that point. It just goes to show how important it is, in all areas of the country and in all our coastal communities, that every effort is made to make sure that our local communities do not suffer as the outcome of Brexit becomes ever clearer.

About one in five of the industry’s skilled workforce comes from overseas. Training needs to be much more widely available if freedom of movement is no longer going to apply to this country after we leave the European Union. With that in mind, I invite the Minister to visit the fantastic Modal Training facility in my constituency, which provides training for maritime, port and marine workers. I hope that he will take me up on that offer to see the modern training methods that are being used to maintain these essential maritime skills.