Fisheries Bill (Second sitting)

Mike Hill Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2018 Public Bill Committees

[David Duguid]

Q One more question, if I may. Going back to what you were saying earlier, I think your exact words were along the lines of “Unfortunately, quotas have become a commodity.” With quotas being sellable and buyable, they are an asset, at least. If quotas were to be more fairly distributed among the smaller vessels in future, how would you avoid them just becoming sellable commodities, bought up by others?

Jerry Percy: There are a number of global examples where you can retain quota as a national resource without allowing its sale. There obviously needs to be flexibility in-year to move quota about, to ensure that those people benefit from it. It is not an easy situation to resolve, but there are global examples of what can be done to ensure that almost half of our national resource is not in foreign hands, as has happened here.

[Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

Q I represent Hartlepool, which is one of those coastal communities affected long ago by unfair quotas for under-10s. There is an argument that our industry could be revived if fairer quotas were allocated. In your opinion, how many ports would benefit from an uplift in quotas?

Jerry Percy: It is not just ports; there are harbours, coves, small areas and small coastal communities. It would be dozens, if not hundreds. Going back 40-odd years, I can remember fishing out of Lowestoft as a boy fisherman. There were myriad groups of small boats all the way up and down the coast, all providing a significant benefit to those local communities. They may not show up on an economist’s spreadsheet, but those people are nevertheless paying their mortgage, taking their kids to school and keeping the local infrastructure going. I am not exaggerating; it could certainly be in the hundreds that we could revive and have some level of renaissance. There is no doubt whatever.

[Mike Hill]

Q I get the impression from representatives from the larger fleets that they would oppose quota redistribution. What arguments are there against that?

Jerry Percy: Well, why should they get more? To an extent, it is based on greed. They already have approximately 98% of access to the quota, 50% of which is in foreign hands, and a very significant proportion is in the hands of the five richest families in this country. It has become a fundamental nonsense and is grossly unfair socially, environmentally and economically that nearly 80% of the fleet in the UK has access to only 2% of the quota. The idea or argument that any additional quota should be allocated according to the existing fixed quota allocations frankly is just grossly unfair. There is no sensible economic or social reason why that should be the case.

[The Chair]

Does any other Government Member wish to ask a question?

--- Later in debate ---

[Luke Pollard]

Q Just so I understand, you are saying that the UK will have that power in the future. Should that power be set out in the Bill—that this should be a requirement? My concern is that UK boats might have to have IVMS, but foreign boats might not, depending on what option we decide to put in the licence. There should be a level playing field between UK boats and foreign boats in UK waters, so should all boats not have to have IVMS on them?

Phil Haslam: The power in the Bill gives us the ability to regulate who comes into our waters by granting permission. I do not think the conditions of permission need to be explicit in the Bill, but they can be part of that, among other things that we would require any vessel within our waters to comply with.

[Mike Hill]

Q On the point you made about IVMS, would that extend to what I consider to be leisure fishing craft as well?

Phil Haslam: There will be a cut-off of who actually gets fitted with it, because the point is to try to develop a picture of what is the main input into the fishery in terms of effort on vessels out there. There will be some vessels—there will be a line below which we will not need to go. At the moment we are looking to catch—not catch, that is the wrong word—fit IVMS to the active fishing vessels.

[Mike Hill]

To commercial vessels.

Phil Haslam: To commercially active fishing vessels, yes.

[Luke Pollard]

Q The Bill includes provision for the Secretary of State to allocate fishing opportunities based on days at sea, as well as the fixed quota allocation. How does your enforcement action differ when you are looking at a boat using days at sea versus looking at a boat fishing against an FQA?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Carmichael]

Q Just 30 seconds on devolution, because I want to give colleagues some time. Is there not a conflict of interest where the United Kingdom is holding the reins but is parti pris in respect of the English interest as well?

Dr Appleby: That is a very good question. I put my amendments together in two parts. The Secretary of State is doing two roles; I am sitting here with two roles myself, so I appreciate that. One is being the Secretary of State on behalf of the UK—he is a trustee of the UK’s public fishery—and the other one is being English Fisheries Minister. That is why I do not like the way clause 20 is drafted, because I thought you would split the functions. The trouble is that it goes into some very difficult water when we start to look at the different devolution settlements.

[Mike Hill]

Q I have two simple questions. In your opinion, does the Bill provide the requirement for the UK fisheries to be sustainable? Should the Secretary of State provide annual statements on stock levels?

Dr Appleby: I will take the second question first because the second one leads to the first. How can you define “sustainable” if you do not know what the stock levels are? There is a massive absence of science on this. If we get money back in from the fishery, I would like the commissioning of decent science so we can look ahead and plan forward. We seem to be navigating while looking behind us. We need to get better data to manage the stock. We also need to have a conversation about which stock we want to fish. What are the stocks that live best in our waters that we want to feed the country in the 21st century?

[The Chair]

Mr Aldous wants to ask a question and we have just less than a minute left.