Fishing Industry

Neil Parish Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Doran]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. All of us are ashamed of the level of discards, but at the end of the day, that has been part—

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Doran]

Of course.

[Neil Parish]

Mr Deputy Speaker is frowning at me, but I will try to be brief. Does not the hon. Gentleman think that over the years the problem of discards has been seen as far too difficult to deal with, but that we must now get stuck into finding a method of ensuring that we can land what is caught? I do not agree with him when he says, “Oh well, this, that or the other”; in the end, we have got to do it.

[Mr Doran]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman entirely. I had not quite finished my sentence, but we are all opposed to discards: it is criminal to throw good fish back into the sea. We have a major problem in this country in that the majority of our fisheries are mixed ones, but the European Commission operates on the basis of species and does not take account of mixed fisheries. We have not resolved that problem, but it needs to be worked on, so he is absolutely right.

To return to the issues that should be considered, the NFFO states that, in what is apparently now being formulated, there is a potential problem for

“choke stocks (where the exhaustion of the quota for a minor species prevents vessels from catching their main economic species).”

There is also the potential

“to put into reverse the progress that has been made over the last decade in reducing fishing mortality and achieving high levels of compliance”,

which is a serious issue. Other problems involve:

“Treatment of species with high survival rates”;

and, finally:

“Whether Norway will sanction quota flexibility for North Sea…stocks.”

I will be interested to hear from the Minister about that.

I do not want to sound totally negative, because it is important that we are not, but there are serious concerns. We have always been concerned about EU bureaucracy, but it seems to have reached a different level in relation to the fishing industry because of the involvement of the European Parliament. The prospect of a rejuvenated fishing industry under a sensible new system of regional management that operates properly, in which the TACs are determined at a relatively local level and which takes account of discards and all the rest of it, is being much delayed. It is important that the Minister responds to the points that I have raised, but also that we hear what approach he will take on these issues at the December Council.

Most of the communications that I have received from the fishing industry in my 20-odd years of life as a Member of Parliament representing a fishing city have been pretty depressing. That is part of the strategy that is adopted by the industry. However, in my recent discussions with Barrie Deas of the NFFO, he was good enough to supply some good news stories and I think it is worth reporting those. The NFFO states that

“the general trend in fishing mortality (fishing pressure) right across the North East Atlantic (including the North Sea and Baltic) since the year 2000 has been downwards. In fact a reduction of about 50% across all the main species groups has been observed by ICES.”

It is important to recognise that much of that is to do with the change in culture among the fishermen in the fleet. I am delighted that, under the guidance of the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation, the Scottish fleet has been in the vanguard of that.

Barrie Deas gave me a few examples of good news stories. The biomass for North sea plaice is

“above anything seen in the historic record.”

Western and North sea hake

“has seen a dramatic resurgence, is seen now in areas where it has not been abundant and justifies a 50% increase in the TAC.”

The Minister can take that information with him. There are similar good news stories about other species of fish.

There is good news on the fisheries science partnership. For years, it has been obvious that there is a big gulf between the fishermen and the scientists who present the evidence to the European Commission that determines the likely outcome for TACs each year. The fact that there is a serious partnership that is supported by Government and by various EU institutions, and that projects are arising from that, is certainly very good news.

I will finish on that point. I simply say to the Minister that this is an important debate for those of us who still have a fishing industry in our communities and it is an important debate for the country. There are many issues in which we might want some involvement during the year, but this is the main debate in which we have an opportunity to focus on the industry. Members of the all-party parliamentary fisheries group had very good relations with his predecessor and were sorry to see him go. If the Minister can keep up to his standards, we will all be grateful.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) and others on securing this timely debate. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing the debate to take place in the Chamber so that there can be more contributions than there have been in such debates in Westminster Hall.

I welcome the Minister and the shadow Minister to their new responsibilities. I thank them for the contributions that they made as members of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and remind them that they both participated in our excellent report in response to the proposals for the reform of the common fisheries policy.

I join the hon. Member for Aberdeen North in commemorating those who have lost their lives in the fishing industry. Fishing and farming are the two most dangerous industries and they both suffer fatalities and other losses. We should recognise that element of the work that fishermen do in bringing the fish to our plates. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) who, despite the personal loss she suffered, continues to take a great interest in the fisheries industry.

Today’s debate is timely, and I pay tribute to fishing ports across the country. The port of Filey has historically enjoyed coble boats—that is why we have Coble Landing—and when I was first elected, six families still depended on fisheries off the North sea coast from Filey port. Sadly, however, for a number of reasons—not least that they needed a trailer to bring the coble boats on to shore—the cost has been prohibitive, and I understand that they now fish mostly out of Bridlington, which I think is the largest shellfish port in England, if not the UK.

The historic common fisheries policy agreement that was agreed by the European Parliament this week is to be welcomed and paves the way for new reforms to take effect on 1 January 2014. Notwithstanding that, I wish my hon. Friend the Minister well in his overnight negotiations. I hope he will be well equipped with refreshments to keep himself in good order, as he will obviously need to be on top form.

[Neil Parish]

Does my hon. Friend agree that although it is great that the European system is now grinding into place to ban discards—I wish the Minister well in that—the process must be kept going and indeed sped up? My knowledge of the EU, and I suspect that of my hon. Friend, is that it will take an awfully long time to get to a situation where we can stop discarding healthy fish. We need to speed up the system.

[Miss McIntosh]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I agree with him. The opinion of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee on this deal was published in February 2012 and the Government response in July 2012. It has taken three years of difficult negotiations, and I commend the fisheries Minister and his predecessor on the lead we took in securing a significant reform of what was deemed a fundamentally flawed common fisheries policy.

Let me say why the reform is so important. My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) and the hon. Member for Aberdeen North mentioned discards, and it is key that we do not replace discards at sea with discards on land. The Committee’s report concluded robustly that we must be imaginative about bringing fish on to land—having been born in Scotland, disappeared, and then returned there, I can say that different fish are eaten in Scotland from those eaten in England. If we can extend the palate and consumer taste to different types of fish and create new markets for existing fish, that would be a great way forward. As the report noted, celebrity chefs and others have a part to play in that by creating a novelty feature for dishes such as pollock, which I am sure would not be so widely eaten had it not been for chefs and others paving the way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Miss McIntosh]

Much as the hon. Gentleman is my friend, I am always cautious when he tempts me to go in a particular direction. If I may, I think we shall discuss that over a cup of tea.

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend talks about Spain’s access to what, historically, were our waters. One problem is that once there is a common fisheries policy everybody muscles in, nobody more so than Spain. Spain will hoover up fish not only off our shores, but off Africa and anywhere she can find them. She is a menace and I am quite happy to say that in this House.

[Miss McIntosh]

As some of my best friends are Spanish, I hope they are not following the debate too closely. I am sure Spain would wish reciprocal access rights for our fisherman in its waters. Perhaps we can reach agreement on that basis.

The new laws will allow countries working together regionally—under my definition of regionally, which does not necessarily include Spain—to move away from micro-management to true regionalisation and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon) said, to a legally binding commitment to fish at sustainable levels.

Our report was so good that I would like to highlight one or two points. We called for decentralisation, rather than the Commission handing down, and for more research into selective fishing methods, which are important. We called for a cipher mechanism to reallocate fishing rights away from slipper skippers, and we called, again, for a register. My hon. Friend the Minister would not forgive me if I did not mention again our call for a register of who owns the current quotas.