UK Fishing Industry

Oliver Colvile Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

I enter the debate with a certain amount of trepidation, having listened to speeches from both my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) and my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), who is a great advocate in this regard.

Before I go further, let me pay tribute to Terri Portman, in my constituency, who helped me to ensure that—hopefully—my speech will be well informed. I also thank Dave Pessell, who runs Plymouth Trawler Agents, and the Devon Wildlife Trust, which has been incredibly helpful to me in this whole matter.

I am going to let you in on a secret, Madam Deputy Speaker: since I last spoke in one of these debates, I have been elected chairman of the all-party group on fisheries, so hopefully I know a little bit of what I am going to talk about. I succeeded my good friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray), who has been made Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

My Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport constituency includes a centuries-old fish market that now sells 6,000 tonnes of fish and shellfish annually and is the second largest fish market in England. About 40 fishing boats unload their catch at Sutton harbour daily, but up to 70% of what is sold in Plymouth is imported overland, which I am told is called overlanding.

Plymouth has a global reputation for marine science engineering research, which includes the Royal Navy, the National Marine Aquarium, the Plymouth Marine Laboratory and the Marine Biological Association, which, interestingly, was set up in the 1870s to explore whether we could ever overfish our waters.

Since my election six years ago, I have called and campaigned for UK fishing waters to be brought under national control. I feel it is the fishermen who are best placed to conserve our fishing stocks; after all, why would they not want to do so, given that they would be destroying their own livelihood? While I voted and campaigned for us to stay in the EU, the whole business of the common fisheries policy has been a running sore for the fishing industry, most certainly down in my neck of the woods. It is a totemic issue.

I feel that this decision provides our fishing industry with a unique opportunity to rebuild. Plymouth’s fishermen and women who supported that did so because they feel there are real opportunities. Now we as a Government have got to rise to, and deliver on, that challenge. Many fisherman in the south-west feel they were simply forgotten on the way as a discussion was taking place about other matters, too.

Whatever mechanisms are developed to manage and allocate fishing opportunities in the future, the south-west fisherman must never lose out again. I am sure my hon. Friend the Minister agrees with that, as he also represents a south-west seat.

Currently the UK and south-west fishermen fishing off our coast receive just 10% of haddock catches in our waters compared to France taking 66%; for monk, it is 18% to 59% for France; for whiting, it is 11% to 60% for the French; and for cod, it is a staggering 8% against 73% for France. We can therefore see why south-west fishermen feel so strongly that they were not considered when the original deal was done, and we must not allow that to happen again. But beyond the catching opportunities that must be resolved, there are many other areas where Government can offer to assist, building on good work already done by fishermen and helping our fleet become more sustainable and safer and take advantage of opportunities in this vital sector, to deliver the best economic value to the UK post-Brexit.

Locally, some pioneering initiatives are being worked through between the local authority and the industry. They will rely on assistance from the European maritime and fisheries fund, and as we look to the future post-Brexit we must endeavour to fund and deliver programmes that continue to offer support to these innovative types of work-streams, and also make sure that fishermen operate in a safer environment; that is a big issue that many Members have talked about in this debate.

My fishermen are very keen to do a number of things, and I will want to show my hon. Friend the Minister many things when he visits Plymouth in the new year. Sutton harbour has an opportunity to develop a very good set of facilities in order to be able to deliver an effective fishing industry. One thing it is looking at doing is delivering an academy to make sure people can be taught not only how to fish safely but understand the concept of what is happening. We have a lot of fishermen with 40 years’ experience and we must do more to engage with their knowledge to ensure that the academy is established.

We need to use this opportunity to deliver for our fishermen in the south-west, very much along the lines of what my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) advocated earlier. I have fought my parliamentary seat regularly, and in the run-up to the 2005 general election he came to my constituency and we met several recreational fishermen. [Interruption.] I already have a copy of the report, thank you. We certainly need to ensure that we do not give the French, or anyone else, the opportunity to get the better of us. As the old Napoleonic toast said, it should be a case of “confusion to the enemy” if they will not let us participate as we want to.

--- Later in debate ---

[Scott Mann (North Cornwall) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), and I add my thanks to the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) for securing this important debate. It is always a delight to take part in Parliament’s annual fisheries debate, which is even more significant in the light of the historic decision on 23 June to leave the European Union. The barometer of success for our negotiations will be tested in many ways. In rural areas such as North Cornwall, however, both farming and fishing will be held up and examined closely against the backdrop of the common agricultural and fisheries policies.

I would like the Secretary of State and Ministers to take up several policies on the behalf of my residents in North Cornwall. Earlier this year, I was fortunate enough to be able to secure a debate in the Chamber on bass fishing, after which I was announced as parliamentary sea bass champion.

[Oliver Colvile]

Is my hon. Friend aware that I am the champion for hedgehogs?

[Scott Mann]

My hon. Friend has mentioned that on more than one occasion. I am aware that he supports hedgehogs.

I came to the Chamber earlier this year to speak on behalf of recreational anglers, who fared badly in last year’s discussions with Ministers and EU officials. Disproportionate restrictions were placed on anglers and increases in commercial landings during specific months were announced. It is now time to act. I welcomed the comments of the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) and believe that now is the time to follow the science on bass. All indications point to stocks being at a critical level. I have been on the record before to ask for hook-and-line commercial and recreational bass fisheries, and I speak again for that today.

I have received a number of letters this week from anglers, many of whom have signed the online petition, and the gist of those letters was virtually the same: “Dear Scott,”—we are obviously on first name terms—“I have grown up fishing for bass around Cornwall. I used to catch lots of school bass. Sometimes we would have competitions to see how many bass we could catch on the same worm. Over the last 10 years, I have caught fewer and fewer. I haven’t become a bad angler overnight. I am now lucky to catch at all if I go out. Please do something to protect the stocks. Best wishes, Concerned from North Cornwall.” In fact, a number of inshore fisheries and conservation authorities are putting proposals in place to remove gill nets from estuaries, and I welcome that. I say politely but forcefully to the Minister: please release the bag limits on anglers and support the proposals for sustainable fishing in 2017.

Of course, there are many who fish commercially in and around our estuaries, and with Britain leaving the EU we have the ability to rebalance quota allocations and ensure that our under-10 metre fleet have species that they can target. We could shape a new coastal 0 to 10-mile nautical plan for this country. We also need to consider small producers’ organisations, so that they can put their case on what they are looking for and we can ensure that everyone, from the hook-and-line fishermen and the under-10 metre fleet to the bigger fleets, has a fruitful future after Brexit. A new British fisheries policy could look after hook-and-line fishermen, the under-10 metre fleet and the broader commercial sector, and I welcome that.

The new changes to the fishing licence have not been touched on. A number of carp anglers have for a number of years called to have three rods on their licence, and I welcome the change that the Environment Agency has made. Changes have also been made so that children under 12 can have free licences, so that we encourage more people to become the anglers of the future. That, too, is to be welcomed.

I wish to ask the Minister about one specific environmental scheme. I have heard of cases where boats across our seas come across plastics. They remove the offending items and bring them back to the land but then find that the local authority wishes to charge them a disposal fee. That is clearly nonsense and I suggest that fishers could be encouraged after Brexit to clean the seas by receiving a payment for landing these unwanted items, as plastics are filling our seas. I know that the Government have already made concessions on microbeads, which is to be welcomed, but does a scheme such as the one I am proposing exist already? Are there plans to implement one?

In summary, I call on the Minister to consider doing the following: redistribute the quota post-Brexit to the under-10 metre fleet; provide financial support to help people get back into the industry; remove the bag limits on anglers and introduce hook-and-line sustainable fishing methods for bass, and follow the science behind that; prioritise the under-10 metre fleet in the 0 to 12-mile zone to compensate for the removal of nets in the estuaries; support new producer organisations that represent the under-10 metre fleet, so that they have a place at the table when these discussions are happening; and introduce an environmental “fishing for plastics” scheme, which could help fishers to clean up our oceans and receive a payment for doing so. Many of our fishing communities in and around our coastline have seen a massive decline under the common fisheries policy. Now that we are back in control, we have the ability to shape our coastal communities once again.