Recreational Sea Bass Fishing

Rory Stewart Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Moon]

I appreciate the comment from my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies)—I should never have done it, but my constituents wanted to know, so I wanted to know, and thus I am here today. I am also a Member who has a coastal resort, in which sea bass fishing was a very popular activity, so I started looking at the facts.

Everywhere I looked, it was very clear that there was an urgent need to rebuild bass stocks—and nobody seems to dispute that. It is the core bottom line. It is an environmental and economic imperative, and everybody will agree on that. We know this because in 2014, the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas recommended an 80% cut in bass mortality across the EU area for 2015, following a rise in bass landings from 772 tonnes to 1,004 tonnes. We were taking more out of the sea than was sustainable. The bass stock in the North Atlantic fishery is 527 tonnes—well below the trigger point of concern for the exploration of the seas, which was set at 8,000 tonnes. Future regenerations of sea bass stocks are now in danger.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rory Stewart)]

This is just a small point, but I think the hon. Lady meant to say 5,250 tonnes.

[Mrs Moon]

I thank the Minister for the correction; he is absolutely right.

In December 2015, the EU Fisheries and Agricultural Council met to formulate a package of measures and regulations, but the agreement that was reached was both unfair, ineffective and, quite honestly, unbelievable. The regulation of recreational and commercial bass fishing, which came out of that December meeting, has exposed a rotten relationship between the industry and Government, both in the UK and across the EU.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rory Stewart)]

As someone who is not the fisheries Minister and whose constituency is stuck on the top of a mountain, I feel I am being drawn from my native rivers and well out from the pelagic realms into very deep water. My main responsibility has been to listen very carefully to this highly intelligent and serious debate. I will communicate all the arguments that have been made to the fisheries Minister and I will make sure that DEFRA takes them into account, responds to them in detail and takes action.

In the seven minutes I have left, it will not be possible for me to do full justice to all the speeches and interventions. May I say, however, that it is a great pleasure to take part in this debate? One of the most striking things about it, as one can see in the Chamber, is the great strength, good humour and, indeed, good looks of anglers. I have been very struck by the sense of generally energetic, tanned men, such as the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) and my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann), who is looking cheerful and bouncy. I have a general sense that this sport brings out a stress-free, cheerful life, and that it is to be praised. The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) also contributed to the debate in an intervention.

As someone who is new to the debate about sea bass, it is striking that it is bringing to the surface the very serious tension between EU fisheries policy and UK policy, and between the interests of anglers and the interests of commercial fishermen. Navigating our way through that is quite tough. Very strong statements were made by my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray), who particularly stressed her family connection with commercial fishing, my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes), who took us all the way back to medieval abbots, and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox), whose speech was perhaps more suitable for mobilising a brigade for war than for a technical discussion of maximum sustainable yields.

The hon. Member for Angus (Mike Weir) made us think about the role of aquaculture in relation to sea bass. One reason why sea bass is a very striking fish is that it is, or so it seems to an outsider, the next salmon—the next great challenge we face in the debate in the United Kingdom. It is clearly an unusual fish, as people found when they developed aquaculture in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It struggles to get out of the microscopic eggs, it produces juveniles that have difficulty in tracking down their prey, and it has to create its air sack by rising to the surface and filling it with an oxygen bubble. In fact, the species suffered what was essentially an extinction event in the Mediterranean. We are now talking about the north-east Atlantic, but the Mediterranean sea bass was in effect eliminated during the 1960s and 1970s. Most of its presence there now appears to be related to farmed sea bass that have escaped.

That is why the challenge that the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) made to us to focus hard on the science is so important. The hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) focused on biomass, particularly breeding or spawning biomass, and my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) focused on landings. The shadow Secretary of State pointed to the issues around tonnage and black fish, particularly the landing of 1,100 tonnes in 2014.

This is a serious subject and the science is at the core of the debate. It does not matter whether we are talking to commercial fishermen or the angling community: the question is: what is the state of sea bass? Of course, sea bass has been on an extraordinary rollercoaster since the early 1980s. We went from minimal tonnage to a single spike year in the 1980s in which we hit nearly 13 million tonnes of biomass. Very warm conditions seem to have created an enormous number of sea bass. Along with changes in our eating patterns, that created the phenomenon, which did not really exist before the 1980s, of commercial fleets going into the Atlantic after sea bass to feed these new tastes. A series of cold winters from 2009 onwards appear to have led to a serious problem in new juvenile production, when combined with the large levels of catching, as the shadow Secretary of State pointed out.

The best analysis that we can currently reach on the subject comes from ICES. We believe that we are catching about 5,000 tonnes and that that is about 30% of an 18,000 tonne biomass. However, if we look at breeding biomass, the figures appear to be lower. I see the hon. Member for Ogmore is looking at a piece of paper. Does he want me to give way briefly?

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I thank the Minister for a very detailed answer, which is focused on the science. The ICES evidence points to the necessity of an 80% cutback in the year ahead and a 90% cutback after that. Those cuts are massive and stringent. Will the Minister respond to the suggestion that we will actually be looking at about 20%? Is that accurate?

[Rory Stewart]

I notice that since the emergency of Daesh, people have really struggled to pronounce ICES. It is causing more and more of a problem. Foreign affairs and defence appear to be entering into fishing debates.

To answer the hon. Gentleman, the 80% reduction is a reduction from a current maximum sustainable yield, which we believe to be about 13%—that is the best science—from the current catch rates and landings, which seem to be striking at about 30%. The question clearly is whether the measures taken in December Council will achieve those targets. I will come on to that now.

The key thing is that most of us in this Chamber agree that we need a solution—in fact, everybody in the Chamber probably agrees that we need a solution—that achieves a healthy bass stock. Again, I am very much not speaking as an expert, as this is outside my field. The measures that were taken at the Council were, broadly speaking, steps in the right direction. I think hon. Members would agree with that. The most important actions that were taken—this relates to the question from the hon. Member for Ogmore about the 80% reduction—were those that related to the pelagic fleet. In particular, the measures on drift netting—not on fixed gillnets, but on drift netting in general—were important, especially in relation to pair trawlers.

One debate in this House is about what kind of impact those measures will have. Will they reduce by 70% or even more the amount that is caught, as one would hope, or does more need to be done? I think that we would also embrace the move from 36 cm to 42 cm. The reason for that, which I do not need to point out to the House, is that we will get more spawning stock because the animals will get to a greater age.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray]

Does my hon. Friend agree that in 2005, the UK fisheries Minister wanted to impose that increase just on UK fishermen? Now, it will at least be imposed on anybody who goes out from any member state to fish for bass.

[Rory Stewart]

That is a very good point, but it is important to remember that one reason why the EU dimension matters is that these fish are very widely distributed. I have talked about the Mediterranean variety, but they exist all the way from the Mediterranean right up to the north Atlantic. About 70% of the catches—it is hard to put a figure on this, but certainly the majority of the catches—in the north Atlantic come from French boats. It is extremely important, therefore, to the UK fisheries that an agreement is reached at the European level if we are to create a sustainable biomass and a maximum sustainable yield on catching.

My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), in a characteristically energetic, cheerful and engaged speech, attacked the specific conclusions that were reached in relation to fixed gillnets and, in particular, the 1.3 tonne limit and the two-month closure.

Let me move to a conclusion. There seems to be a consensus in the House that there is more to do and that we must consider our next steps, several of which have emerged from the debate. First, we must all agree that the huge achievement in the Council—I am sorry that more people have not pointed this out—was to get all member states to agree on the figure for the maximum sustainable yield. That is absolutely vital. By getting them to agree on a 13% take, we have a target for 2017-18 that we can use to leverage in exactly the kind of arguments made by my hon. Friend about the tonnage catch for individual boats. We must have those conversations throughout the summer and the rest of the year, and keep relentlessly focused on that target.

Secondly, the hon. Member for Angus made a powerful point about ensuring that, through the regional advisory council network, we have people in a room who are seriously focused on an agreed target of meeting that maximum sustainable yield—as my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall pointed out, that also extends to commercial fishing. The 25-year environment plan that DEFRA is introducing will provide us with an opportunity to lead a pathfinder that will focus on a marine area. Hopefully that will allow us to explore the kind of ideas that my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall focused on in relation to striped bass and the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham focused on in relation to Ireland, namely the potential social and economic benefit that can come from developing a sustainable bass angling industry.

This has been an impressive debate given the level of science, detail and constituency commitments involved. In defence of the deals that are being struck, we have achieved an enormous amount in addressing the biggest problem, which was the pelagic large drift and pair trawlers, and that is a big achievement. We have also achieved an enormous amount in getting agreement at European Council on the maximum sustainable yield, and that target will be vital. We have done that in a way that has attempted to respect the interests of commercial fishermen, and also to engage anglers. If we can achieve that target by 2017-18—and it will be tough—a lot of these issues can be revisited. If we do not achieve the right path towards that target in the coming year, we will have to revisit the catch for commercial fishermen. I call on the patience and understanding of the House as we address an issue that is important not just to this country, and that is the preservation of a unique iconic species: the branzino, the spigola, the lavráki, or for us, the bass.