Fisheries

Russell Brown Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Doran]

The hon. Lady has direct experience of what I am discussing and is an expert in the field. I am happy to have been a member of the Committee that debated her Bill. She has made an extremely important point.

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Like the hon. Member for Southend West (Mr Amess), I need to leave shortly; I need to be in the main Chamber shortly for the second debate. On health and safety, we all recognise how dangerous a job it is out there on the open seas, but exploitation is occurring as well. I draw to the attention of my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) and other hon. Members the police operation in my area yesterday, which stretched into west Cumbria and up into the Aberdeen and Peterhead area. It looked like that was a result of illegal immigrants, and potentially even people trafficking. The police said yesterday in their second statement:

“Our primary objectives are to ensure the human rights of these workers are being respected and to gather evidence against those who may have been involved in their alleged exploitation.”

I am sure that my hon. Friend would agree that such activity does nothing for the good name of the fishing industry.

[Mr Doran]

I agree with my hon. Friend entirely. He was good enough to tell me about that issue yesterday and I will refer to it at length later in my speech, but I thank him for that contribution.

Returning to the problem of safety in the North sea and the UK fishing industry, I have the most recent stats from the marine accident investigation branch for 2011, which show that there were 58 major injuries or fatalities in the industry, and eight of those were fatalities, so the rate is 7.5 per 1,000 people employed. It is more than twice the number of the next most dangerous industry, water and waste management, which has an accident rate of 3.3 per 1,000, and it is three and half times as many as the construction industry, which is often quoted as the most dangerous industry, with an accident rate of 2.2 per 1,000 people employed. All those figures are based on the Office for National Statistics business register and employment survey. According to the MAIB, the number of marine vessels lost was 24, which was a significant increase on the previous two years—in 2009, 15 were lost, while 14 were lost in 2010. Those are shocking figures.