UK Fishing Industry

Debate between Sarah Wollaston and Sheryll Murray

Wednesday 12th December 2018 Westminster Hall

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that really important point. In Brixham, in my constituency, fishermen are very worried about choke species with cod, which they cannot avoid catching. I wonder whether she feels the same about cod fisheries?

[Mrs Murray]

Absolutely. I wanted to point out what Bertie Armstrong had said, wholly and solely because, off the south-west coast, in areas VIId and VIIe—or VIIb to VIIk, actually, which is the whole of the south coast—UK fishermen have a tiny proportion of the EU total allowable catch. They get something like 8% of that quota, compared with 80% for our French counterparts. That is what causes the concern and the problems, because if there is cod on the ground, fishermen cannot stop the cod swimming into their nets, and many have to be discarded. What happens when fishermen catch a net full of cod? They cannot land it, but they cannot throw it away either. That is a good illustration of the problem with the landing obligation under the top-heavy bureaucratic common fisheries policy.

I have mentioned the south-west and area VIIe, but I want to point out to the Minister some of the proposals that are on the table for the North sea stocks. I understand from the National Federation of Fishermens Organisations that the proposals are for a 22% reduction in whiting, a 33% reduction in cod and a 31% reduction in haddock. What will the Minister do to rebalance that?

If all the fish, using zonal attachment, were available for the British fishing fleet to catch and land from when we leave the European Union—my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State have said that we will leave the common fisheries policy on March 29 2019 at 11 o’clock in the evening—it would certainly benefit the United Kingdom and our economy. We should look to redress the imbalance that has been heaped on the industry for more than 40 years.

Other hon. Members want to speak, and we have only a short time for the debate, so, in summary, I wish to hear what the Minister will do at the Council. Will he send a message to our European partners that when the United Kingdom leaves on March 29 2019, we will honour our obligations under the United Nations convention on the law of the sea and the United Nations fish stocks agreement—particularly article 62—and set quotas in a sustainable way, as is our obligation, but make available to other nations only the surplus of fish that the UK fleet cannot catch? It will be interesting to hear what my hon. Friend the Minister has to say at the end of the debate. I will finish now, because I promised other hon. Members who want to contribute that I would speak only for a short time.

Fishing Industry

Debate between Sarah Wollaston and Sheryll Murray

Thursday 11th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sheryll Murray]

Does my hon. Friend recall that, when the then Minister under the last regime tried to introduce unilateral restrictions on British bass fishermen, he had to abandon them?

[Dr Wollaston]

Yes, absolutely. My hon. Friend makes an important point.

We are all calling on the Minister not to penalise sport fishermen. Sport fishing is very important to my constituency because it attracts a large number of tourist visitors. Having a one fish-bag limit is illogical when the vast majority of mortality is a result of pair-trawling carried out by the French. I hope that he will hold his ground on that issue and press for a size limit so that the fish can at least spawn. That is a much more sensible way of trying to turn around the bass fishery.

I also want to mention demersal skates and rays. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) made an extraordinarily eloquent contribution, and I will simply state my support for everything he said rather than repeating it. I will expand on one point, however. I have spoken to fisheries scientists and I understand that one of the problems is that skates and rays are all lumped together as one. We know that some species might be quite rare, but as we have heard from the hon. Member for Hartlepool and others, some are not rare at all and, in my patch, the fishermen just cannot avoid catching them. The situation is completely illogical. Would it not be better to support fisheries scientists to work on board our fishing vessels to assist in clearly differentiating the species by practical means, so that they can be returned to the sea?

The irony is that a total discard ban will have many unintended consequences if it is not imposed in a nuanced way. We know that many skates and rays will survive if returned to the sea. Paradoxically, we would be changing from a system in which fish were discarded at sea and might have survived to one in which they are discarded on land. That is entirely illogical. Will the Minister address that point and assure the House that he will press for a nuanced application of the ban in relation to skates and rays? The measures will have a profound effect on the fishermen in my constituency.

A constant theme of this afternoon’s debate has been the lack of data and the effect that poor data have on our fishing communities. I urge the Minister to look closely at the effect on our plaice fisheries. Plaice have benefited in many ways from some of the sole restrictions, but we need to examine the way in which the quotas are being applied. For example, he will know that in some fisheries the areas D and E are accounted together but recorded separately. May I urge him to support at least the status quo in this and other areas and not a cut, as we need to increase the limits for sole?

We need to take a scientifically led approach, but we cannot do so if further drastic cuts are made to our science base. In the Minister’s discussions, will he insist that funding for our fisheries scientists comes directly from the EU, rather than from local budgets? That would be a very good use of resources. As we move towards landing everything that is caught, the collection of data will become easier, but there will be a considerable delay—an unnecessary one in the case of demersal species. In the meantime we face even more gaps in the data, and if further missing data results in an automatic 20% cut, that is unacceptable. I hope that the Minister will strongly press that point when he goes to the European Council.

Finally, let me deal with the issue of the MMO, as looking at what has happened there provides a heart-sink moment. I can only reinforce the points made so eloquently by so many Members. It is unacceptable that fishermen are paying the price for the incompetence of others; in other sectors that would result in compensation, but it is not resulting in compensation for our industry. We are talking about bankruptcies and the loss of an industry that will not return. What is the Minister going to do to get a grip of the situation and make sure that that does not happen again? The “Have Your Say” panels were heralded by the MMO on 5 November—five weeks ago—but we are still waiting to hear the details. Perhaps he could also set that out in this answer.

Looking further afield, has the Minister seen the article published in PLOS ONE yesterday by Marcus Eriksen and others, which referred to the 5 trillion pieces of plastic now floating on the surface of our seas? It particularly deals with the effect of microplastics—very small particles that attract organic chemicals to their surface and enter the food chain. It is sobering to remember that the great Pacific garbage patch of swirling eddy current is now larger than Texas, and it is just one of many. We have to deal not only with microplastics but with larger plastics, which are so dangerous to cetaceans and turtles. Is that actually going to register on the agenda at some point? Perhaps it is not for the forthcoming Council meeting, but the article is an important publication and I hope the Minister will read it.

I wish the Minister success in the Council negotiations. I heard his predecessor say that the collective noun for fisheries Ministers is “an exhaustion”. It is worth being exhausted and I hope that this Minister will spare no effort in exhaustion on behalf of our fishing communities, many of which I am proud to represent. I wish him well.

Solar Arrays

Debate between Sarah Wollaston and Sheryll Murray

Thursday 11th July 2013 Westminster Hall

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan.

I will start by making it clear that I am not here to deny the pressing need for alternative energy sources, and I am in no doubt about the threats that we face from the twin hazards of peak oil prices and rising greenhouse gas emissions. I also want to acknowledge the work of Rob Hopkins and Transition Town Totnes in my constituency. They have inspired not only a national movement but an international movement that is leading the way in taking practical steps towards more sustainable and resilient communities.

There is widespread support, in my constituency and nationally, for roof-mounted solar photovoltaic systems. Projects such as Transition Streets in Totnes, which the Minister very kindly visited in April, bring communities together, and they look at energy saving as well as microgeneration. I hope that the Minister can set out in his response to this debate how he plans to support community energy projects such as this, which have the potential to be rolled out at scale. However, I will not dwell on that issue in detail, because I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) will elaborate further on community energy when she speaks.

I thank the Minister for his response this morning in oral questions, because it went to the nub of this issue. We do not want to resist solar PV as such; we want to resist inappropriate solar PV. I was immensely relieved, as all my constituents will be, to hear that he is working so closely with his colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government to bring forward a change to planning regulations, in order to make it very clear to planners and local councillors that local opinion, the need to protect our heritage and our rural landscape, and all the other factors that matter so much to local communities, cannot automatically be overridden because of the need to go forward on renewable energy.

Perhaps I can just set out the scale of where we are and say why communities are so worried. At the moment, we have 1.6 GW of solar capacity within the UK, and almost all of that is in microgeneration. The average scale is 4/1,000th of a megawatt and only 71 of the current 369,912 sites that are listed on the renewables obligation and feed-in tariff database are more than 500 kW in size. To put that in context, that would be a site of more than 2.5 acres. These sites contribute just 203 MW of that total 1.6 GW of installed capacity. However, if we look at the Department of Energy and Climate Change planning database, we see that 1.7 GW is in the planning pipeline or under construction, which is even greater than the solar capacity that we currently have installed. The point is that most of that 1.7 GW is completely different; it is not microgeneration but large-scale generation. In fact, more than half of it is very large-scale; we are talking about projects that are more than 5 MW. To put that in context, 1 MW requires around five acres of land, so more than half of that 1.7 GW that is in the pipeline will be of a scale greater than 25 acres. That is the nub of this issue.

I will put that figure in context again by looking at the impact on Totnes. My constituency covers an area from Holne on Dartmoor down to the sea; it takes in an area of outstanding natural beauty, several sites of special scientific interest and several special areas of conservation. South Hams district council has received 28 applications for large-scale solar projects: 25 have been approved and they are either in construction or awaiting construction; one is at appeal; and just two have been withdrawn. It is hard to convey the scale of these projects, or how much they cause devastation to the landscape; people have to see them to understand why communities are so worried about them. Anyone who travels north from Diptford, which is a tiny community in a beautiful rural setting, will come over the brow of a hill and see the development at a place called Blue Post, and they will be in no doubt whatever about what the future holds if we do not do something about this issue. There are more than 20 acres of densely packed, ground-mounted panels. Anyone who wants to see this site can look on my Twitter feed and there is a photograph of what these things look like close at hand. Effectively, the site is an industrialised desert, and it is a world away from the misleading and I have to say—frankly—fraudulent impression given in some of the glossy advertising that is being targeted directly at farmers.

However, I must say that farmers are the one group that I do not blame for any of this development. If farmers’ cattle are suffering from the devastating effects of bovine TB and the farmers repeatedly see their beautiful herds of South Devon cows being culled, while they are also under pressure from falling milk prices and face losing their family farms, and through their letterbox they receive a deluge of advertising that promises them up to £1,000 an acre per year for having solar panels installed on their land, together with a maintenance contract, who on earth would not decide to do that?

[Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there are a tremendous number of farmers in the south-west at the moment, particularly in her constituency and my constituency of South East Cornwall, who may be land-rich but cash-poor, and that that is possibly one of the problems?

[Dr Wollaston]

I agree with my hon. Friend. The collapse in farming incomes is extraordinary and both of us know that, having worked closely with farming communities. There used to be a dairy farm on every hillside in the South Hams area, but I am afraid that we are losing that vital part of our heritage.

Far from the rural idyll of grazing sheep and wild flowers that we see in all the glossy literature about these sites, the reality is that where the panels are closely packed and close to the ground there is very little grazing land. There may be a margin around the edge of these sites, which of course is where the photographs are taken, but those photographs give a very misleading impression. We are often told that these projects will be sensitively screened. Well, anyone who has driven past Blue Post will see very high and very ugly wire fencing, often with security cameras and humming transformers. That is a very different world from the one that is portrayed in the literature. The industry guidelines talk about sensitive siting, consultation with communities and sensitive screening, but I am afraid that this process does not appear to be about renewables and saving the planet; instead, it appears to be about big money.

Diptford, the small community I referred to earlier, has already felt the impact of the arrays at Marley and Blue Post, and there are already two further large sites along the power line corridors nearby. Now, AAE Renewables is in the pre-planning stage for a further 83 acres directly bordering the AONB. There is a visceral sense that something is very wrong. I know that the community in Diptford will be immensely reassured that the planning guidelines will be updated by the Minister in the next few weeks.

However, I will just sound a note of caution, because we often hear the term “prime farmland” being used. Agricultural land is graded between one and five, but the grade is determined by a number of factors, such as gradient, flood risk, versatility, the yield and so forth. If the Minister looks at the map of agricultural land grading in my constituency, he will see that almost the entire area is grade 3 or 4. If we restrict the protections to prime farmland, and that is interpreted as being grade 1 or 2, that will be no protection whatever to the South Hams. I was relieved to hear this morning that landscape and rural views are also issues, because it is important that we focus not only on land type.

There is a wider point about food security, which has been made to me by my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), who would have liked to contribute to the debate. The projects in Suffolk Coastal are taking over not only areas of outstanding natural beauty, but valuable agricultural land. In summing up, therefore, will the Minister tell us whether any assessment has been made of the impact on food security, because we, as a country, are already unable to feed ourselves? There is also an issue about the impact on local food webs. The disruption to local food webs will be important in areas such as south Devon. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s comments on that.

Another real grievance relates to subsidies. We see from the correspondence between AEE and the planning department that it is not necessary for an 80-acre area of desecration—that is what it is, I am afraid—to have an environmental impact assessment. Small-scale, sustainable, self-build projects from the Land Society are held up, sometimes for years, by the need to have environmental impact assessments, but the real environmental impact is from inappropriate large-scale solar developments. In summing up, will the Minister refer to the need to have environmental impact assessments? Often, the image we are given is of projects that will be high off the ground and widely spaced—we all recognise that that has less of an environmental impact—but if Members go to look at the project at Blue Post, they will see that there is a major environmental impact when these things are densely packed and ground mounted.

Another issue is, how temporary is temporary? The planning officer referred in her correspondence to “temporary structures”. In 25 years’ time, I will be 76—

Fisheries

Debate between Sarah Wollaston and Sheryll Murray

Thursday 6th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

I am proud to represent Brixham, which lands the highest value catch in England, worth £26 million. I am pleased that the Minister has already visited our fantastic new fish market, and I look forward to welcoming him back next year. He knows how important shellfish are to the industry locally, not only because 99% of scallops are landed for processing in the area, creating local jobs, but because the majority are then exported, adding significantly to our balance of payments.

Scallop fishermen, however, are under considerable pressure. They are regulated not by quotas, but by limitations to their effort through their kilowatt days at sea. They are therefore seeking an increase in the effort available to them in area VII and, as the Minister knows, the French have 5 million unused kilowatt days. Earlier this year some dangerous intimidation of Brixham fishermen occurred around the baie de Seine, arising from French grievance in relation to a closed season that our fishermen do not have to respect. It strikes us, therefore, that there is a lot of room for an arrangement of mutual benefit. I hope that in summing up the Minister will inform us of any progress.

In the next round of negotiations, will the Minister also make representations on behalf of Brixham scallop fishermen for an increase in their effort, which is vital to Brixham’s local economy? Many people will make the case that scallop dredging is too environmentally damaging. I receive letters and e-mails saying that we should abandon it in favour of diver-caught scallops, but they would then be wholly unaffordable for most people, and that would completely destroy an industry. My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Dr Offord), who is no longer in his place, referred to the work of Callum Roberts. Anyone who has read his moving work, “The Unnatural History of the Sea”, will know that another way forward, which we are adopting, is to find areas of sanctuary.

In my area, there is a proposal for a large marine conservation zone of about 250 sq km, to be known as the Skerries. That will join a special area of conservation and will become a very large area. I welcome MCZs, but my concern is that we already have a successful inshore potting agreement in that area. Those who are part of the potting industry and use static gear in that area already operate in an environmentally sustainable way under that agreement. Understandably, they are worried about the impact. If it is too restrictive, and the area becomes a no-take zone, not only would that be unnecessary, it would destroy their industry. Will the Minister update those in my constituency who use static gear on the likely management arrangements in the proposed MCZ? The areas and their management will be announced next year.

[Sheryll Murray]

Does my hon. Friend agree that sometimes a scallop dredger will stir up feed to attract other fish, and that it does not always destroy the ground?

[Dr Wollaston]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. We all want scallop dredging to be removed from environmentally sensitive parts of the sea bed, but that should not be overly restrictive, and I agree that we do not want people to have a blanket idea that all scallop dredging is terrible if we want people to be able to afford scallops, and the industry to be maintained. My hon. Friend made the fantastic point that the issue is not just about conserving fish; it is about conserving our fishing communities, which are so vital in all coastal areas.

In closing, I pay tribute to Brixham coastguard, which is due to close, to its work on behalf of communities, and to all those whom they have helped to keep safe at sea.