UK Fisheries

Sheryll Murray Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2020 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the future of UK fisheries.

Since the Fisheries Bill is currently proceeding in the other place, I felt that it was timely to call for this debate to discuss the massive opportunities that a future fisheries regime can provide the UK as an independent coastal state. The Fisheries Bill means that, for the first time in almost 40 years, the Minister will have autonomy under international law to set the rules that apply to fish stocks and access for fishing vessels operating in the UK 200 mile to median line exclusive economic zone. That should be seen as a massive opportunity for the UK fishing industry and allied industries. It will offer great potential for small boatyards such as C Toms & Son and Mashford Bros in my constituency, as well as others in constituencies right around the UK coast.

The purpose of this debate is to explore the many opportunities for the industry, which, although contributing a small proportion to UK GDP as a whole, has a disproportionate impact on the economies of small coastal communities where fishing is a prime industry. I urge the Minister to ensure that the mistakes of the past are not repeated, and that the UK’s new status as an independent coastal state is treated as a great opportunity. I reiterate my message in previous debates: access to UK fishing waters must not simply be squandered to buy a trade agreement with the EU in other areas. I will do my best to keep my points as brief as I can, as I am sure that other Members will have their own points to make.

I welcome the reassurance by the Prime Minister last week that there is no need to abide by EU rules. He went on to say that British fishing grounds are “first and foremost” for UK boats. As someone who has campaigned for almost 40 years to highlight the gross disservice heaped on the industry when we joined the European Economic Community, it is refreshing to hear a Prime Minister say those words. I hope there will be determination to ensure that any future arrangement with the EU looks similar to that of Norway, and that access for non-UK vessels to fish in UK waters will be subject to annual agreements.

The Norway agreement sets a precedent for the way an independent coastal state works with the EU. We must not stray from that. The EU will not be happy, but let us look back in history to a precedent that it set when Spain and Portugal joined: the EU fleet needed to rebalance its size to the available resource, because those two member states brought with them very little resource of their own but very large fleets. The rest of the EU member states had to introduce a number of decommissioning schemes in order to balance the whole of the EU fleet to the available resource. As a consequence, many UK vessels were broken up and scrapped.

Faced with the loss of access to UK waters, the European Union must now reduce its own fleet to adjust. As an independent coastal state, we could be generous and give them time year-on-year to adjust; at the same time, the UK fleet could be allowed to grow. The annually set total allowable catches will allow the Minister and his Department to establish the real catching capacity of the UK fleet, which has been artificially suppressed from achieving its full catching potential because of the share it received under relative stability, set in 1983. Given that there is potential for the UK fleet to expand, fishermen could even invest in newer, more modern, safer and more environmentally friendly vessels.

Much has been heard about the lack of quota available to the under-10-metre fleet. It is worthwhile looking back to what led to that situation. Under the original common fisheries policy, the catches of that sector were estimated, and the fleet fished relatively unrestricted until the total catch was deemed to have been used. There would then be a total ban on landing a certain species, which incidentally also prevented shoreline leisure fishermen from landing that species.

The introduction of the Registration of Fish Buyers and Sellers and Designation of Fish Auction Sites Regulations 2005 changed that. Suddenly, it became clear that the present-day catch of the under-10-metre fleet had been underestimated, and officials held a number of meetings around the coast to try to find a solution. It was a former Labour Minister, the former Member for Scunthorpe, who failed to take timely action. After introducing fixed quota allocations for the over-10-metre vessels, he was left with no additional quota to allocate to the under-10-metre fleet. That was the beginning of this travesty. I pay tribute to the former right hon. Member for Newbury, who tried to provide additional quota to the under-10-metre vessels by top slicing any uplift in quota gained from each annual Agriculture and Fisheries Council—something that this Minister has continued.

Perhaps the hon. Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones) would like to apologise to the under-10-metre fishermen for the action of her predecessors, rather than simply making statements, as members of her party have in the past, that are no more than political posturing. I remind her and the shadow Secretary of State that Plymouth fishermen, just like my late husband, have long memories: they will remember the proximate cause of the under-10-metre miniscule quota.

I turn to conservation. I recognise that we need to record how much catch each vessel lands if we are to comply with our obligations under international law. While we have protection under the UN fish stocks agreement about minimum fish size and gear that can be used, where we have a median line between us and a member state we must adhere to international law and ensure that any management regime respects the sustainability of fish stock in our waters. We must respect science and the maximum sustainable yields recommended. Larger vessels have a satellite-based vessel monitoring system introduced under the CFP, which has provided and continues to provide information on catch composition.

It is essential that smaller UK vessels receive their fair share of the quota. They should be allowed to fish regardless of quota for a number of days a year, provided that they have enough days to ensure that their annual fishing pattern can continue throughout the whole year. The minuscule share of quota for some species under the CFP for south-west fishermen is often attributed to the lack of historical catch data. I fully understand the intention of the new app the Minister has introduced. However, a trusted friend with vast knowledge of the fishing industry recently wrote to me that the Marine Management Organisation has introduced a new licence condition that requires skippers of under-10-metre boats to estimate, or guess, within a 10%—

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

rose—

[Mrs Murray]

I give way to the right hon. Lady.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

I sincerely congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. She is talking interestingly about the use of technology in fishing. I am sure she will agree that, as we move into this new era, investing in health and safety on the fishing vessels around our coast must be integral to any measures the Government take to support fishermen, particularly now we know that the investment from the European maritime and fisheries fund is going. We need certainty about how to move forward. Safety on vessels, where many people operate on their own, is crucial.

[Mrs Murray]

I completely agree. I know from personal experience that safety aboard fishing vessels is essential.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady mentioned the app. A number of fishermen have told me that it is difficult to use: certain species are difficult to record on it and, in some cases, it does not seem to work at all. I think it was given a one-star rating on Google for its effectiveness. Does she think that needs to be looked at?

[Mrs Murray]

If the right hon. Gentleman is patient, I will come to that.

To reiterate, my friend wrote that the Marine Management Organisation has introduced a new licence condition that requires skippers of under-10-metre boats to estimate, or guess within a 10% tolerance, the weight of all fish caught, species by species, before the fish have been landed. He went on to say that, with small quantities of fish, it is almost impossible to estimate that reliably within 10%. If a fisherman gets it wrong, he is liable to criminal prosecution, with a maximum fine of £100,000.

Given the mixed catch in the south-west, my friend continued, that could put an extra hour or two on the end of a long working day for an under-10-metre trawler. That is totally unreasonable and is not safe. There is no de minimis exemption for small catches; every fish has to be counted and its weight estimated. Over-10-metre vessels are exempt from having to log catches of less than 50 kg per species, which obviously reduces the problem of trying to estimate the weight of small quantities.

I have used the app myself, so I have seen some of the problems that fishermen encounter. My friend added that there has been a string of technical and practical problems with the app and the contact centre, which is open only during office hours. According to the app, some harbours and landing places do not exist, and it does not recognise that fishermen catch more than 10 different species. People have had problems getting through to the contact centre. As far as the app is concerned, the threat of criminal prosecution for estimating outside the 10% tolerance should be removed, and there should be a complete rethink about the new system.

[Mr Owen Paterson (North Shropshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on landing this timely debate. I apologise to her—and to you, Sir George—that I cannot stay for the whole debate; unfortunately, I have a clash, which I discovered only this morning.

My hon. Friend touches on all the problems with how to fish in a mixed fishery. Does she agree that one of the real horrors of the CFP is the extraordinary level of discards? The industry has said that the level widely across Europe is beyond 1 million tonnes; the House of Lords says it could be up to 1.7 million tonnes.

Our great advantage now is that we can design a system that is tailored to our fisheries and works with the grain of nature, so we can stop that horrendous waste. The only way to do that, which my hon. Friend touched on—it would be great if the Minister confirmed this—is not to trade the allocation of fish stocks in the upcoming negotiations. We must take back 100% control of our exclusive economic zone and all that is in it, and then negotiate—in a friendly, amicable way, as my hon. Friend said—annual reciprocal deals, so we have complete control of what is in our marine waters. That would bring a huge advantage to our coastal communities and, potentially, a massive improvement to our marine environment.

[Mrs Murray]

My right hon. Friend speaks with great authority. I congratulate him on the Green Paper that he produced. I cannot remember how long ago that was, but I congratulate him on his expertise and on his record as shadow Fisheries Minister. I concur completely with what he just said.

Will the Minister please meet fishermen’s representatives and fish auctioneers to ensure that the app is operated in a way that reassures fishermen? Something that could benefit UK fishermen is being interpreted as a tool to use against them because of the complexity of the app and the worry that it will be used as a tool for prosecution.

There is also an opportunity to introduce a new registration and licensing regime, and to reintroduce the terms of vessel ownership and associated conditions that were first introduced by the Merchant Shipping Act 1988. That Act was introduced to stop other nations from benefiting from UK fish quota by registering their vessels on the UK fishing vessel register. People who did that were commonly described as “quota hoppers”. Although the European Court of Justice ruled that that Act of Parliament was contrary to the treaty, the fact that we are now not members of the European Union provides us with an opportunity to ensure that those so-called quota hoppers comply with UK law.

I acknowledge that some measures have been introduced at EU level to provide that an economic link must be shown, but, as is often the case, those measures are at best weak. By restoring the terms of the Merchant Shipping Act, we could require individual owners, or 75% of the registered owners of a company, to be UK citizens. We could couple that with a requirement to land all catch in UK ports. That would not only bring economic benefits but allow us to enhance the enforcement of UK catch rules on vessels. Will the Minister speak to the Minister with responsibility for shipping to explore that? I have been considering introducing a private Member’s Bill based on the Merchant Shipping Act.

In summary, I thank the Minister both for his Department’s commitment to UK fishermen and for the Prime Minister’s commitment. I am sure I speak for all wives, husbands and partners of fishermen, present and former, when I say that we have seen the price they have paid while operating under the disastrous common fisheries policy. All they were doing was trying to provide an honest living for their families—fishing provided a comfortable living for my family for 25 years—and that is a tribute to those men and women who put to sea to put fish on our table.

Some of us have seen our husbands pay the ultimate price, but we have never lost hope. I look forward to seeing us adopt a strong stance in the forthcoming negotiations, and I urge the Minister and the Government to never surrender to the unacceptable demands of the European Union. We must not allow the pillaging of UK waters to happen ever again.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Murray]

I thank all hon. Members for attending this debate, which has been one of the best-attended fisheries debates I have seen in quite a long time. I think the Minister has heard the message loud and clear: we want UK fishermen to be treated such that, first and foremost, they can get the majority of fish in UK waters, just as the Prime Minister confirmed. We are looking to both the Minister and the Prime Minister to deliver on that promise.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No.10(6)).