UK Shellfish Exports

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Monday 8th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Under the trade and co-operation agreement, there is provision for a specialised committee dealing with SPS issues. There are some early discussions on what that would look like—it would probably be a senior level technical group, probably led by our chief veterinary officer. At the moment, the issue is that the EU, because it has not even got around to ratifying the TCA, is not yet in a place to have formal discussions on how we would form those groups. That of course does not prevent us from doing what we are doing, which is working very closely with the EU at a technical level to iron out the difficulties.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister and Conservative Ministers made grand promises about how they would take back control of our fishing waters and how the fishing industry would prosper. The Leader of the House stood there recently, smiling and saying that

“they are now British fish, and they are better and happier fish for it.”—[Official Report, 14 January 2021; Vol. 687, c. 510.]

The reality, however, is that our shellfish industry is on the verge of collapse and that, thanks to this Government, costly new red tape and bureaucracy are holding back British businesses and our economic recovery. Does the Secretary of State accept that no business, consumer or community should have to pay the price for this Government’s incompetence?

[George Eustice]

The reality of the trade and co-operation agreement is that its fisheries section delivered a 25% uplift in fishing opportunities, a rebalancing of the sharing arrangements and an abandonment of relative stability as the quid pro quo for granting the EU continued access to our waters for five and a half years. We are free to review it after that. We also have the freedom to set our own regulations in this area. But we recognise that there have been teething problems. That is why the Government announced a new £23 million fisheries disruption fund to support those businesses that struggled with the paperwork in the initial weeks.