UK Fishing Industry — House of Commons, 2016-12-01
Topic: Agriculture
Oliver Newton Colvile (Conservative, Centre-right): I enter the debate with a certain amount of trepidation, having listened to speeches from both my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) and my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), who is a great advocate in this regard Before I go further, let me pay tribute to Terri Portman, in my constituency, who helped me to ensure that—hopefully—my speech will be well informed. I also thank Dave Pessell, who runs Plymouth Trawler Agents, and the Devon Wildlife Trust, which has been incredibly helpful to me in this whole matter I am going to let you in on a secret, Madam Deputy Speaker: since I last spoke in one of these debates, I have been elected chairman of the all-party group on fisheries, so hopefully I know a little bit of what I am going to talk about. I succeeded my good friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray), who has been made Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs My Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport constituency includes a centuries-old fish market that now sells 6,000 tonnes of fish and shellfish annually and is the second largest fish market in England. About 40 fishing boats unload their catch at Sutton harbour daily, but up to 70% of what is sold in Plymouth is imported overland, which I am told is called overlanding Plymouth has a global reputation for marine science engineering research, which includes the Royal Navy, the National Marine Aquarium, the Plymouth Marine Laboratory and the Marine Biological Association, which, interestingly, was set up in the 1870s to explore whether we could ever overfish our waters Since my election six years ago, I have called and campaigned for UK fishing waters to be brought under national control. I feel it is the fishermen who are best placed to conserve our fishing stocks; after all, why would they not want to do so, given that they would be destroying their own livelihood? While I voted and campaigned for us to stay in the EU, the whole business of the common fisheries policy has been a running sore for the fishing industry, most certainly down in my neck of the woods. It is a totemic issue I feel that this decision provides our fishing industry with a unique opportunity to rebuild. Plymouth’s fishermen and women who supported that did so because they feel there are real opportunities. Now we as a Government have got to rise to, and deliver on, that challenge. Many fisherman in the south-west feel they were simply forgotten on the way as a discussion was taking place about other matters, too. Whatever mechanisms are developed to manage and allocate fishing opportunities in the future, the south-west fisherman must never lose out again. I am sure my hon. Friend the Minister agrees with that, as he also represents a south-west seat Currently the UK and south-west fishermen fishing off our coast receive just 10% of haddock catches in our waters compared to France taking 66%; for monk, it is 18% to 59% for France; for whiting, it is 11% to 60% for the French; and for cod, it is a staggering 8% against 73% for France. We can therefore see why south-west fishermen feel so strongly that they were not considered when the original deal was done, and we must not allow that to happen again. But beyond the catching opportunities that must be resolved, there are many other areas where Government can offer to assist, building on good work already done by fishermen and helping our fleet become more sustainable and safer and take advantage of opportunities in this vital sector, to deliver the best economic value to the UK post-Brexit Locally, some pioneering initiatives are being worked through between the local authority and the industry. They will rely on assistance from the European maritime and fisheries fund, and as we look to the future post-Brexit we must endeavour to fund and deliver programmes that continue to offer support to these innovative types of work-streams, and also make sure that fishermen operate in a safer environment; that is a big issue that many Members have talked about in this debate My fishermen are very keen to do a number of things, and I will want to show my hon. Friend the Minister many things when he visits Plymouth in the new year. Sutton harbour has an opportunity to develop a very good set of facilities in order to be able to deliver an effective fishing industry. One thing it is looking at doing is delivering an academy to make sure people can be taught not only how to fish safely but understand the concept of what is happening. We have a lot of fishermen with 40 years’ experience and we must do more to engage with their knowledge to ensure that the academy is established We need to use this opportunity to deliver for our fishermen in the south-west, very much along the lines of what my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) advocated earlier. I have fought my parliamentary seat regularly, and in the run-up to the 2005 general election he came to my constituency and we met several recreational fishermen. [Interruption.] I already have a copy of the report, thank you. We certainly need to ensure that we do not give the French, or anyone else, the opportunity to get the better of us. As the old Napoleonic toast said, it should be a case of "confusion to the enemy" if they will not let us participate as we want to.