UK Fisheries Policy

Craig Mackinlay Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley.

Brexit creates a unique and golden opportunity to rejuvenate a multibillion pound industry for our nation. It is an opportunity, should we successfully grasp it, to create a sustainable and successful fishing industry such as those of Norway, Iceland and the Faroes. I am sure all coastal Members received a communication from the Minister with responsibility for coastal communities, my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry), about round five of the coastal communities fund, totalling £40 million. That is hugely welcome and I hope to promote bids from South Thanet, but we have in our coastal communities, on our doorsteps, especially my own, the ability to bring real added value to communities without additional help from the Government, welcome as it is.

A fishing industry that in 1950 employed 48,000 people is now down to just 12,000 people today. An added lunacy is that this country, described by Aneurin Bevan in 1945 as an island

“made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish”,

now imports 238,000 tonnes of fish a year worth £1.3 billion. We have a trade deficit in fish alone of more than a quarter of a billion pounds. Whichever way we measure the CFP, it has been an environmental, ecological and financial disaster. In 2012, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee found that 1.7 million tonnes of good fish were discarded annually across the EU: some 23% of the catch. In a world of want, that represents not only a moral outrage but an ecological disgrace. If the CFP is bad for our industry, it is even worse for our fish.

I do not know how the Fisheries Minister manages to be so cheerful when he goes to Brussels every December. I would guess he doesn’t. We face a total allowable catch allocation of quotas that bears little relation to what is on the ground. I speak to my local fishermen and they say there is an abundance of thornback ray, which is lumped together in the EU-wide skates and rays analysis as a whole. The EU considers skates and rays to be at risk, so our quota is remarkably low.

We have had problems with sea bass. A lot of my local fishermen who have not been able to catch sea bass have undertaken recreational fishing by taking day anglers out. In the first six months of the year, we are not even allowed to catch and release, let alone catch and keep. My fleet in South Thanet in Ramsgate is in the under 10-metre class. I propose that it receive the most light touch regulations, if not wide-ranging exemptions. It is completely environmentally friendly. It barely dents the stocks and it presents the most benefit to coastal communities. Such fleets represent 70% of the UK fleet, employ 65% of those working in UK fishing, yet they receive 4% of the total quota.

I fully support the effort control system proposed by Fishing for Leave, and I hope the Minister and the Secretary of State will look at that. What we do not want during the implementation period is to somehow get dragged along with a perpetual CFP. We have the opportunity for a Brexit dividend. We have an opportunity to take back control of our seas and to rejuvenate our local fishing communities. I call on the Government to exempt fishing from any transition deal. Really importantly, we need unilaterally to ban pulse beaming, which has been catastrophic on spawning areas, particularly against our demersal species.

[Several hon. Members rose—]