Inshore Industry Fishing Crews: Visas

Debate between David Duguid and Brendan O'Hara

Thursday 25th May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

As always, Mr Vickers, it is a pleasure to see you in the Chair for this afternoon’s debate on visa arrangements for inshore fishing industry crews. It is good that it has brought together Members from Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), Banff and Buchan (David Duguid) and Totnes (Anthony Mangnall), as well as, obviously my hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), whom I thank for bringing this motion before the Chamber and allowing us to discuss it again.

I say “again” not to be disparaging in any way. As the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland asked, how many times have we discussed the issues surrounding the inshore fleet? Yet certainly since I first came here in 2015, these issues have not been resolved and the Government seem utterly incapable of properly getting to grips with them, no matter how many times they are raised.

I am sure that the hon. Member for Strangford will recall us going to the Home Office in 2016, 2017, and I think again in 2019, with the representatives of our respective fishing organisations—and indeed, in one case with representatives from the Philippine embassy—to sit with Ministers and try to explain how the chronic shortage of professional seafarers in the UK is having a devastating effect on our communities, and how we desperately needed those professional fishing crews to be allowed to come and work in the inshore fleets, particularly around Northern Ireland and the west coast of Scotland. I am sure that the hon. Member will also recall that, for the most part, we were treated with great courtesy and listened to. Our ideas, we believed, would be examined. But then, every single time, the things that we asked for were rejected out of hand. I implore the Minister to please be the one to break that cycle.

[David Duguid]

In my remarks, I asked for more constructive engagement. However, would the hon. Member join me and others in seeking an actual meeting with Ministers—I know, it is difficult enough for us Conservatives to get meetings with Ministers—and officials, and with key stakeholders from the industry who know the industry far better than we do?

[Brendan O'Hara]

Absolutely. Despite having been there so many times in the past, I—and I am sure he, and every other hon. Member here today—would love to be able to sit down again with the Home Office, and with the representatives of these communities and industries, and say, “Please, let this time be different.”

Fisheries Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between David Duguid and Brendan O'Hara

Tuesday 4th December 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Brendan O'Hara]

Q As the Member for Argyll and Bute, I take on board what you are saying. We are absolutely dependent on speed of access to market. What should we in this Committee be looking at over the next few weeks to ensure that vital shellfish market remains open and there is that speed of delivery from Loch Fyne to Madrid, for example? How do we ensure that that is as seamless as possible, and that we keep those vitally important markets?

Jerry Percy: There has to be a balance in the negotiations, permitting some level of access to our waters—although much less than currently—to ensure that we do not have those non-tariff barriers, and that the facilities, including on the French side, permit us to have that seamless transport and that there are no road blocks in the meantime.

[David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)]

Q On access to market versus access to waters, I think you mentioned that there would be some exchange of access for quota in any future arrangement. I presume you would agree that it is important that, as an independent coastal state, we have full control of that access so that we can use it as leverage. I hesitate to use the phrase “bargaining chip”, but when we go into future annual negotiations, that has to be the leverage that we have.

Jerry Percy: Absolutely. We should start with a clean sheet: “We are an independent coastal state. That’s that.” We have a clean sheet and nobody has the right of access. Then there will inevitably be negotiations and bargaining, and that balance is going to be extremely difficult, because Mr Macron, the Commission and others have already made clear that they want the status quo to be the basis of any further negotiation. The Government will have their work cut out to try to sort that out.

--- Later in debate ---

[Brendan O'Hara]

Q Do you have the capacity, the capability and the funding to meet the worst-case scenario that we have talked about?

Phil Haslam: That is where our judgment has been made, and that is where the bid has gone in. We are building that capability in order to be able to deploy it within the timescales, so by March.

[David Duguid]

Q Still on the subject of fisheries protection, you mentioned airborne surveillance earlier. One of the questions that fishermen in my constituency keep asking is: how does the eye in the sky seeing something wrong—somebody shooting their nets where they should not be shooting their nets, or whatever it is—turn into some kind of enforcement or some kind of actual protection, particularly in the future when there is no automatic equal access to our EEZ?

Phil Haslam: The intent of redeploying aerial surveillance on a more routine basis is to cover off any risk that we do not continue to receive data that we receive now through the vessel monitoring system and the like. We would need a mechanism to build a picture of what was happening in our waters. If it is not derived remotely from a location device on board a vessel, we will have to actively go out and build that picture.

What the aerial surveillance does in the first instance is build situational awareness of what is going on in the water. If, once you have that, you see in among it non-compliant behaviour, it can operate as a queueing platform. Either it can queue in a surface vessel to come and take subsequent action, or you can warrant the air crew so that they can issue lawful orders, whether it be, “You are required to recover your gear and exit our waters,” or whatever it is. That can be passed from the aircraft.

It is not an entire panacea. It cannot stop non-compliant activity, because it is clearly airborne, but it gives you, first and foremost, that picture. It has a very clear deterrent capability, and it can start a compliance regime by queueing.