Labour and Skills Shortages: Temporary Recovery Visa

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Thank you, Mrs Cummins. You caught me out, because I was not expecting to be called; I was just doing my duty of jumping up and sitting down again. You are most kind. I congratulate the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) on setting the scene for the debate. The Minister probably knows what I will ask in relation to the fishing sector, because I asked him last week after the debate; his Parliamentary Private Secretary, the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Shaun Bailey), was there as well. I have sought a meeting with the Minister and he has agreed to it, so hopefully we will have that in the diary over the next period of time. I will specifically focus on that and explain why it is so important, and reflect on my meetings with the previous Minister, the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster), and how we move forward on the issue.

One UK sector that most people agree has a bright future following Brexit is our fishing industry. Located in often remote coastal communities, the industry has weathered many challenges over many years, including those that are unique to the sector. The fishing fleet based in Portavogie, in my constituency, probably had its heyday during the second half of the ’70s and into the ’80s. Good profits were made and shared with the crew, which reflected the hard work and long hours that fishermen put into their profession. My brother is one of them; he worked the fishing boats in Portavogie over a period of time. I could never understand how the guys could get into the fishing boats, never mind get out of them, but that is by the way. It is a dangerous profession. Being a fisherman carried with it a great deal of pride, but something went wrong. Fisheries management policies were applied that undermined the industry; with hindsight, it is debatable whether those policies were right or wrong. Nevertheless, the policies succeeded in reducing most crew wages. Combined with alternative occupations, this led to a situation developing in the 1990s where there were more crew vacancies than there were crew to fill them. That is a wee bit of background about the sector before I put forward some ideas.

Fishing vessel decommissioning schemes released some crew who found positions in other fishing vessels. At that time, it was migrants from eastern Europe who, although inexperienced in commercial fishing, offered a breathing space when they were recruited to fill the crewing gaps. Then, trawler owners from Portavogie, Kilkeel and Ardglass followed the lead of owners elsewhere in the UK by beginning to recruit new crews from overseas. Those crews were Filipinos, who became a very important part of fishing for nephrops in the Irish sea and the Clyde.

The fishing fleet has never pretended that overseas crews offer a long-term replacement for domestic recruits. I understand exactly that it is not a long-term solution, but it is a short-term solution. It would be great if young people from my constituency were going into fishing, but they are not, and neither are young people from Kilkeel or Ardglass. The hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) will speak for Scotland shortly, and the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) will speak for Wales. I think both of them will endorse that point.

Overseas crews have filled critical roles, which has kept a large part of the UK’s fishing fleet at sea and, in turn, maintained supplies of domestically caught seafoods to markets at home and overseas. Overseas fishing crews have largely been recruited to the UK on the basis of transit visas. I understand that transit visas were never intended for that purpose. Transit visas permit a crew member to join a vessel that is departing the UK and working outside UK territorial waters. It has generally been accepted that the majority of time on a fishing vessel at sea has to spent beyond the UK’s—

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

One fishing practice that the Minister might propose is for those vessels to keep their foreign-originating crew offshore, beyond the 12 miles of territorial waters, but that is both dangerous and inhumane.

[Jim Shannon]

The right hon. Lady illustrates the issue very clearly, as well as the concerns that we have. I think there are solutions that all of us here can support. I suspect that, besides fishing vessel owners, many ship operators would find the 12-mile limit challenging, as she mentioned. That is certainly not a new issue.

For well over a decade, the fishing industry has sought to engage with the Home Office to resolve the ambiguities around the matter. Ten years ago, a concession was granted: the option to move crew on to work permits. That was not widely taken up. The situation has changed again, not least because EU crew have left the industry, so there is a dependence on non-UK and non-EU crew.

Geographically, areas such as the Clyde have nowhere outside 12 miles. I am told that, towards the end of 2021 and early 2022, staff from Border Force visited Campbeltown, where they reminded fishing vessel owners about their roles, and effectively told the owners that overseas crew would have to go home. As a result, boats have been tied up and some have been sold. On 20 August, Border Force visited the fishing community in Mallaig and delivered a similar message to the one that was heard in the Clyde. A virtual meeting was held with industry representatives in Northern Ireland on 15 September.

I arranged a meeting with the previous Minister, the hon. Member for Torbay, and we discussed concessions granted to other marine operators, specifically those engaged in the construction of offshore wind farms and the owners of well boats. The latter are largely Norwegian-owned ships that transport fish between salmon farms in the west of Scotland, which are all within the 12-mile limit. Will Minister tell us the difference between a well boat carrying salmon smolt inside the 12-mile limit and a trawler carrying prawns in the same area? I do not quite understand that, but if we have a meeting, perhaps we can develop that argument constructively and find a solution. For me, it is all about solutions. It is never about the negativity; it is about the solutions. It is about what we can do to make it better. We ask the Minister for that meeting.

The industry is indebted to the Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for Sherwood (Mark Spencer), for his early intervention with the Home Office on this matter. A six-month window has been agreed during which trawler owners are encouraged to pursue the sponsorship route for fishing crew, and the industry is working on that. Although that avenue is being pursued by some, questions are being asked about its applicability to the fishing fleets, especially in respect of the Government’s immigration targets.

Fishing vessel operators accept the need for a scheme that is transparent, complies with international law and affords protection to all fishing crew, especially those from overseas. There is no question about what they are trying to achieve. Fishermen and fisherwomen are skilled professionals, as the Government recognised in early 2021, following a recommendation from the Migration Advisory Committee. However, despite the committee’s further advice that deckhands be added to the shortage occupation list, the then Home Secretary declined to approve the recommendation, and stated that more time was needed to examine the impact of the covid pandemic on UK employment levels. Again, I honestly believe that the fishing organisations that I and other Members represent have a working solution. The Minister’s PPS, the hon. Member for West Bromwich West, is not involved in the debate, but he knows that only too well, so he knows what I am going to say. I also note that it is accepted that skills can differ across the professions on the Government’s shortage occupation list, with one being English language fluency. However, the same standard of English is required across all occupations, which is something that we urgently need to examine.

I am nearly finished and am going really fast—I hope Hansard can follow my flow of words. The hon. Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) says that Jim Shannon gets more words to the minute than any other MP, and today may be one of those occasions.

Leaving the EU creates opportunities for our fishermen, yet they are still competing with EU fishermen. The Home Office’s refusal to engage with the fishing industry and consider a bespoke or flexible approach to the issues around overseas crews compares less than favourably with the approach taken by others, such as the Dublin Government. In Ireland, a partnership approach has recently resulted in a new policy being unveiled. When we meet the Minister, we might be able to share this example, which is a constructive one. Less than a month ago, on 11 October, the Irish Government approved the publication of the “Review of the Atypical Scheme for non-EEA crew in the Irish Fishing Fleet”. The report and its recommendations followed an extensive consultation process, with stakeholders involved in the scheme. It is that kind of collaborative approach that needs to be pursued by the Home Office, instead of trying to squeeze the square peg of the fishing crew into the round hole of the sponsorship route. A square peg in a round hole really does not work.

The fishing industry remains focused on creating an economically viable sector that will offer financial rewards in order to reflect the hard work that the fishing sector does. After decades of challenges, that ambition will not be met overnight, which is why officials need to work with the industry to develop a visa system that allows skilled overseas crew to pursue their professions on UK fishing vessels in a controlled, transparent and law-abiding way. That would allow our fishing industry to develop its full potential, benefiting the economic life of our coastal communities as well as the whole of the United Kingdom.

What I have said today about Northern Ireland is reflected for our fishermen in Scotland, Wales and England, and I honestly believe in my heart that we have a solution. I know the meeting last week was about a different thing, but none the less I took the opportunity to appeal to the Minister’s good nature and will. I hope to have a meeting shortly, so that collectively we can move forward together in a partnership fashion and solve this problem. If we can do that, it will be a big day.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

No, that was not the issue. Without going off on a tangent, the root cause of the issue was the aging population of HGV drivers. Many were coming up for retirement and the industry had had poor pay and working conditions for a long time. There was also a global shortage of HGV drivers, so it was not unique to the UK. We saw it all over Europe.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the Minister for his interest in trying to solve these problems. In my contribution I spoke specifically about fishing and skills; will he give an assurance that he will meet me, and other Members who wish to join us, to discuss that topic? That would be helpful. I make that request in a constructive fashion—I mean that honestly—because I believe there is a way forward that we can all agree on.

[Robert Jenrick]

In the time I have available, let me address some of the specific points raised. I am looking forward to meeting the hon. Member for Strangford and representatives from the fishing industry. He has made a number of good points today and I hope we can explore them in more detail when we meet.

The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) made valid points, particularly on health and social care. As a former Health Minister, I hear what she said. The issues she raised are the reason why my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham created the health and social care visa, which has been very successful, and we now see tens of thousands of doctors and nurses coming to the UK. That is not the long-term answer—we want to train more people domestically, and I am alive to arguments made for lifting the cap on medical school places—but in the meantime it is important to bring in those who want to come here to work. That visa is also applicable for care workers, although I appreciate that there are some legitimate concerns about the salary threshold and so on that make it more challenging than we would like it to be.

In opening the debate, the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale talked about the broader labour market challenges and how we respond to them—a valid point also made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham. We need to take that up across Government so that we have a far more joined-up approach to these challenges. One way in which we are trying to ensure that skills training more adequately meets the needs of particular communities in England, at least, is through devolution. We now routinely devolve the skills budget for adults to local authorities and Mayors. The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale has a new devolution deal in his area; if that progresses to a mayoral deal, I suspect he will see a devolution of skills budgets and training to Cumbria, which may be helpful to him.

A number of colleagues raised the question of youth mobility schemes, which I fully support and would like to see more of. Most recently, we have progressed that idea through the Australia and New Zealand free trade agreements, while negotiations are ongoing with other countries. We are open to more agreements, which clearly must be reciprocal. With respect to European countries, we are open to that debate. The EU is currently seeking an agreement across the whole European Union, rather than on a state-by-state basis; although that does not preclude us from entering into it, it clearly means a longer and more complex negotiation than if we were able to negotiate with individual states.

Several Members raised the question of asylum seekers having the right to work in the UK. I appreciate that there are good arguments on both sides of this debate, which I have considered at length. On balance, I do not agree with doing it because it would add a further pull factor to the UK. The UK already sees a very large number of individuals making the dangerous crossing across the channel. There are a number of reasons for that. The UK is viewed as a more attractive location to come to for work and access to public services because of the way in which we treat those individuals versus other European countries. I do not think it would be sensible for us to add a further pull factor to the many we already have. Deterrence has to be suffused through our approach to tackling illegal immigration. If we undermine that further, we will only find larger numbers of individuals crossing the channel.

With that, I draw my remarks to a close. I look forward to meeting the hon. Member for Strangford to discuss fishing. If the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale ever wishes to take up these matters with me, I would be happy to meet with him to discuss them further.