Leaving the EU: Fishing

Debate between Sheryll Murray and Melanie Onn

Wednesday 13th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered fishing and the UK leaving the EU.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I start by welcoming the Minister to his place. It is incredibly welcome that he is an east coast colleague, and so will understand the particular pressures on the fishing industry in that part of the world. I look forward to building a constructive relationship with him over the many years that I know he will be in post. Many Members will use their contributions to talk about the catching aspect of our fishing sector—both around the whole UK and in their local areas—with which they will be more familiar than me. I will focus on the impact of Brexit on the post-catching aspect of the sector.

The fishing sector has been the hallmark of Grimsby for generations, and factories such as Young’s and Seachill are the largest source of employment for people in Grimsby. Traditional Grimsby smoked fish is perhaps the most recognisable symbol of quality in the fish world. If the Minister has not yet had the chance to try some, I urge him to visit my constituency and to come along to Alfred Enderby, which supplies Marco Pierre White’s restaurants, and hopefully then he will understand exactly why it has such an excellent reputation.

However, the fish that feeds those factories and smoking houses no longer lands at the docks in Grimsby, and often not even in the UK. Instead, the fish processed in my constituency arrives at our factories from across northern Europe. The cod and haddock used by companies such as Young’s and Seachill and enjoyed by many in the fish and chip shops up and down the country are caught in the likes of Norway and Iceland. They are then transferred across Europe, usually by lorry, moved on to a container ship and then put back on a lorry, eventually arriving at their destination. Those companies really worry about the effect of Brexit on their sector.

It is right that we talk about the sector as a whole, including processing. The Government document, “Seafood 2040: A strategic framework for England”, looks at the whole sector, from catching the fish all the way through to its ending up on people’s plates. The strategy covers the industry in its entirety, which is why it is relevant for me to raise these issues. Companies such as Young’s and Seachill rely on seamless supply routes to ensure that the fish that they use arrives in as fresh a state as possible. Any delay in the transport of what is a highly perishable good will have a massive impact on both the quantity of spoiled fish and the quality of the end product in our supermarkets.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

The hon. Lady mentioned, and is a powerful voice for, processors in her constituency. Could she give us some idea of how much of their supply those processors source from EU member states and how much is sourced from places such as Norway and Iceland, which are clearly third countries to the EU at the moment?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

Leaving the common fisheries policy provides so many opportunities for the UK fishing industry. Article 62 of the United Nations convention on the law of the sea states that any surplus, and only the surplus, that UK vessels are unable to take from UK waters needs to be made available to other nations, and the UN fish stocks agreement protects shared stocks that transit between each country’s waters.

Leaving the CFP means an opportunity to boost our fishing industry, rather than allowing other member states to simply come in and take fish from UK waters, as is the case when the French take 80% of the cod from waters off the south-west coast—we will be able to take that with our fleet. That has the potential to benefit the UK economy: we will no longer be just giving away this very valuable UK asset to other nations to profit from, with no benefit at all to the Exchequer.

I pay tribute to the Minister’s predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice)—he did a really good job—and I welcome the Minister to his place. I cannot think of a better person to represent the fishermen for whom I care so much.

Leaving the CFP gives us the potential to implement measures that will attract young blood into the fishing industry. The industry has been in decline for the last 40 years, and we have the potential to grow it. I pay tribute to my joint co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on fisheries, the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn), who I know really cares about the processing sector. I also pay tribute to her predecessor, who I knew for many years and who I worked with on the Save Britain’s Fish campaign, since he was—

[Melanie Onn]

A lad!

[Mrs Murray]

Absolutely. Austin Mitchell was a great man, and the fishing industry cared so much for him.

[Melanie Onn]

He is still alive!

UK Fishing Industry

Debate between Sheryll Murray and Melanie Onn

Wednesday 12th December 2018 Westminster Hall

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship in this important debate, Sir Henry, and I congratulate the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray) on securing what has become a useful annual fixture in the calendar, ahead of the Fisheries Council that the Minister is now very familiar with. I will take this opportunity to remember and commemorate all of those who go out and fish for the benefit of their communities and the whole country. Those people are in what is still the riskiest occupation in the whole of the country, and they deserve our thoughts and our thanks for the work they do, as does the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. I notice that a small situation occurred off the coast of the hon. Lady’s constituency in recent days, when the RNLI was required to go out and rescue a French vessel that broke down. It is not just those directly involved in the fishing industry, but all those associated with maritime activities, who deserve our thanks.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray]

I wholeheartedly support what the hon. Lady has said. Will she also recognise the work of the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, which provides support not only for UK fishermen, but also for those from other member states who find themselves in trouble or hardship off the coast of the United Kingdom?

[Melanie Onn]

Yes, absolutely. The hon. Lady makes a powerful point, and she is right to recognise the work of that organisation. I will also take this opportunity to remember our colleague and former Member of this House, Margaret Curran, who has been very unwell. She used to make valuable contributions when she was an elected Member, and we are the poorer for her no longer being in this House.

The hon. Member for South East Cornwall was assiduous in pointing out how important this Fisheries Council is going to be: this will be its final meeting, and will set the tone for all our future fishing relationships. The general nature of fishing lends itself to becoming quickly adversarial over territorial and quota disputes, but there is an enormous amount of room for generating good relations with those countries that have traditionally fished alongside UK vessels. We might not like it, and the fishing industry of the UK might not like it, but even if we eventually are in the driving seat, taking back control of our waters—that is language that I do not like to use, but that is what is hoped for within the industry—so that we can decide who fishes, where they fish and how much they fish for, we will still require good relations in the future, because we do not want to see any conflict or aggression over borders or quotas. I cannot see how this House could possibly wish to encourage any kind of negativity or conflict over those issues, which is why it is all the more important that the Minister sets the tone and the boundaries of expectations going forward.

The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O'Hara) said that successive Governments have failed on the CFP, and have not taken a strong enough stand. I suspect that the Minister may wish to dispute that, given his endeavours in recent years, but it seems that the selling out of the UK fishing industry in the withdrawal agreement is history repeating itself a little bit. There is no guarantee in the withdrawal agreement that anything will change: the Minister has said that for the next two years, he does not expect a great deal to change, and beyond that, we really do not know. The withdrawal agreement is wholly unsatisfactory to an industry that is looking for more certainty, and for a redress—a rebalance—of the inherent unfairness that they see as having been inflicted on them for a number of years.

I recognise that other hon. Members want to contribute to this debate, so I will just touch on the east coast specifically. We have traditionally had a very different industry from that of the south-west or Scotland: we were a deep-sea area, with deep-sea fisheries that were going into Atlantic waters—although the people of Whitby and Bridlington will no doubt say otherwise, because their fleets were much more inshore and smaller. The instrumental thing for Grimsby, about which I cannot get a satisfactory answer from the Government, is our relationships with Iceland and Norway. We will still want access to those waters, so what will be the impact of the European economic area and European Free Trade Association agreements that Norway and Iceland have with the EU? How will that affect the UK once we have left the EU? That is if we actually leave—it is all looking decidedly ropey today. How will that affect those agreements? That is why I urge the Minister to continue those good relations, because we will still need good relations with those countries and with the EU if we are to continue the relationship that we have at the moment.

I am going over time—sorry, Sir Henry. I will just say that to some of those larger fleets, as UK Fisheries Limited has said, for the east coast of England, Brexit means that

“UK fishing opportunities, including access and quota, will only be traded if there is a reciprocal benefit to the UK and that there will be a fairer share of the fish in UK waters allocated to UK fishermen. This has the potential to correct the current situation where fishing vessels from the East Coast are prevented from going to sea due to lack of quota, while those from other countries can continue to fish. There are, however, a number of threats that are particular to the fleet based in the area.”

I will write to the Minister with more detail, if that is okay, to allow colleagues to make their contributions.

UK Fishing Industry

Debate between Sheryll Murray and Melanie Onn

Thursday 7th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray) on securing the debate and on her excellent work with the all-party fisheries group, of which she is chairman. I also echo her sentiments about the Fishermen’s Mission and its continued good work supporting fishermen and their families and local communities, particularly those in my constituency.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray]

I do not want to leave out my hon. Friend—the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn)—who is the joint chairman of the all-party parliamentary group.

[Melanie Onn]

A rare moment of cross-party agreement around fisheries. I thank the hon. Lady for those comments.

Today, I want to focus my remarks primarily on the processing side of the fisheries industry. However, before I get on to that, I want to mention the case of a former fisherman from my constituency. In the debate last year, I raised the case of James Greene, and the issue of fishermen missing out on their pensions unjustly, with subsequent Governments failing to properly compensate them for that. Sadly, James Greene passed away last year, but his widow is still waiting for his full entitlement from the fishermen’s compensation scheme. The ship he worked on for 20 years was wrongly omitted from the scheme’s list of eligible vessels. That list has been corrected, but the payments owed to James have still not been made in full.

I have been dealing with this matter through the parliamentary ombudsman, but the most recent correspondence I have had sight of says:

“The matters you have raised are not new as they were not in the scope of the investigation. We did not look at the department’s decision to pay for work on the Thessalonian at the reduced second scheme rate even though it had mistakenly been excluded under the first scheme…As the Ombudsman has already given this matter her personal attention earlier this year and with no new information provided, we would not look at this matter again.”

That is extremely disappointing. For the sake of his widow, for just £3,000—that is all we are talking about—and for the peace of mind of those at the Great Grimsby Association of Fishermen and Trawlermen, who have been fighting for decades for justice, will the Minister please meet me to see whether there is anything more that can be done to bring this matter to a satisfactory close?

The demise of the fishing industry since its peak in the middle of the 20th century has hit my town particularly hard. What we have seen in Grimsby is the transformation of the sector. While catching has severely diminished, in the way the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) discussed, we are now a hub for the processing, manufacturing, and packaging side of things. We have 75 food sites within a radius of a couple of miles, employing 5,000 people in landing the fish, selling it, smoking it or turning it into fish cakes.

This is necessarily an international industry. The fish caught off our coasts are often not the kind that people in Britain want to eat. Depending on where a catch is landed, the fish that ends up in Grimsby may have crossed the borders of three or four countries on its way to us. Some 270 tonnes of imported fish passes through our market every week, and these are perishable goods. Anything that makes trading harder could compromise the viability of the main source of employment in my constituency.