That this House has considered the impact of quota negotiations on the UK fishing fleet in 2025.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I come at this debate as someone who is not entirely new to fisheries debates, after having been involved in them in the early days of my parliamentary career in 1997 and on a number of occasions since. On how the fishing industry is perceived by the political process, I have always found that there seems to be an inverse relationship between politicians’ desire not to interfere with the fishing industry and the inevitability that politics has to interfere in order to help establish and sustain an industry that is so important to this country. Indeed, there is a further inverse relationship in the sense that the industries that work in and are exposed to the raw power of nature seem to have a higher degree of regulation and administrative burden that is disproportionate to their sense of freedom from office-based activity.
It is interesting that the political parties that always seem keen to use the fishing industry as the poster boys for their campaigns and send flotillas up the Thames do not seem terribly interested in discussing the detail when it comes to the hard miles.
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. Although he did not name the individuals concerned, did he consider the fact that they might have other fish to fry?
We could spend all morning exchanging fishing industry puns, but I think it would be better to get back down to the nitty-gritty of trying to advance policy for the benefit of the fishing industry.
The Minister will appreciate what goes on in my constituency, which he visited last summer when he came to Newlyn, Sennen and other areas around Cornwall to look at the activities within the industry. That was very much appreciated and he clearly has a very sincere interest in the industry. Although he is not personally responsible for what he has inherited, he has a significant task on his hands in helping the industry find a way forward. That is what I hope we can encourage him to do today, because the issue for us—I am speaking on behalf of the industry, which I have spoken to on numerous occasions—is how last year’s quota negotiations are impacting on the prospects for the industry this year.
I thank the hon. Member for introducing the debate in a light-hearted way—initially, at least—which is a contrast to some of the previous discussions. Is he concerned about reports that our French allies are seeking to link fishing quotas to other matters, such as access to the €150 billion defence budget? Does he agree that the Government should clarify their position on this, and will he perhaps ask the Minister to do so this morning?
I am sure that the Minister heard that intervention. It does trouble me. If we go back to 1974, when Edward Heath was involved in the negotiation of our entry into the EU, and to subsequent negotiations, the fishing industry has often been used as a pawn—a bargaining chip. It would be a great pity if that happened again. I know that fishing Ministers do not usually sit around the Cabinet table, but I hope the Minister will use his influence to make sure the message is heard loud and clear within the Cabinet and by the Prime Minister that the fishing industry is not a bargaining chip that can be handled in that manner.
My hon. Friend has spoken about political intervention. Fishery quota negotiations are difficult and nuanced at the best of times and understanding the granular detail of advice from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, for example, is never straightforward. It always goes badly wrong when we bring in other considerations. Does he agree that both our national security and our fishing industry deserve better treatment than the sort the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) just outlined, if indeed what is reported is true?
If we are to establish a sustainable fishing industry that is fair to UK fishermen, it is important that the industry is reviewed on its merits and on the basis of science, not on political horse-trading with other countries. I strongly accept that point.
Given the debate we are having and the risk that our fishing communities could be used as a bargaining chip, does the hon. Member agree that, as the Government have said, food security is national security, and we cannot have our fishing communities and fishing stocks traded against defence in any way?
These negotiations are difficult at the best of times. We need to make sure these decisions are made on the basis of merit. Of course, we wish to re-establish UK fishing entitlement out to the 12 mile limit and to ensure that foreign vessels are not able to use their historic entitlements to fish within the 6 to 12 mile zone. Relative stability within the common fisheries policy left the UK, particularly in the western approaches, with a significantly poorer deal in comparison with many European countries, and that is the basis of a great deal of disquiet within the industry.
The hon. Member is being generous with his time. I am fortunate to represent the fishing fleet off the Berwickshire coast, which is relatively small but very active, together with the fish processing industry. The Scottish Fishermen’s Federation produced a very helpful briefing note ahead of today’s debate. One of the points it makes is that, since the UK left the EU in 2020, the UK and Scotland’s opportunities have increased greatly, and those opportunities would not have been there had we remained in the EU. Does the hon. Member agree with the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation?
No, I disagree. I think that overall, the impact on the fishing industry has been a net negative, certainly for people in my own region, who depend substantially on the export of fish to other European countries. In the past, the majority of the fish landed in Newlyn, which is a very substantial port in my constituency—at least 80%—went to France, Spain and other European countries. The impact that that and other things, including veterinary inspections, vivier export requirements and licences, have had on the industry has been significantly detrimental, so I do not accept that. That is a conversation that I would be very happy to have with the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation, but by no means can one say that Brexit has been a great success, because that is certainly not the case.
The fishermen in my area do not feel that they have been well treated as a result of those negotiations. As a passionate remainer, I was prepared to accept that on the face of it, there was a potential benefit. There should have been—fishing was the only industry in which it was possible to make an argument that there could be a potential benefit as a result of Brexit—but that has not happened, so I reject the basis of that intervention and the point made.
I hope that in time, the Minister will look at the opportunities, rather than taking the sort of stop-start approach that I am going to refer to today—I will get to that point after all the interventions. I hope he will look instead at a medium and longer-term setting of quotas, with rolling multi-annual quotas, perhaps of up to five years. That should be the Government’s objective, and they should work with scientists so that the industry can see a way forward, rather than having to adjust its business plans at very short notice, which is the case at present.
I will be adding a few small points about the small-scale, low-impact fishing industry; indeed, I come to this debate as someone with a limited amount of experience within the industry itself. When I was younger, our family had a boat at Mullion, in the south of the constituency, which used to supplement our income from the smallholding that we had. It was very low-impact, outboard motor and oar-based fishing activity that involved the setting of lobster and crab pots—very little of it was mechanised; it was all pulled by hand—and mackerel hand lining. It was low-impact fishing that we could only undertake during the summer months because of the storms that came into the coast in Mullion over the winter period. I have that experience, and many members of my family are engaged in the industry.
I remind Members to bob if they wish to speak. I intend to call the Front-Bench spokespeople at 10.28 am; if Members bear that in mind, we can probably manage without a formal time limit.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I congratulate the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) on securing this important debate.
I declare a sort of interest: in a previous life, I was a special adviser with the Scotland Office, and I spent the larger part of 2021 working on exports from Scotland to the EU. I have to tell the hon. Gentleman that the EU, far from being our avuncular friends in this matter, were a protectionist bloc. Many of the difficulties we faced, including the transport of live langoustines—he mentioned vivier transport—were to do with problems on the far side of the short strait. It was bloody-mindedness at best and outright protectionism at worst.
But let us talk about chips—not the golden-fried essential component of what we Scots call the fish supper, but bargaining chips, for that is yet again what our fishing crews risk becoming. The statistics are superficially simple: the Office for National Statistics says that fishing accounted for just 0.03% of the UK’s economic output in 2021. However, that does not capture the reality that a great many of our fragile coastal communities, not only in Scotland but across the UK, are entirely dependent on jobs in fishing’s at-sea component and its allied onshore processors.
If fishing were a trifling little homespun affair, why is the EU so interested in it? With the Business and Trade Committee, I travelled to Brussels to discuss this Government’s reset of relations. What Labour expects from this reset is opaque at best, but the EU—good protectionist that it is—has already drawn up an invoice, and top of its list is fishing. Amid warm words about security and co-operation between Britain and the EU, the French are keen to lock us out of the new £150 billion Euro defence fund, only to then show a bit of ankle on negotiations involving—quelle surprise!—fishing.
Just as Labour’s Employment Rights Bill, with its heavy pro-union bias, takes us back to 1979 and the winter of discontent, so fishing is drifting back to 1973. Then, our prized and pristine waters were the quid pro quo for access to what was then the European Economic Community. Today, the dice are loaded in favour of the EU fleet. According to the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation—I note that the hon. Member for St Ives is not a huge fan of it, but I certainly am—the EU catches around seven times more fish by value in UK waters than we land from EU waters. Britain’s status as an independent coastal state was hard won, and we must not allow our fleet to be dragged back into the ambit of the hated common fisheries policy. We cannot allow a linkage between fisheries and access to markets to be established.
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and to serve under your chairship, Mr Vickers. I commend the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) for setting the scene so well. Fishing is important to me, as the representative of the village of Portavogie. The hon. Member for South Down (Chris Hazzard) takes his money but does not take his seat in this House, so I also have to speak for the fishing sector in Kilkeel and Ardglass. I am quite happy to do that; I do it regularly to represent the collective viewpoint of the sector and to ensure that we have a voice in this House.
I liaise with the fishing bodies in Northern Ireland. The feeling, as things stand, is that they are happy with the quota negotiations at the moment, provided that the Government continue to deliver to the sector in Northern Ireland the quota allocations that they have indicated they will deliver, and that they do not take a backward step and grant the EU more than it has currently, at the expense of our fishing industry.
The message from my fishermen—from the Anglo-North Irish Fish Producers Organisation and the Irish Fish Producers Organisation—is simple. The Minister has met them and he knows that. I hope that he will come over sometime shortly to meet our fishermen, and I look forward to that. I know they have a very high opinion of him; they see him as one who stands firm, and they hope that the Government will stand firm and not—to use a pun—row back on where we are at the moment.
The Northern Ireland industry’s priority for the negotiations is not necessarily quota; it is access to the Republic of Ireland’s 6 to 12 nautical mile zone, which we lost through Brexit. My questions to the Minister will be along those lines. In the original withdrawal agreement, France was granted access to UK waters—specifically, English waters on the south coast—on the basis of grandfather rights. There is therefore, I believe, a precedent for offering access to limited named vessels in the negotiations. The principle of promoting access for UK vessels to EU waters has mixed receptions from those who want their scallopers—and we have many of them in Northern Ireland—to have access to French waters, and those who would like to see EU vessels, with the exception of EU-owned flagships, out of UK waters.
I thank the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) for securing the debate. I rise to speak on behalf of the fishing communities in both my Gordon and Buchan constituency and wider north-east Scotland, who play such a crucial role in the UK’s fishing sector but are facing unprecedented challenges following, among other things, the most recent quota negotiations.
The total allowable catch quota negotiations have been another example of the UK losing when Labour Governments negotiate. Analysis by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs itself shows that, as a result of the most recent negotiations, UK quota fell by 5% for 2025, representing a 38,000 tonne decrease and a £9 million reduction in the value of fishing opportunities. In total, the UK secured approximately 747,000 tonnes of quota, valued at about £950 million—a decrease from 2024 in both tonnage and value.
Let us not forget that behind every percentage point of the reduction are real people—fishermen and women, their families and our coastal communities—who now face difficult decisions about their future. That is before we even start to consider “paper fish”, or quota allocations that cannot realistically be caught—that is to say, their benefit exists only on paper. That might happen, for example, when a country is allocated quota for species that are not present in sufficient quantities in its water, when quota is allocated for species that the fleet does not have the correct gear or capability to catch, or when the quota exists administratively but does not translate to actual fishing opportunities. The Scottish Fishermen’s Federation and other fisheries organisations have highlighted the distorting effect of paper fish when discussing quota negotiations, because it means that actual usable quota is less than what appears in official statistics. Some quotas look great on paper, but provide no benefit to the fleet.
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The Cornish fishing fleet has a value to the Cornish economy of £174 million, and 8,000 people are employed in the industry, so I particularly wanted to address the impact of the 2025 quota settlement on choke species. It is going to have a detrimental impact on the significant amount of fishing that takes place around the western approaches. The headline impact is that on pollack, which is very much bycatch fishing only. Boats under 10 metres are allowed just 75 kg per month. We have to remember that this is an ultra-mixed fishery, so even though those fishermen target other species, such as hake, it is hard for them not to catch pollack. Because pollack is healthier than the science seems to indicate, fishermen end up catching a lot more of it and, under the regulations, are obliged to land it.
When the long-term ban was announced last year, the previous Government provided financial support for only one year, and the Minister and the new Government have not announced any other compensation for those affected by the pollack ban. I would be interested to know whether the Minister has anything to say about that. The industry asked for management measures for the recreational industry. At present, there is no management in place for the recreation fleet. The Cornish Fish Producers Organisation estimates that up to 50% of the total pollack catch around our waters is taken by the recreational angling industry.
The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea advice for pollack is currently being benchmarked, as the Minister knows, and that formal review of the available science will lead to new advice in June. The House and I would be interested to know what power and influence the Minister has in that regard before June and over any decisions taken after June when the benchmarking process has been completed. Will he commit to introducing new management of the pollack stock on or before the completion of the benchmarking process? The industry cannot wait until next January.
There are similar problems with Dover sole. Our fleet is targeting megrims and monkfish, but Dover sole are known to be abundant in many areas. In areas VIIe, VIIf and VIIg, Dover sole are relatively abundant, and therefore the total allowable catch for those areas is relatively good, but data is lacking for areas VIIh, VIIj and VIIk, which has led to a much lower total allowable catch as a precaution. For example, each boat can catch 400 kg of Dover sole per month in area VIIe, but in VIIh it is limited to just 30 kg per month. Because of the catches that have been experienced, that is a significant diminution in the activity that the industry can pursue.
In 2023-24, the Cornish Fish Producers Organisation fleet worked with the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science to collect genetic samples of sole in VIIe and VIIh areas to provide evidence of the genetic links between the two stocks. Unsurprisingly, they saw that Dover sole swim between those areas. If that is proven and accepted, there will be greater confidence in setting fishing opportunities for the fleet to target monkfish and megrim in those other areas. I hope the Minister will prioritise the review of the scientific evidence at the UK-EU Specialised Committee on Fisheries, with a view to making a joint request to ICES to amend the total allowable catch for Dover sole in that area.
Similarly, the industry is working with scientists, CEFAS and environmentalist non-governmental organisations to aid the recovery of the stock of spurdog—a slender shark found in our waters—by providing bycatch and discard data. The spurdog fishery reopened in 2023 with a 1 metre maximum landing size as a precautionary management measure. Spurdog is a non-target species in a mixed fishery, so its increasing abundance is leading to increased unavoidable bycatch, forcing vessels to discard fish over 1 metre in length. In December the written record agreed that that rule should be reviewed in 2024 and 2025, but so far no meaningful adjustment has been made. Will the Minister promise to follow through on the commitment to review the 1 metre rule and work with the industry to develop more sustainable management measures?
There has been a dramatic recovery of bluefin tuna in our waters over recent decades. In the past, the Atlantic bluefin tuna saw drastic cuts in catch limits, and a crackdown on illegal and unreported catches across its whole range. The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas has taken that action over the last 20 years to reach a tipping point. Over the last decade the recovery has benefited that fishery, and has reached the shores of Cornwall, where sightings of bluefin tuna have increased by a factor of 60 since just a decade ago. The total allowable catch set by the International Commission is over 40,000 tonnes, more than half of which is allocated to the EU. In 2021 the UK received 50 tonnes of quota, initially for bycatch. In 2025, the UK quota is 66 tonnes, with 45 tonnes for commercial hook-and-line vessels.
Sixteen tonnes, almost a quarter of the entire quota, is set aside for accidental mortality from recreational catch-and-release permits. Tuna are vulnerable to unintended mortality due to the long fights they often endure with anglers, so mandatory training and strict handling procedures have been applied to some vessels, and 1,700 tuna have been released with minimal mortality. But in 2024 recreational catch-and-release permits were introduced, with a voluntary code of conduct and training. Will the Minister join a roundtable meeting of MPs, fishers and scientists to look at how the UK tuna industry can be managed more sustainably?
I will not detain the House for much longer, but there are other issues that I know the Minister is aware of, and which I have spoken to him about—particularly the impact of regulations on the small-scale fishing industry: day boats, under 7 metres, that fish around our coast and take less than 1% of the annual catch. Last summer I met Jof Hicks on the island of St Agnes in the Isles of Scilly. Over the last five years, he has gone out of his way to develop a fishery that has the lowest possible impact because there is no plastic or fuel involved: he uses sail and oar, and he makes his own crab pots entirely from natural materials—growing his own withies and tamarisk to make the pots. He is sustaining a living from that. Admittedly, some of the restaurants on the Isles of Scilly are able to provide him with relatively healthy prices for his produce, but he is nevertheless demonstrating that it can work. However, he complained to me that all the same regulations that apply to supertrawlers apply to him with his home-made boat and locally made lobster and crab pots. I urge the Minister to have a close look at that, perhaps with me. I am not arguing that this is the future for the fishing industry, or that we can feed the nation by this method, but it can make a measurable difference and provide an alternative way of catching fish in areas such as mine, and no doubt in other places. We could forge a different approach. If we could take unnecessary burdens from the shoulders of people such as Jof Hicks, that would be enormously appreciated.
I will bring my remarks to a close, because many others wish to speak. I hope that the Minister will respond to the questions raised. I believe that politicians and the fishing industry are all pushing in the same direction—towards a sustainable industry based on the best available science—but we need to ensure that the regulations that are informed by that science do not create unintended consequences that have a detrimental impact on fish stocks and the fishing industry.
Things have changed. The culture has changed, and the industry is much more engaged with a science-based approach than perhaps it was when I first engaged in these debates nearly 30 years ago. I hope that we will continue with openness and dialogue, and that we will push for efficiency in the way we update the regulations this year. The pressures on the fisheries I mentioned earlier, which are being affected by choke stocks such as pollack and Dover sole, need to be addressed before the end of the year.
British fishing is already under a series of threats. Let us be as clear as the blue ocean about the conservation issue: fishermen are to the fore in this area, for they know that if they clear the seas of fish today, there is no tomorrow for them. Things such as spatial squeeze are real. Our seas are vast but not limitless. Boats cannot fish between floating wind turbines or trawl near those turbines’ subsea infrastructure. To say that boats can simply up nets and go elsewhere is to demonstrate a terrifying lack of knowledge about the sea. Fish and seafood are not evenly suffused; they are in some places and not in others.
Fishing is food security, as we have heard. It is a livelihood for many—not just for those who literally risk life and limb on the storm-tossed seas, but for those onshore. Fish and chips are as emblematic of this country as the bright fishing boats at quaysides from Kirkcudbright to Kirkwall and more. They must not be frittered away at the behest of an avaricious EU.
It is my belief, as I said, that the top priority for the Northern Ireland fleet in the upcoming negotiations is to have access restored to those parts of their traditional fishing grounds, which they had grandfather rights to, that lie in the 6 to 12 nautical mile zone of Irish waters. Given that precedent was set when the UK granted access to its territorial waters to a limited number of named EU vessels, will the Minister confirm that he will press for Northern Ireland’s vessels to have the same privilege as those granted by the previous Government to the French? That is the first of my three questions.
My second question comes from the—I will use an Ulster Scots word—shenanigans being played out between the UK and the EU. The UK has banned bottom trawling in some areas of UK waters that are important to the French trawling fleet. I understand the reason for that and I support it. The ban applies to both the UK and all other countries. By way of retaliation—the French are well known for their retaliation; if we give them a kick, they kick us back almost twice as hard—the French have linked fishing rights to the Security Action for Europe initiative. There is always a clause or add-on to anything that the French do—I could make some further comments, but I will not. There are claims that the EU is trying to play politics with the livelihoods of UK fishermen by attempting to link defence contracts to fishing rights, so will the Minister take this opportunity to renew his commitment to treating food security as national security, and will he commit to pushing back against any attempt to use our fishing communities as pawns in wider political games? I know the Minister: he is an honest politician and an honest Minister. His fight will be for our fishermen, and I wish him well in that.
Our fishing industry relies on the Government to be its mouthpiece and its strength. I know that that is the Minister’s desire and I believe that now is the time to prove to our fishing crews and fish producers that this new Government are on the side of our industry and prepared to push and, if necessary, fight their part. The industry is more than the fishing crew; so many subsidiary businesses rely on it. On behalf of those people—my people—I ask the Minister to send the clear message from our Government and this House that the fishing industry is alive and well and ready to thrive even more.
DEFRA has published two reports—one on economic outcomes and the second on sustainability—considering the UK’s fishing opportunities for this year. We should remember that sustainability under the Fisheries Act 2020 has three pillars—environmental, social and economic —and that no one pillar takes precedence over the others. In Scotland, about 70% of key commercial stocks are fished sustainably. Yes, there is still room for improvement, but it is important to recognise that progress has been made in the last 30 years. For example, in 1991, the same indicator showed that sustainability levels were only at 35%. The industry has driven that progress alongside fisheries scientists and managers, because no one has a greater vested interest in healthy seas and fish stocks than our fishermen and those who depend on them for their livelihoods.
There is still much work to do for the UK’s fishing industry to benefit fully following Brexit and our departure from the broken, inequitable common fisheries policy. Under the adjustment period in the trade and co-operation agreement, the EU still has unrestricted access to the UK exclusive economic zone. That benefits the EU far more than the UK and, unsurprisingly, the EU wishes for that position to continue. As other Members have mentioned, we just have to look at how things have developed in recent weeks to get a true understanding of the EU’s approach to fishery negotiations. Some EU member states are now saying that, unless the UK gives way to exactly what the EU wants on fishing, it will be excluded from the EU’s defence fund. It is almost unbelievable that anyone would risk the safety, security and defence of Europe and its allies on such a pretence.
Fishing and defence—indeed, national and international security—should not be conflated. Our national security is vital, our energy security is vital and our food security, in which fishing plays a major part, is vital, and each should be dealt with in its own right. We cannot allow our fishing communities to be caught up in this EU posturing. The UK Government must state unambiguously that giving up their rights to our waters and natural resources would represent a long-term loss of a national asset critical for food security and production of climate-smart food. I invite the Minister to do so in this debate.
I urge the Minister to commit to securing a better deal for UK fishing in the revised TCA—one that genuinely rebalances quota towards zonal attachment principles—and protect our fishing grounds. Will the Government ensure that small-scale and coastal fishing operations have proper representation in future negotiations? The Conservative party committed to that in our manifesto, along with seeking additional opportunities for these vital parts of our fishing fleet.