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81 Marine and Coastal Access Bill 26 OCTOBER 2009 Marine and Coastal Access Bill 82
[Lords]
[Lords]
more important activity to this country economically.
The industry employs 13,000 people on the catching
side, 26,000 in processing and 40,000 in distribution, it
contributes about £6 billion a year to the national
economy and, as I said, it is particularly important to
remote communities.
7pm
The Bill affects fishing in many ways. It is primarily
a Bill that has been pushed by non-governmental
organisations—the conservation and environmentalist
groups—and, in a sense, it is too far weighted towards
them and insufficiently weighted towards preserving the
interests of fishing as an existing activity. Even I—the
MP for Great Grimsby—have been deluged with cards
telling me, “These marine conservation zones should be
extended to a quarter, a third or even more of the North
sea.” I have replied by asking these people, who are
from Grimsby, whether they had not realised that it is a
commercial fishing port with an interest in fishing in
these zones. Members have gone around telling schools
that the interests of fishing should be precluded altogether
and that fishing should be stopped because we are
endangering stocks.
The Bill is primarily about conserving the marine
environment; it is not a Bill for controlling or regulating
fishing. We need to make that absolutely clear, because
it cannot do both—indeed, it should not do both,
because the fishing industry has a major interest in
conservation. It is one of the natural agencies that
Governments should look to and be concerned with,
because its interests are in conservation, in sustainable
fishing and in maintaining a resource on which the
livelihoods of fishermen depend and which they want
to hand on to their children and to their area. That
interest has to be taken into account. This Bill should
not be seen instead as yet another restriction on fishing—
commercial fishing in particular—which has been harassed
and weighed down with regulations, controls, quotas,
limits, the days at sea limitation and exclusion from
certain areas and certain stocks to the point where it has
become desperate.
We cannot use this Bill to impose another series of
controls on fishing, because that would alienate the
fishing industry. Such an approach would fail to generate
the enthusiasm for conservation that exists within the
industry and would fail to use fishing as a means of
ensuring proper conservation. The fishing industry wants
to build up stocks and avoid damage, and, in that sense,
it has the same interest in conservation as the Bill. Like
New Zealand, whose marine conservation areas are
perhaps more natural than ours because they are based
on reefs—the more natural way of having conservation
areas—this country’s approach, in this Bill, should be
based on consulting and involving the fishing industry.
I want the Minister to take that approach and I know
that he wants to achieve that end too.
We are dealing with an area in which scientific knowledge
is inadequate; we do not have scientific knowledge
about the marine conservation areas, about the sea or
about what is underneath the surface. The fishing industry
has more knowledge than the scientists, so it should be
involved not only when consulting on what is decided in
the Bill, but in policing that and in reporting to the
Minister and the authorities about what is going on in
these areas. Anything that restricts fishing weakens that
superintending role and the conservation concern that
the industry has; anything that weakens fishing weakens
conservation. That is why I wish to include in the Bill
some of these safeguards that have been mentioned.
I should mention that the responsible fisheries schemes,
which have been energetically, and rightly, promoted by
Seafish, now have the support of 44 per cent. of the
fishing industry—by weight of vessel. That demonstrates
the degree of involvement of the fishing industry in the
conservation issue.
Martin Salter: I am listening, as I suspect many hon.
Members are, with some incredulity to the arguments
being made by my hon. Friend. Will he clarify for the
House his earlier statement that it is impossible to
introduce conservation measures that restrict commercial
fishing? Does he not see that that statement might be a
problem for some of us?
Mr. Mitchell: I am surprised at my hon. Friend’s
incredulity, because the interests of commercial fishermen
and anglers are much the same.
Martin Salter: No, we are in favour of this Bill.
Mr. Mitchell: I am defending the interests of fishing
as an industry and as a leisure activity—I would have
thought that my hon. Friend would have supported
that. My assertion is that fishing is an agent of conservation,
and one cannot have marine conservation areas, which
are intended primarily to conserve the marine environment,
by also placing added restrictions on fishing. That
defeats the purpose of the marine conservation areas.
Martin Salter indicated dissent.
Mr. Mitchell: Well, if my hon. Friend wants to tell me
that fishing is damaging the environment, he is wrong.
Martin Salter: I shall certainly continue the exchange.
Does my hon. Friend recognise that probably precisely
the same speech was made in about 1988-89, just before
the collapse in the cod stocks off Newfoundland? It is
precisely because the fishing industry does not recognise
the value of conservation, engages in overfishing and
opposes steps to allow fish stocks to recover and replenish
themselves that fishermen lost their jobs?
Mr. Mitchell: Fishing might have overextended its
ambitions there, but that has nothing to do with this
and nor has the conservation of cod stocks anything to
do with this Bill. We are talking about the conservation
of the marine environment. This is not a measure that
deals with the conservation of stocks. Any attempt to
impose that on this measure will defeat the measure,
because it will alienate the fishing industry, which is an
agent of conservation. We have a very changed fishing
industry now; it is on a much smaller scale, it is much
more based on sustainable fishing and, as I said, it is
committed to responsible fishing. My hon. Friend, in
trying to produce a gulf between his anglers, whom he
has worked so hard to protect, and commercial fishing,
is doing the whole issue a disservice, because their
interests are very much the same. An interest in conservation
is an interest in keeping fishing at a sustainable level in a
sustainable way. That is what I am arguing today. He is
making an entirely artificial distinction, which makes