Hansard

I feel that it is like the end of an era. Some of us, including Lewis Macdonald and, indeed, Fergus Ewing, have been here from the early days of these fishing debates. This is one of those moments when we might wonder whether we will pine for the language of the CFP, common access to a common resource, relative stability and the Hague preference. I recall Ross Finnie being asked by Mr Salmond in the first fishing debate whether he would invoke the Hague preference. As Mr Finnie said to us afterwards, he knew that question would be asked, so he went away and did his homework before the debate to find out what the heck the Hague preference was. Heaven help any fisheries minister who does not know what it is, although, in future, Mr Ewing may not need to know, because it will no longer have any bearing—it will all be gone.

Whatever happens in the future, the common fisheries policy will be gone. It has never been common. It has never been a policy. It has not worked for fishing communities here in Scotland and right across the coastal states of the EU. On that, I entirely agree with Peter Chapman.

I want to make two points today, the first of which is about the reality of the industry now. We are not really debating in detail the catch quotas set for monks or haddock or cod at the recent EU-Norway annual negotiations. This is not a huge fight about days at sea or the discard ban. As the minister and Peter Chapman said, there are problems—choke species being the main one—and Marine Scotland needs to work with the industry to sort them out. However, nothing compares with the high drama and dark days of decommissioning and the financial losses by boats affecting families in every fishing community around the coast of Scotland. Broadly, as the minister rightly said, stocks, science and fishing effort are in reasonable balance. The seas for which we have responsibility appear to be healthy. Science says so.

My second point is that the Government wants to double the size of the food and drink industry by 2030, and seafood has and will have a significant role in that objective. Shetland’s fish landings have grown from 300,000 boxes in 2015 to more than 400,000 in this year. This year, £33 million of whitefish alone will be landed in the isles and, every night, 21 containers of fresh seafood are on the boat from Lerwick down to Aberdeen and on to market.

There are two issues that I ask the cabinet secretary to consider. First, we need to ensure that there is enough shipping capacity as landings grow. If Shetland cannot get fish on to the boats, we cannot play our part in meeting the Government’s export target. Secondly, the ferry freight fares review needs to be concluded. Putting up freight charges by 2.9 per cent, as the Government has done, has not helped the industry’s competitiveness, nor is it consistent with other Government policies, such as the food and drink strategy. I know that Seafood Shetland wrote to the cabinet secretary this week and it would greatly appreciate his assistance on those matters.

To export and expand, to genuinely harvest the sea of opportunity, means having access to market. That is the reason for my amendment this afternoon. Bertie Armstrong’s Scottish Fishermen’s Federation briefing paper for today’s debate is accurate in many respects. Bertie Armstrong writes:

“With trade talks imminent, we must achieve the best and most free access to all markets including the EU.”

That is absolutely right. Much of Shetland’s catch, and that of most ports in Scotland, is destined for the European market. We can argue about weight, volume, value and the statistics that go with all that, but fishing depends on selling fish to Europe. Europeans simply eat more fish than we do.

We therefore need a deal out of Brexit that makes sense not just for the car industry or financial services, but for fishing. However, this week, as we debate the fishing industry, we find out two facts. First, the UK Cabinet has not even discussed the shape of the trade deal that it wants to achieve. Secondly, no impact assessment of fishing, never mind the rest of the economy, has been carried out. That is a dereliction of duty on the part of any Government. We are almost in 2018. We are months away from the UK Government’s date for leaving the EU in March 2019 and the UK Cabinet has not discussed trade, nor do we know what any of this will mean for our economy.

The message for our industry is clear. It should not depend on the UK Government to defend its interests. Sadly, the only party that the UK Government is defending is the DUP, and that is because the DUP is keeping the Tories in office—in office, but not in power.

The other reason that I worry for fishing is the speech that the UK fisheries minister Michael Gove, a member of the UK Cabinet and a leading Brexiteer, gave to a meeting of Danish fishermen on 31 July. As reported by the Financial Times, he assured the Danish food industry that their fishermen would

“still be able to catch large amounts in British waters.”

If ever there was an illustration of the need for our industry to be on its guard it was that. Gove is a highly intelligent individual. He did not misspeak—he meant it. What he was really saying is that the fishing industry is part of the overall negotiations. It does not stand outside them. Many old hands on the quaysides from Lerwick to Anstruther remember what happened in the 1970s when the Tories took them into Europe.

I therefore urge my good friends in the SFF and at home in the Shetland Fishermen’s Association to hold the UK Government’s feet very firmly to the fire. Mr Gove has opened up what many of us feared on day 1 of Brexit—a Danish or Dutch veto of the fishing part of Brexit in their own national interest. It is not just the UK that has national interests. The Dutch and the Danes most certainly do.

In economic terms, the industry is highly significant to both countries. Just as Ireland is currently holding a veto over number 10, and rightly so, it is all too easy to envisage the same from the Danes or the Dutch over access to the UK parts of the North Sea.

The SFF’s advocacy of a nine-month bridge after March 2019 makes intellectual sense, but the question is whether it makes political sense. It is a way forward, but it will need support as part of the Brexit negotiations here and in London and, as an approach to the future management of our seas, it will need to be sensibly explained to other coastal states and to the EU. Who is doing that? I rather doubt that it has got to the top of David Davis’s inbox and Michael Gove seems more interested in being chancellor than fisheries secretary, so it is a tough period for assessing the next steps.

Bertie Armstrong and the SFF are quite right to set out a plan across the nautical chart. It is now a question of how that chart is navigated across a very stormy political sea.

I move amendment S5M-09406.1, to insert at end:

“, and notes the uncertainty of the UK Government’s role in the 2018 EU Fisheries Council, given the anticipated departure from the EU in March 2019, and what this might mean for the long-term sustainability of the fish catching, processing and supply chain industries.”