Marine and Coastal Access Bill [Lords]

I wish to discuss not only new clause 8, but amendments 41, 17, 15 and 24. I wish to do so because of a concern for the interests of commercial fishing, which remain a factor, although not as big a one as before, in the health and prosperity of Grimsby. They are more important to communities up and down the coast—many of them isolated—in which fishing is the main industry. Their needs, views and industry need to be taken into account more effectively than they have been. I wish that some of the passion, enthusiasm, interest and involvement that have just been shown in discussion of the rights of coastal access in the Bill were also demonstrated in concern for fishing, because it is a 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. 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.