Clause 189
Marine and Coastal Access Bill [Lords]
12:30 pm
Martin Salter (Reading West, Labour)
I apologise to the Minister for not giving him direct notice of my point. The clause addresses sea fish size limits, and it would be remiss of me if I did not make a comment. It is a shame that the hon. Member for Broxbourne is not here—or perhaps not—as he gets similarly agitated about this.
I want to press the Minister on the promised review of his predecessor’s quite disgraceful decision not to implement the bass minimum landing size limit. The purpose of the Bill is to improve the environment for all species of fish and life forms around our coasts. The bass is an extremely valuable recreational fish. The recreational value of our bass fishery has not been assessed, but is pretty serious. I know the hon. Member for Newbury is keen to catch bass on the fly and I am quite happy to stick hooks in them; anyhow, they are superb fish.
Although the last Fisheries Minister but one made a solemn promise to implement a bass management plan, which involved raising the bass minimum landing size from the current 36 cm—a ridiculous limit given that he optimum spawning size for bass is around 40 to 42 cm—all 750,000 recreational sea anglers, who are all registered voters, were disappointed to say the least by the Minister’s predecessor’s subsequent decision. The Minister is showing himself to be very flexible and, at my behest, he met interested parties from the world of recreational sea angling. I am giving him the opportunity to say when he plans to review his predecessor’s decision. We were promised a review many months ago. I know that his officials would like to kick it into the long grass, but I can assure him that while there is breath in my body, that will not happen.