Orders of the Day — Sea Fisheries

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 16 July 1962.

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Photo of Mr Patrick Wolrige-Gordon Mr Patrick Wolrige-Gordon , Aberdeenshire East 12:00, 16 July 1962

I hope that the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Peart) will not mind if I tell him that I certainly shall not be doctrinaire. I am also deeply conscious of the difficulties of the Scottish trawler owners, but I should like to leave that matter to my hon. Friends on this side of the House who are more closely connected with it than I am and who will cover those points.

I want to say a word or two about the problems of the inshore fishing fleets in Scotland. They are very serious. These subsidies are very important, but it is little use having a subsidy if there is no fishing industry at all, and that is the reality of the situation which faces us off the north-east coast of Scotland. There are no fish in the local grounds whatsoever, for the second year in succession.

The inshore herring fishermen are having to go to Lerwick to get the herring and the quality of the fish is good. Moreover, they are the only fish that they get at the moment and the price is good enough to obscure the grimmer realities of the situation for them.

Even then, though, the numbers are very scarce. The latest figures that 1 have show that for the best day in a week the catch was 1,100 crans and that for the rest of the week it varied between 200 and 700 crans. Apart from that, the boats from Fraserburgh and Peterhead have to travel so far that they are at best only able to get back once or perhaps twice in the week.

In fact, the whole structure of what has been a traditional and very important form of fishing has been very greatly disturbed with the consequent damage and danger to the industries which have grown up there, based on a regular herring supply. It is an exceedingly scrious matter. In that light it will be a very sad disappointment to the men on boats of between 60 ft. and 80 ft. to find that their subsidy has been out from £8 10s. a week to £8—a loss of 10s.

I asked about a week ago why there was this scarcity of herring in the North Sea. I can only say that the answer of the Secretary of State that this loss was due to natural causes excites a great deal of derision on the part of men who have to make their living from this industry. They have, generally speaking, been in the business for generations. They have watched the fish come and watched the fish go. They have seen two world wars and they have seen the renaissance of fish. Each time it has come about with a renewal of fishing after the wars and their forced period of conservation. Now we are told that it is due to natural causes, and the fishermen simply do not believe it.

We see day in and day out foreign trawlers scooping up the heritage of our inshore fishermen with nets through which nothing can pass; they look like curtains. They are catching everything, even sand eels. It is quite absurd to expect that the fishermen will believe that the effect on the death of fish is caused by natural causes, because they see what is causing their destruction. In the Moray Firth, as my hon. Friend says, it is particularly and most painfully obvious.

The question that I put to my right hon. Friend is: how much longer can we delay pushing out our limits to at least six miles? I am well aware of the delicate balance which has to be made between the interests of the national fleet as a Whole and our own inshore fleet, and also of the delicacy of the negotiations on the Faroes which are due to come off shortly. But we are losing a tremendous national 'heritage of wealth for our inshore fishermen, and if the Government find it impossible to conserve abroad and internationally, why cannot they start a policy of conservation at home?

We are all aware of the difficulties of getting the nations of the world to agree on a uniform policy of conservation for world fishing. It is a sad fact that some of them seem to prefer to cut their own throats. If we cannot bring about conservation abroad why cannot we do something of the sort for ourselves at home, by expanding our limits to at least six miles and within that territory embark on a policy of control, if necessary, and also the development of our own natural fisheries?

One thing is obvious—unless we can bring a rebirth to our inshore fishermen a very important industry to the whole of Scotland will suffer material damage.