Yorkshire and Humberside

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 23 November 1973.

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Photo of Mr James Johnson Mr James Johnson , Kingston upon Hull West 12:00, 23 November 1973

Yorkshire and Humberside Members owe an enormous debt of grati- tude to my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield, West (Mr. Lomas). His opening speech was first class.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon), whose speech I also admired, I intend to make what is largely a constituency speech. Those hon. Members who wish to leave may do so. I shall be watching the clock carefully.

In a wider context this is a Humberside question. Earlier I detected a note of chauvinism among Government back benchers about the south bank of the Humber. When I come on shortly to speak about fishing and the EEC and their effects on Humberside, I shall be speaking of both banks and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) is not with us, I shall speak about both ports.

At the time of our last debate there was an air in Hull if not of melancholy certainly of dissipated gloom about conditions there. Astute business men spoke of a malaise on Humberside. In terms of the building of office blocks and of the unemployment figures and in many other ways, we were in the dumps. Since then we have attended the ceremony of the laying of the Humber Bridge foundation stone. The girders now appear against the skyline, and this activity is a visible symbol to the people of Hull that, whatever the past assurances of Governments, at last we are on the way.

It had been a sick joke for a hundred years and a matter for cynical comment. Today that mental climate has gone. The creation of the new Humberside County Council, which includes what were formerly known as North Lincolnshire, Lindsey and East Yorkshire, means that we are now pulling together. I assure the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Jeffrey Archer) that he need have no qualms. Both banks will pull together in the future.

During all these years I have voiced, both inside the House and outside, considerable optimism about the future of Hull and Humberside. Whether or not we joined the EEC, I always believed that we were the "gateway to Europe" and that what was often termed the sleeping or slumbering giant of Hull would turn in its bed. The geographical isolation which in the past was our inborn handicap will go when the M18 and the M62 motorways show us how appalling our communications were in the past to West Yorkshire, the Midlands and elsewhere. In 1975–76 when we have the M18 and M62 as magnificent turnpikes, with the addition of the Humber Bridge, we shall have access to more than 15 million souls who have been our economic hinterland, who have sent their goods to the Humber Estuary and who have dealt with those goods which have come in.

The hon. Member for Louth, who is not in the Chamber at present, made some snide comments about the workforce on the Humber. Although Southampton has overtaken us as the third port, and although our image has been tarnished over the last year or two by unofficial action in the port, the Transport and General Workers' Union called a conference this week at which, happily, a new pay offer was accepted at a mass meeting. We shall have a new climate in the docks. I hope that we have no more south bank men speaking of the north side, and making furious comparisons with Immingham. I hope that we shall all pull together and do much better in the future.

Much responsibility lies with the British Transport Docks Board, which, with other employers, must get better communications with the workforce in the docks. The most disappointing thing, which I hope the Minister will note, was the shock that we received in the city a few weeks ago when we were told that the south docks road was not to be built, mainly in my constituency, coming out of Hessle and going to East Hull commercial docks. This will take all the weight and all the traffic now plaguing the city centre. We are now told that, instead of its being built in 1975–76, we shall not get it until 1979. I hope that the Minister will see this as very important. It links the east side of the city beyond the Hull river with the new communications network which is to the north and west of where the Humber Bridge enters on the north bank.

When talking about the city, I must mention that unemployment is falling. There has been an enormous upsurge of economic activity, particularly in East Hull on the new Sutton Fields estate. Perhaps it would surprise my colleagues to know that Hull is the largest centre of caravan manufacture in Europe. That is typical of our dynamism on the north bank. Hull's output is 60 per cent. of the United Kingdom total output of caravans. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) talked in some detail about the need for training and the way in which some joiners and other artisans were, unfornately, leaving the labour force to move into other competitive fields of employment in Hull itself.

I know that the Minister would wish me to ask some questions about the deep sea fishing industry and its situation now, at the end of the Icelandic dispute; and at the beginning of our two years of this dearly bought interval of peace, before finally we are forced to leave certain waters. I believe that we shall not be allowed by the Icelanders to apply for a licence, as the Belgians have done, for some 30,000 tons, because the Icelanders will want to take the lot. They have built or are having built for them 16 or 17 first-class stern trawlers, and they will wish to have a monoply in their home waters.

Many people, in Yorkshire and elsewhere, think that the deep sea fishing fleet is our basic industry. That is not so. It is one of our basic industries but, nevertheless, despite what I have already said about the upsurge of economic activity, we muster 10 per cent. of the labour force in the catching fleet and in the ancillary activities of Bird's Eye, in filleting, and so on, on the dock. That is about 18,000 people. My colleagues from the South Yorkshire coalfield will recognise that, if we were to lose our deep sea fleets and all the associated activities in two years' time, this would be equivalent to the closure of 18 pits in South Yorkshire, each employing 1,000 men. I hope that my colleagues from the southern part of the county will bear with those of us from the Humber Estuary. We feel keenly about this problem and want to know what the Government will do about it.

In two years' time, or even beginning now, there will be a large gap in our fishing activities. The Prime Minister has said at the Dispatch Box that we would lose 30 wet fishers. They are not freezers. There will be no freezers fishing in the northern waters. The loss of 30 wet fishers, or side fishers as we call them, is a big loss. We shall have to face that in the short-term agreement.

The North Atlantic is over-fished. I shall attempt to compress this very long story in view of the shortage of time in the debate. We are now tying up limitation quotas in the North-West Atlantic. This matter has been settled. We are now being given 80,000 tons; but we were catching 200,000 tons alone off the Icelandic Banks two or three years ago. The North-East Atlantic will also have a settlement, and again the Norwegians, ourselves and others will fix a quota. All this will mean that our vessels come back to middle waters from distant waters.

What is the shape of our fleet to be, and what are our fishing limits to be? Next year, from 20th June to 29th August, the Law of Sea Conference will be held—not at Santiago, that ill-fated city, but in Venezuela. No doubt we shall attempt some kind of collective decision making about the limits. The Chinese and several of the Latin-American countries will be attending the conference. So will the black developing States of Africa and many white States, such as Canada, which also believe in extending limits. They will not be extended to 200 miles, but I believe that there will be an extension, possibly, to a minimum of 50 miles. What are we to do? We should now be doing our contingency planning. What are the Government doing about these limits in relation to the future for our fishermen?

We now have 12-mile limits, except for a six-mile limit over a small stretch between the Coquet and the Tweed. In the European Economic Community, as with the common agricultural policy, we can and must fight. The Government must be tough. They must fight for our fishermen in the same way as they have fought for our farmers. They must fight the Gaullists, who look after their people within the EEC. We must stand out in the EEC for a change in the fishing limits at some time in the future. I realise that this must not be brought about in 1979 or 1989, but we must begin now to talk about this sort of thing.

I hope that the Minister, who has listened to me with his usual courtesy, will pay attention to this matter and attempt, in his Cabinet sub-committee meetings, to deal with it. It is fearfully important. In Hull, Fleetwood, Grimsby, North Shields perhaps, and in Leith and elsewhere, we shall witness a change in our pattern of fishing. Our distant-water boats will have to come back. This will mean that we may have to fish in the North Sea. What will be said by North Sunderland, Blyth, Eyemouth, Lowestoft and Grimsby, which have a lot of middle-water boats, or by Bridlington and Scarborough? We must handle this matter very carefully. I suggest that the Minister works in the closest liaison with the owners and the trade union leaders involved, as he has done over the last year or two on the Icelandic dispute. This matter affects us greatly. As I have said, it may be like the closure of 18 pits in South Yorkshire.

We must also get new areas in which to fish. The White Fish Authority tells us that it is possible to catch fish off the whole West European Shelf. What will now assume significance is the west coast of Ireland, and Rockall and the west of Scotland, all the way through. We can catch at 600 or 700 fathoms. There is no technical difficulty apart from the need for more engine power and a tougher fibre in the nets. We can fish at great depths.

I am told by the experts that there is plenty of fish there. There are enormous quantities of blue whiting and Norwegian pout all the way through from the south of Iceland. We must try to land some of the other types of fish, with names such as ling, rattail-grenadier and so on, and having caught them our job will be to persuade housewives to buy them. That will need careful marketing indeed.

The Government can be tough. They are being tough, and no doubt they will continue to be tough with organised workers of all unions, including, unfortunately, the miners and many others. I ask the Government to be just as tough over the common fisheries policy and the common agricultural policy with their partners in the EEC. If they are not, they will stand convicted, because after the Caracas conference, when the international limits are extended, they will have the backing of international law, and hence it will not be possible for anyone to fault them.