Andrew George

I beg to move, That this House has considered the impact of quota negotiations on the UK fishing fleet in 2025. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I come at this debate as someone who is not entirely new to fisheries debates, after having been involved in them in the early days of my parliamentary career in 1997 and on a number of occasions since. On how the fishing industry is perceived by the political process, I have always found that there seems to be an inverse relationship between politicians’ desire not to interfere with the fishing industry and the inevitability that politics has to interfere in order to help establish and sustain an industry that is so important to this country. Indeed, there is a further inverse relationship in the sense that the industries that work in and are exposed to the raw power of nature seem to have a higher degree of regulation and administrative burden that is disproportionate to their sense of freedom from office-based activity. It is interesting that the political parties that always seem keen to use the fishing industry as the poster boys for their campaigns and send flotillas up the Thames do not seem terribly interested in discussing the detail when it comes to the hard miles.