Luke Myer

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Roger. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) on securing this debate and on his report. In my region, our identity is shaped by our coastline. From the old fishing villages of Staithes and Skinningrove through to the port at the Tees, the sea has shaped our economy, our identity and the character of our communities, so I welcome this debate and the call for a national fishing and seafood strategy. I will illustrate some of the points made in the debate by adding two experiences from my constituency. The first concerns a fishermen from Easington, who came to see me at my surgery earlier this year. He operates commercially out of Whitby, and for three years he had been trying unsuccessfully to obtain a licence to catch bluefin tuna. I have to confess that before coming to this place, I did not think a great deal about the geographical distribution of licences for bluefin tuna fishing, but I soon discovered that it was a source of considerable frustration for fishermen in the north-east, who felt that opportunities were disproportionately concentrated on the south coast. Here was a hard-working local businessman who wanted to diversify his trade and invest in his future, but who had spent three years trying to secure the necessary permission. I wrote to DEFRA and to the Northumberland Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority, to express this man’s concerns. In July, I was pleased to hear from him that he had finally secured his licence, which he understood to be the only one awarded locally that year. That was a good outcome, but it left me wondering why it took three years, the intervention of an MP and correspondence with different public authorities just for a fisherman to get the opportunity to do what he does best. I hope that any national strategy will look seriously at such barriers, so that we can encourage small fishing businesses to diversify and grow, and not make their lives unnecessarily difficult.