Luke Pollard
MP for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport · Labour (Co-op) · United Kingdom
“As the Member of Parliament for Devonport, where we not only base-port but refit Type 23s, I know that many of those ships that have given decades of service are no longer able to provide the capabilities we need.”
“It is unlike the SNP to be so positive about defence, isn’t it? The Type 83 and Type 32 were PowerPoints—there was no budget attached to them. That is why in the defence investment plan we set out a plan for a common combat vessel and a hybrid Navy to fulfil the opportunities that the retirement of the Type 45 presents for us.”
“If the right hon. Gentleman is talking about a salary of up to £1 billion, he is cosplaying as the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), isn’t he? Seriously, we are the third-largest cash spender in NATO. At the spending review next year, we will be setting out an increase in defence spending.”
“My hon. Friend really is the Member of Parliament for the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, as she is determined to champion it so frequently. She will have seen in the defence investment plan our commitment to the new generation of fleet solid support ships, and she will have seen the work that this Government have undertaken since 2024 to address…”
“I say seriously to the House that my hon. Friend has been an incredible advocate for Rosyth. I have met him on a large number of occasions, and he has been absolutely determined to talk not just about the potential of Rosyth, but about the professionalism of the men and women who work there and the opportunity for young people to have a c…”
“We inherited a situation where the north-east was the region with the lowest Ministry of Defence spend in the country and we have made it a mission to increase defence spending in the north-east. We have an incredible talent pool in the north-east, with brilliant defence companies both large and small doing brilliant work.”
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“Allowing illegal deforestation to become legal deforestation is a “get out of jail free” card that does nothing to get our planet out of trouble, so we need to see further advances. I am glad the Minister is making progress on certain commodities that come from stressed areas, but I encourage her to go further and do more. Briefly, could the Minister ask the Financial Conduct Authority to issue new guidelines to financial institutions on deforestation risk? No British bank should be bankrolling deforestation internationally.”
“England is being left behind in the UK’s family of nations when it comes to tree planting, and we are being left behind on the global stage, too. If Ethiopia can plant 5 billion trees a year, including planting 350 million trees in a single day on 29 July 2019, why can we not have similar ambitions and scale of delivery? Although we should be planting more trees, we must also be careful of losing trees, which is why Labour supports Lords amendments 94, 95 and 66. We know that deforestation, legal and illegal, is increasing alarmingly across the planet, but we also know that, far too often, we measure the impacts only within our own nation. Our global consumption and global supply chains must be taken into account if we are to prevent deforestation.”
“Their action does not match their soundbites, as it must if we are to hit our climate goals. Planting more trees in England is strongly supported by the public, by business, by local councils and, looking at their press releases, by Ministers as well, so why are Ministers failing to plant sufficient trees? It is not because they do not enjoy enough support, it is not because the public will not support further measures and it is not because the public will not support further spending on this, so what are the obstacles and inhibitors that stop Ministers from delivering more trees? We need to see further action on tree planting by mobilising more of the power of the state to get this done. On an issue where there is cross-party and full public support, we need Ministers to do better than they are at the moment.”
“That is why we are seeking to protect Lords amendment 65, which would ensure that powers to amend these regulations did not weaken their important environmental protections and could be used only for environmental improvement. I struggle to understand why anyone would not agree with the case that the Lords have made on that. The public want to see us protect our forests and woodlands, and they want to see us plant more trees. The Climate Change Committee, the independent body set up to advise the Government, has been clear that we need to raise our current 13% forest cover to 17% by 2050 if we are to have any chance of meeting our climate goals, but we know that the Government’s slow, pedestrian and managerial approach to tree planting means the target will not be met until 2091.”
“Dr Andy Purvis from the Natural History Museum has said that the UK has “led the world in degrading the natural environment.” We only have half our biodiversity left as a nation; we have lost an awful lot of species and habitats and we cannot risk losing any more. The habitats regulations, which are the first line of defence in providing strict protections for the UK’s finest wildlife sites and endangered species, are so important, yet clauses 113 and 114 essentially give the Secretary of State the freedom to do what he likes with those regulations. He is required only to “have regard” to the need to enhance biodiversity when making changes, but “having regard” is not sufficient when we are in a climate and ecological emergency.”
“Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi): “When will all English rivers be sewage free?” That seems a simple question, and our constituents want to know the answer. If she cannot provide the answer, we must recognise that there is a bigger problem here that we need to look at. Turning to habitats, I am proud that the British people have an ambition to protect the environment. All of us are here reflecting the views of our constituents who want to see more action to protect the environment. Not everyone knows how much carbon is emitted from their community on a daily basis, but we all recognise how many trees there are and the volume of the birdsong chorus in our communities. Nature matters.”
“To achieve that, we need pressure from the companies’ shareholders to do so and also pressure from Ofwat. Ofwat needs to prioritise action to deal with raw sewage outflows into our rivers much more in the business plans. If it is not incentivised or required to do that, it will not do it. That is the power the Secretary of State and the Minister have over water companies under this privatised system. They have the power, but they are choosing not to use it to put in the investment that we need. That is why we need to see further improvement on this amendment, and I suspect that there will be further improvement on it, but I would also encourage the Minister to find a good answer to the question that was posed by my hon.”
“My hon. Friend raises an incredibly good point. People want to see action. This is not something that concerns only politicos; the public want to see proper action as well. We need to put pressure on the Minister to do the right thing, and I am afraid that more pressure will be put on her on a cross-party basis. What she has announced is a step in the right direction, but it does not reach a compromise that is acceptable. We also need to put pressure on the water companies. Water companies such as Southern Water have presided over huge amounts of discharge into our natural environment, but it is not just those companies. Southern has had an enormous focus as a result of its huge fine for deliberately venting sewage into the sea, but we need every single water company to step up.”
“On the important issue of river sewage, I want to work on a cross-party basis with Ministers to find a better compromise. I do not think what we have just heard will convince Opposition Members or Conservative Back Benchers, but there is a route through this, and that is firmer action and a clear timeline as to how we will address this problem.”
“My hon. Friend raises a good point, and it is why we need firm action not only from the Government but from the supply chain. We also need enforcement of our high standards, which must not be undercut in any trade deals. Food and produce produced to lower standards abroad must not undercut domestic industries or our environmental and animal welfare standards. I thank Labour peers, Cross Benchers and peers from other parties for their work on this Bill. Until the votes earlier, the Bill was in a much better place than it was at the start. I deeply regret that the Government are whipping their MPs to remove many of those improvements, and I hope Conservative Members will consider what further pressure can be put on Ministers to improve the Bill.”
“Government amendments (a) to (c) made in lieu of Lords amendment 85. Lords amendments 36 to 42, 44, 68, 76 to 84, and 86 to 90 agreed to. Ordered, That a Committee be appointed to draw up Reasons to be assigned to the Lords for disagreeing to their amendments 1, 2, 3, 12, 28, 33, 43, 65, 66, 94 and 95; That Rebecca Pow, Selaine Saxby, Heather Wheeler, Ruth Edwards, Luke Pollard, Mary Glindon and Deidre Brock be members of the Committee; That Rebecca Pow be the Chair of the Committee; That three be the quorum of the Committee. That the Committee do withdraw immediately.— (Michael Tomlinson.) Question agreed to. Committee to withdraw immediately; reasons to be reported and communicated to the Lords.”
“It is an okay Bill—it is bit meh—but we do need the measures in it to be put in place soon. I know that it will be considered again by our friends in the Lords next week. I invite the Minister to have words with those programming Government business to see whether this Bill can be brought back before COP26. Although I would like this Bill to go much faster and further, and although there are bits that are clearly insufficient, it is a step forward. Besides, I know that the Minister has plenty of press releases saying, “Landmark Environment Bill” ready to be sent, and I would hate to think that she would not get a chance to do so before COP26. I would be grateful if she brought forward those measures beforehand, but the Opposition welcome this positive step forward to address our throwaway culture. Lords amendment 85 disagreed to.”
“I am glad that the Minister has listened to the concerns that were expressed about the throwaway economy and the throwaway culture that we have seen. Since the pandemic hit us, much of the progress that had been made in addressing single-use plastics has gone into reverse, with more single-use plastics being used and more being disposed of, including the emerging threat to much wildlife of PPE being disposed of in an inappropriate way. I am glad that the Minister has taken action to listen to the concerns of the Lords, which will now include extension of the single-use charge to other items that accompany this. That is a positive step and Labour Members support her in doing so. I invite her to look again at some of the other aspects around this that we have discussed today. It is important to finish this Bill soon.”
“The inquest and the ongoing investigations will set out the answers to those in due course. I want to focus on how our community will get the support it needs not just today, tomorrow, next week or next month but for the coming years—support to come to terms with what has happened, and hopefully support to heal. We know the earlier the help arrives, the greater the effect it will have.”
“On Thursday 12 August at about 6.10 pm, the first shots were fired in Keyham. In the space of the short amount of time that followed, our city was forever changed. That day, we tragically lost five members of our community. We remember Maxine Davison, Stephen Washington, Kate Shepherd, Lee Martyn and his three-year-old daughter Sophie Martyn—five people: mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, friends, neighbours and colleagues, members of the community whose lives were taken from us too soon. We also remember two others who were injured and taken to hospital that day, whose recovery we continue to hope is as full and fast as possible. This incident has devastated the proud and tight-knit communities of Keyham and Ford in Plymouth. Tonight I will not be speaking about the causes of the shooting.”
“When your child cannot sleep because of what has happened and they are scared that a bad man will come through the window, a simple window restrictor is worth more than its weight in gold. I want to thank in particular Keyham neighbourhood watch—Sarah, John, Simon, Lena, Laura, Kicki and Hazel—and its relentless and positive chair, Kevin Sproston. I thank everyone for the outpouring of support from across the country. The support that we saw in Plymouth was cross-party.”
“I want to thank the local councillors—Sally Cresswell, Jemima Laing, Bill Stevens, Mark Coker, Charlotte Cree, Tudor Evans, Gareth Derrick and Stephen Hulme—and the police and crime commissioner, Alison Hernandez, and her team for the work they have done. This was a Team Plymouth response. I also thank the Wolseley Trust for its co-ordinating and fundraising for the Plymouth together fund, which has already raised thousands for the funerals, the victims and the community, but more is needed. Donations are still being made online. Local businesses large and small have also stepped up, including Zoe Stephens from the Co-op, who provided candles for the vigils and cups of tea at the events, and Richard Baron, who dropped everything to install more home security for residents.”
“This really has been a Team Plymouth response. I have never been so proud of my city as I was in the days after the shooting. There was an incredible response on the day from the paramedics and the police who rushed to the scene, the four air ambulances that attended, the doctors and the nurses, the city council and its staff, the local schools and many more. Our whole community stepped up. The teams at Ford Primary School and Keyham Barton, as well as Stuart Road and other schools, have been superb, as have the churches that opened their doors immediately—St Mark’s and St Thomas’s in particular.”
“Plymouth is a trauma-informed city, and the experience of communities in similar circumstances in the past has shown us that after an event like this there are consequences that can be predicted. More children will struggle at school, get lower grades and drop out of school earlier. More people will face unemployment and insecure work. More people will be a victim of crime and more people will themselves commit more crime. More people will experience and suffer from domestic and sexual abuse. More people will suffer from severe mental health problems, anxiety and depression. I see it as my job as Keyham’s MP to do everything I can to stop that from happening. As a city-wide response, local councillors from all parties, community leaders and the police and crime commissioner all shared in this effort.”
“Like many of the community responders, I had conversations like this not just once or twice but many times every day in the aftermath of the shooting. My experience, though, has been no different from the school staff at Ford Primary School who opened their doors to the community just hours after the shooting, the street pastors, the police officers and the PCSOs, the local vicars, the staff at our local Co-op, or the residents told to stay in their homes for days after the shooting with the bodies of their neighbours on the streets outside. I say these things not just to seek and elicit sympathy but to illustrate what collective trauma means in a very real human sense. Biddick Drive in Keyham could be any street in any of our communities, and that is what makes this tragedy so scary for all of us.”
“I thank the hon. Lady, my colleague from just across the Tamar. This tragedy has affected not just our entire city of Plymouth, Devon and Cornwall and the wider peninsula, but the country as well, and it is something that we face together. I thank her for her remarks. Our community in Plymouth is facing a collective trauma. We know that there are over 300 eyewitnesses to the shooting—people who have seen a body or blood on their street—and many of those are children, who should never have witnessed anything like this in their young lives. There is nothing that prepares you as an MP for the conversation with a parent about how their child saw someone get shot in front of them—what they should say, what they should do, who they should turn to—and not always having the answers to give them.”
“We have asked for more victim support to make sure that those who have lost everything have everything that they need at this terrible time, and we have asked for more police on our streets to reassure a community where some people are still scared to leave their homes, scared to return to work and fearful about letting their kids out to play. Some of those requests are about policing.”
“We have asked for more support for teachers and local schools so that teachers, teaching assistants and school staff can help the children deal with what they witnessed. We have asked for more social workers and a higher capacity for children’s social care, because we know that our community will have more complex needs in the months and years ahead. We have asked for more support for the community safety partnership so that families can be reassured that they are safe in their homes. We have asked for more youth workers to help our young people get through this and stay resilient. We have asked for more bereavement and mental health support to help people process the things they saw and how they are feeling.”
“The funding bid prepared by Plymouth City Council, Devon and Cornwall police, the police and crime commissioner, our local NHS and our mental health provider Livewell Southwest, backed on a cross-party basis, is reasonable, proportionate and laser-focused on tackling the trauma caused by this mass shooting. In the weeks that followed the tragedy, we pushed the entire city’s resource into Keyham. We have managed that, but we can do so only for a few weeks and not on a long-lasting basis. We are asking for support now so that we have what we need not just for Keyham, Ford and North Prospect but for the rest of Plymouth. We have asked for additional educational psychologists and social workers to help our children deal with the trauma they have experienced.”
“I thank the hon Member for that intervention and for giving me time to compose myself. I agree wholeheartedly. The support that we saw in Keyham was cross-party. The Home Secretary and the shadow Home Secretary visited to share the nation’s condolences. It is important to say, because some people are sometimes sceptical of politicians and parties, that party politics is irrelevant here—not secondary but irrelevant. It is the people of Keyham and Ford who are the focus for me and colleagues on a cross-party basis in Plymouth. It has made me extraordinarily proud of our city. Despite the tragedy, we have come together and cared for one another, but we need more help. Our conversations with Ministers have been productive and constructive.”
“The case for immediate and long-term funding is an important one, and I am grateful that it has been listened to with respect and dignity. I hope that when the Minister gets to his feet, he will have good news to share. For those who are watching in Plymouth it is important that we say this: we will get through this, and we will get through it together.”
“It keeps the support workers in our community, and it provides the reassurance for folks to leave their homes, for kids to play outside—importantly, for kids just to be kids again—and for all of us to start to heal. Plymouth is a strong city. We always look out for one another, and it is in the darkest hour that even the tiniest glimmers of light shine the brightest. It was the compassion of neighbours, the love of friends and family, the messages of support, the expertise of professionals, and the promise that we would not be left behind that saw us through. I have spent a lot of time speaking to the Minister, and to other Ministers and officials, and making the case, as have colleagues from our city council, the police, our NHS and mental health services, and right across Plymouth.”
“Sometimes I feel really silly having these feelings because I did not see anyone die, but I did see the forensic tents over the bodies and the pressure-washed pavements where the blood had been cleaned away, and I have spoken to dozens and dozens of people who saw someone killed in front of them. I think I have a responsibility to take my own advice, so I have been getting some help as well to help me deal with what I have experienced and the stories that have been shared with me. Not everyone has to make a speech in the House of Commons to admit it, but help is available if you need it, and I encourage people to come forward. This is not a sign of weakness; I think this is just an admission of being human. That is why the support we are asking for is so badly needed.”
“I think we are all hurting—I am hurting—and the sense of loss is deep and profound. For me, it is the children who are the hardest aspect of this—the children who witnessed it, and not just the toddlers, but the teenagers. I think it is worth saying at this point that it is okay not to be okay. I have not been okay at times, and I am probably still not okay now. I think that none of us who experienced this really is. Each of us will process the pain and loss differently. Some will do so quickly, and others will take weeks, months or years to start to heal or to feel able to come forward to talk about what they have experienced. For the victims’ families, the loss of a loved one will mean there is a part of them missing for the rest of their lives.”
“There has to be a national debate that takes place as a result of this shooting about strengthening our gun laws, about proper mental health support, about addressing the poison that is lurking in the rotten underbelly of the internet and about how to help angry young men. Keyham’s voice will be heard in that debate, but the focus right now should be on getting the support that is needed to the people who need it right now. Plymouth needs big hearts to prevail in giving us support, and calm and cool heads to prevail in the changing of laws. I do not want any other community to go through what we have in Plymouth, and that means the changes must be right and they must be right first time. This has been the hardest month of my adult life. I live half a mile from the shooting, and this is my community.”
“We have tried to request funds from current Government spending pots that fit with departmental spending priorities. We have had and are continuing to have good conversations with the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office, the Department for Education, the Department of Health and Social Care, and the Department for Communities. I think this underlines the importance of having a lead Minister to co-ordinate and pull together a pan-Government response in this respect, and I am very grateful to the Minister for Crime and Policing for doing that role, working across Departments to help us get the support we need.”
“The bid we have put together is partly about policing, partly about education, partly about mental health and partly about recovery and healing, but it is a bid that all ties together and that deals with every aspect of our community. It is in that way that I think the promises that were made to Keyham and to Plymouth in the days after the shooting—that our community would not be left behind, that the victims would not be forgotten, that help would be provided—are so important to remember now. The ask we have made of Ministers is a big one. It is a multimillion-pound ask, and I am sure it is a difficult one to receive as a Minister halfway through a budget year, but it is important that we take time to look at what a difference it would make. The focus for me is on the immediate support—on what can be done in the next year, in particular.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. The tragedy we faced in Keyham has reminded so many other communities of tragedies they have faced. One thing we have benefited from is the experience and the lessons of other communities that have been through so much—from Northern Ireland, but also from Manchester. In particular, the team at Manchester City Council after the Manchester Arena bombings have shared so many of the things that they did and so many of the lessons that they learned with so much honesty and transparency. There is a temptation to say that in the response we had all the answers, and we did not.”
“The fishing industry knows that the Government have failed to negotiate real-terms quota data with the European Union, and it also knows that the Government have no idea—no idea—how much non-quota species are being caught by EU boats in our waters. With the shellfish ban on exports and British fishers being harassed for catch data that we do not require from EU boats, where in the Tory manifesto did it say that we would actually give away control of our waters, and where is the plan for fishing? Where is the plan?”
“There are crops rotting in the fields due to a shortage of people to pick them, there is a self-inflicted shortage of HGV drivers due to the Government’s poor Brexit deal, and there are now empty shelves across Britain because thousands of retail workers are doing the right thing and self-isolating. Why has the Secretary of State for food not got a grip on the lack of food security in the country, and where is the plan?”
“I invite the Minister to look at whether fisheries support schemes need to be flexed in conjunction with the annual negotiations, because the annual negotiations will adjust the available quota for different species around the coast. That will have a knock-on and sometimes immediate effect on the financial viability of certain businesses, particularly if their quota goes down. Whether there is a moment to align some of the support mechanisms with the annual negotiations is the type of a constructive suggestion that Members on both sides of the House will be able to make in a beefed up annual fisheries debate on the Floor of the House. I hope that she will support that. As it stands, we will not oppose the SI, but I have some questions, in particular about appeals and the impact assessment, that I hope the Minister will be able to answer.”
“Both of those cannot be right, so either we are wasting our time here today, passing legislation that will not have an impact to look busy, or the Minister has got the impact assessment wrong. I would be grateful if she set out which of those it is, because it cannot be both. There is either an impact or there is not. If there is not, we are all wasting our time and missing an opportunity to support our brilliant fishers around the coast. I want to see proper support for our fishing industry and, as I made clear in the debate yesterday, a proper debate on the Floor of the House, when we come back after recess, to provide robust scrutiny ahead of any annual negotiations.”
“Mr Twigg, you may know that I am not a fan of some of the wording of impact assessments, because I say it in every SI Committee—I hope the Minister will forgive me for having to hear it again. Page 3 of the explanatory memorandum says: “There is no, or no significant, impact on business” from this SI. First, those are two different things: either there is no impact or there is an impact. Secondly, if there is no impact on businesses, what is the point of this SI at all? The entire point of this statutory instrument is to provide financial assistance for fishing businesses, yet the Minister’s own impact assessment says there is “no, or no significant, impact on business”.”
“The Minister mentioned in her remarks yesterday that there are three pillars in the new fisheries fund announced by the Prime Minister when the deal was announced just before Christmas. One pillar will be about environmental performance and sustainability. I would be grateful if she expanded ever so slightly on that, because there is a real opportunity to decarbonise, moving from the heavy, thirsty, diesel engines that we have in the fishing fleet, towards electric and hydrogen propulsion. If the Minister has any time over the summer, I hope she will head to Plymouth to see the world’s first electric ferry, as a testbed for marinised battery technology, which can be scaled up to provide an alternative to many diesel engines. I would be grateful if she could again set out the three pillars for the sake of transparency.”
“We certainly have a lot of them that could assist in updating this area. I am grateful that the Minister set out in her opening remarks that there is support available for recreational fishers. The hon. Member for North Cornwall and I share much in common in our support for recreational fishing, which is a significant part of our fishing industry in the south-west. It has potential for huge growth if appropriate decisions are taken to provide support in catching species—the Minister will know that I am keen, as the hon. Gentleman is, to see a catch-and-release fishery for Atlantic bluefin tuna, rather than the catch-and-eat fishery, to preserve these amazing marine species—and also to ensure a focus on decarbonisation, not only of recreational fishing boats but of commercial fishing boats too.”
“There does not seem to be any scope for appeals in the process. That does not sit right with me, and I hope it does not sit right with other members of the Committee, who I think would want to know that there can be an appeal in the event of a decision being made incorrectly. That is especially important for small-scale fishers, who by and large do not specialise in bid writing and appeal writing. They are professional fishers; they are really good at that, but not necessarily at completing all the forms. Certainly, that is much of the feedback that I have had when speaking to fishers in Plymouth about this, so I would be grateful if the Minister set out what the appeals process is. If there is not an appeals process in the SI, could one be added subsequently, albeit on an informal basis, or brought back in a future SI?”
“Making sure this works is really important. We need proper transparency in these decision-making processes and proper reporting. Earlier I briefly mentioned the appeals process. I would be grateful if the Minister set out where in this SI there is scope for an appeals process. My understanding is that the only provision anywhere close to that is regulation 8, on decision and notification, which says: “The Marine Management Organisation must…decide whether to approve an application unconditionally, to refuse or reject it” and to “notify the applicant of the decision made under sub-paragraph (a).” I want to see applicants notified of decisions, but I also want to understand what happens when decisions are wrong, or where a decision might have been made incorrectly, on the basis of a different interpretation of the evidence before the MMO.”
“Some had not even set up their companies after the application was submitted, and some of the projects given funding had been planned before the pandemic hit. How does the Minister feel the decision-making processes have gone to date, and can any enhancements to scrutiny and openness be provided for with the additional powers in these regulations? The Minister will know, because I mentioned it yesterday, that the Seafarers UK report, which is a good one, stated that most small-scale fishers have little or no savings or financial resilience, and that was before the start of the pandemic. That places a greater onus on decision makers to ensure faster processing and a greater focus on applications from small-scale fishers, many of whom will not be able to access the professional bid writing support that is available to larger organisations.”
“The smaller fishers associations are not as well resourced as the larger ones, and I appreciate that availability may be an issue, but the Minister should task the MMO to ensure that, regardless of the issue being debated or the applicants, there is a seat for a small fisher to help to inform the decisions that are being taken. Some fishers have told us about their concerns that some of the organisations that received money last time had connections, through membership bodies, to some of the people on the panel. I do not wish to suggest that any decisions were made improperly, but we must ensure that the sense is that all decisions are beyond reproach and are made wisely. We know, sadly, that some recipients of past funding were at risk of being struck off at Companies House for late filing.”
“It is important that we have industry representatives assisting the MMO to make decisions, but there should be a focus on ensuring that those industry representatives are representative of the whole fishing sector—because as the Minister knows, there are dozens of different fishing industries, catching different species in different locations, with different gear set up very differently—and also on ensuring that there is always a voice for small fishers on decision-making panels. There should be a space reserved for them.”
“Labour’s view is that our small fishers are the backbone of our fleet and deserve the lion’s share of attention from Ministers. However, the funding has not always followed that in the past year. As the Minister said, the SI does not set out any significant changes in regulations or policy, but that is why fishers are concerned that it will reinforce the present situation, in which larger fishing businesses, including foreign-owned fishing businesses, receive the greater share and smaller fishing businesses, for whom support and intervention can have a more profound positive effect, will be overlooked. Some fishers were concerned about the openness and transparency of the process in the past year, how decisions were taken, who sat on the panels taking the decisions, and what interests they took in with them.”
“Can the Minister outline what scrutiny will be in place for MMO decisions after an award of funding or a rejection of an application? Can she tell us what the appeals process will be for fishers if the MMO gets decisions wrong, or a decision has been taken on incorrect grounds? We know all too well that things can go wrong when DEFRA throws cash into its menagerie of non-departmental public bodies. Last year’s domestic seafood supply scheme handed out hundreds of thousands of pounds to companies, some of which had huge reserves, running into millions of pounds in some cases. The great concern is what will happen to our small-scale fishers. The Minister and I have had many debates, in this room and elsewhere, about the desire to focus on small-scale fishers.”
“It largely relates to concerns about the transparency and openness of decision-making processes that have been undertaken over the past year. The Minister and I probably share a desire for greater openness and transparency, and I hope that she will reflect that in discussions with the MMO when she looks at implementing the SI in due course. The SI will give the MMO more powers to set schemes, approve payments, and revoke, suspend or even reclaim money. That is all without a proper duty under the SI to convey the reasons to the applicants, let alone an open and transparent process or an independent appeals process. The SI will hand powers to the MMO without any indication of how its decisions will be scrutinised, how fishers can appeal bad decisions or how the decision makers will be held to account.”
“Fishing really is crying out for help, which is why it is important that this SI is adequate and properly resourced and, importantly, that the correct decisions are made as a result of it. We support a well-resourced and well-managed fund for the fishing industry to get the vital support it so desperately needs. We will not stand in the way of passing this instrument today, but I have some questions for the Minister that I hope she will be able to answer. The questions express not so much my personal concern, but the concerns of fishers whom we have spoken to in advance. The instrument will give powers to the MMO to administer payments to fishers. For some fishers that is causing anxiety, and I will explain to the Minister why that is the case.”
“It is a pleasure to respond on behalf of the massed hordes of Labour MPs in this Committee today. This is a really important SI. The Minister will know, because we were in the same debate on fisheries policy yesterday, just how betrayed and let down fishing feels because of the poor Brexit deal—the promises that were made and the breaking of those promises. That is why these types of SIs must be got right, and their implementation must be got right as well. We know that British fishing has been sold out by the Government. In the last few months we have seen our distant water fleet tied up, shellfish rotting at the ports, unable to be exported, and EU boats catching non-quota species basically unchecked, with no real time data-sharing arrangements in place due to a botched deal between the Government and the EU.”