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Inshore Industry Fishing Crews: Visas

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). In his

—if I may say so politely—lengthy speech, he has probably covered everything that every one of us will end up asking for. I agree almost 100% with his requests of the Minister and his suggestions for how we can help the fishing sector and turn on their head some of the long-standing and difficult issues for the industry.

Mr Vickers, if you were to come to south Devon—you are of course always welcome—you would be greeted by three extraordinary fishing towns of great variety: Brixham, Salcombe and Dartmouth. Brixham is the most valuable fishing port in England, as we all know— I spend half my time in this place talking about it—but in Dartmouth and Salcombe there is a large contingent of inshore fishermen, whether they are crabbers or day fishermen, who are really impacted by this issue. Indeed, the entire town of Brixham, which I think is now on its third year of record sales—a point that is often overlooked in the mainstream media—is absolutely dependent on visa arrangements. It is my pleasure as their representative to stand up in this place and talk about how we can do more for the fishing sector.

As the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) said, fishing is all too often an afterthought. People do not fully consider the fact that fishing is a massive lever with which we can help to level up in our coastal communities and create good, well-paying, highly skilled jobs that allow our coastal communities to flourish. We need only read Professor Chris Whitty’s report on how to level up in coastal communities to see that there is a huge opportunity for us to do more for our fishing industry, and that starts by changing our attitudes. It also starts by changing our habits; just eating more fish—more seafood—would help us to grow the UK’s domestic market. That is something that a great people in my constituency, such as chef Mitch Tonks, are trying to do. He is leading a campaign to support the fishing sector and to talk about the fishing community and the great sources of food we have on our coastline.

I come back to the point about changing attitudes, because if we want to attract people into the fishing community, that is not going to be done by handing out visas to foreign workers; we have to change the approach. I welcome the Government’s measure as a temporary measure, because I hope that, in the in-between period, we can put more into training.

On visa arrangements, it is absolutely welcome that the Government have reduced the cost of the visas and reduced the salary threshold, but I come to the point the hon. Member for Strangford made about the B1 English language requirement: if we are trying to fill a gap right now because there are not enough workers in the fishing community, how on earth do we hope to achieve that when the B1 language course is so complicated and, in many instances, lengthy?