Welcome for Fisheries Minister

West Cornwall MP welcomed the new Fisheries Minister, Stephen Morgan MP, to Newlyn this week. A copy of a social media post about the visit is attached. The text is below:

I really appreciate the new Fisheries Minister’s visit to Newlyn this week. I know others will be cynical about our having to show around “the umpteenth Minster in as many years”. However,I found Minister Stephen Morgan ( Office of Stephen Morgan MP ) didn’t come with the kind of lazy preconceptions so often displayed in politics. I found him sincerely interested; keen to follow the science and the evidence. Which is exactly what we need, if we’re to ensure a sustainable fishing industry; balancing marine conservation with the harvesting of an important, and sustainable source of healthy protein.

It was an early start too. Leaving home at 4.30am on my bike (I’ve again vowed to cycle as much as possible throughout the summer). Newlyn fish market has changed so much since I first took Ministers and shadow Ministers around the shout auctions in the early 1990s. It’s very quiet now. Just the clicking of a keyboard and mouse in a side room while 45-55 anonymous bidders engage in the online clock auction.

I also remember coming back from a Select committee tour of fish markets in Scotland and Shetland 27 years ago to gleefully encourage Newlyn’s then market operators to modernise and establish an electronic auction. After a long pregnant silence, I was nearly frogmarched off the premises! It took another couple of decades for the proposal to be accepted.

There’s much on the agenda for the Minister. Cornwall and Scilly’s fishing industries are well led. The Cornish Fish Producers Organisation (CFPO) is setting the pace for advances in science-based policy-making. But it still needs investment, better protection for low impact fishing methods within the 6-12 mile zone, and improvements in closer working relationships between scientists and the industry.

It’s always telling that those who were so keen to use the fishing industry as the poster boys for divisive campaigns, like Brexit, are never to be seen when the hard work has to be done, including sorting out the mess they made of the fishing industry and the impediments they created to vital export markets.

Link here Social media post

Copies of photos available for use. Credit Perran Tremewan

For more information contact Andrew on 07779224031 – direct email andrew.george.private@parliament.uk