INSHORE FISHERMEN.

HC Deb 08 February 1939 vol 343 cc975-1032

4.11 p.m.

Major Neven-Spence

I beg to move, That this House, recognising the great importance to the nation of the inshore fishing industry which supplies the population with an essential part of its food and the Royal and Merchant Navies with men whose unique character and experience are invaluable to the country both in peace and war, urges His Majesty's Government to take every practicable measure to preserve this industry from the extinction with which it is threatened. After years of balloting I have at last got an opportunity of laying before this House certain grievances and disabilities under which the inshore fishermen have long been suffering. I was surprised when an hon. Member said to me after the ballot, "Could you not have found a subject of more general interest?" I know of nothing of more general interest to this House than the grievances and disabilities under which any section of the community may be suffering, and I feel that when these grievances and disabilities are of such a nature as to threaten the very existence of an industry which I believe to be vital to us as an island race, then indeed I need offer no apology for having chosen this subject for debate to-day.

The inshore fishing industry is one which touches the national life at several points. The fishermen are citizens; the industry brings to us food supplies; there is the part it plays in manning the sea services of the nation; and, finally, there is the fact that it provides almost the whole of the personnel for the lifeboat service. As regards citizenship, these inshore fishermen are well known to be hard-working and courageous men who live a life of great exposure and at times of very great danger. They are extreme individualists, often, I am afraid, to the point of damaging their own interests. Where will you get a finer type of man or woman than is to be found in the small fishing towns or villages, a type which in these days of industrialisation and over-organisation the nation will neglect at its peril.

As regards food supply, this particular section of the fishing industry brings to us the finest quality of fish that we consume. As regards the sea services, I need only remind the House that 21 years ago this country was within a few weeks of starvation. It was not the battleships anchored in Scapa Flow that saved the situation; it was the Q boats, the patrol vessels and the mine-sweepers, manned to the extent of 90 per cent. by men brought from the fishing industry. They saved the nation in those days, and that fact it is well to remember.

I dare say some hon. Members may not know exactly what an inshore fisherman is. Like haggis he is not altogether easy to define. The distance from the shore does not altogether cover it, because generally speaking he fishes in a boat up to 10 or 20 miles from the land, but sometimes even 30 or 40 miles. The real point is that he fishes in a boat that does not have sleeping accommodation aboard. Therefore, he returns to port every day, and, of course, brings with him, if successful, a prime quality of fresh-caught fish which commands a premium in the market. The quality of the fish which he brings gives him an immense advantage over the trawling industry, but he does not really get anything like the benefit he should out of it. The industry has been slowly going under. There are things which could be done to stop the rot and to reverse the process, just as we hope to see measures taken to get more men back into the kindred industry of agriculture. Members who sit for fishing constituencies offer congratulations to the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Agriculture upon recently succeeding to that high office. I would remind him that it is a double-barrelled one, Fisheries as well as Agriculture, and would assure him that the fact that he is on that Front Bench will not be lost sight of in all the little fishing villages round the coast where they watch very closely everything that we say here in speeches affecting their livelihood.

As regards the numbers of men employed in the fishing industry, I have figures which are quite accurate enough for the purposes of to-day's Debate. They show that there are 59,000 fishermen in Great Britain. Of this number not less than 25,000 are employed in the inshore fishing industry or rather more than one-third of the whole number. In 1913 nearly 36,000 were so employed, showing that in these brief intervening years there has been a loss of 30 per cent. of the men employed in the industry. What is the reason for the decline? Simply that, as things are at present, the men are unable to earn a livelihood. I do not think the position has anything to do with the very hard life that they lead, but is due to the fact that, for reasons that I shall endeavour to explain, they cannot make a living. I had before me the other day a statement showing the earnings of three men in Northumbria. Over a period of 10 years they averaged £70 per man per year. It must be remembered that, generally speaking, these fishermen have large families. Another important thing to remember is that, owing to the life of great exposure which they lead, these inshore fishermen require to be very well fed. I defy anyone to lead a life like that and keep a large family upon an average income of about 30s. a week.

No wonder they cannot afford to insure their boats, or that they give up the industry and go elsewhere, or take to gathering winkles on the shore for a steady 25s. a week. Consider their life. In winter they are off by five in the morning. They are out at sea from five till eleven in the morning, often in terrible weather, buffeted by the wind, drenched with the spray and bitterly cold. They do exceedingly hard work when haling in their lines. They come back again by 11 o'clock and are then engaged in cleaning up their lines for baiting. From 3 0'clock to 5 they have odd jobs about their boats and later they have to get in their meal time and their rest. They suffer under many handicaps, one of which is that there is very little capital in the industry. They suffer from antiquated harbours which restrict their opportunities to prosecute their industry. There are many difficulties also in connection with transport and with getting ice at a price which does not do away with all their profits, and other matters such as that. I shall not deal with all those handicaps. They all play their part, but none of them is fundamental to the present condition of things.

The depressed state of the inshore fishing industry can be explained in a few words. The cause is the scarcity of fish due to the efficiency and the wastefulness of modern trawling methods. There is no question that an enormous amount of small life is destroyed on the sea bed by the dragging of the trawl over it. Despite all the regulations about the size of mesh, tile cod end of the trawl is fatal for the small fish. They come in among the large fish, the stones and the weeds, and an enormous number of small fish are destroyed or rendered useless. Small fish caught by the trawl are of no use to the market. The trawling industry can market only the very best fish, such as the best haddock, whiting, or flat fish. The small fish which are of no use or are damaged are shovelled back, not to grow to maturity but to die in the sea. If, as so often happens, a trawler or a fleet of trawlers be working over a bank on which herring are spawning, the bank is absolutely destroyed as a spawning bed. The spawn is brought up in large quantities and is shovelled back into the sea.

This is the real reason for the general impoverishment which has taken place in our North Sea fishing. If the inshore fisherman is to make a living there must be fish for him to catch. No amount of money in the industry or any other kind of help can possibly make up for the lack of fish. It would be well to remember what we tend so often to forget, and what the trawling industry has forgotten, that the resources of Nature are not inexhaustible. We have learned that in the past in many other cases. In the United States they destroyed the buffalo with the rifle, extinguished the Californian pigeon with shot gun and net. We exterminated the great auks by knocking them on the head for the sale of the oil they contained. A few years hectic whaling in the Arctic regions exterminated the right whale. To bring the matter slightly nearer home I would suggest that to a large extent we are going the same way in the North Sea in regard to fishing. I do not say that it is conceivable that North Sea fishing can be entirely brought to an end, but those responsible for trawling have looked upon the North Sea as a sort of Eldorado. They have made great fortunes out of it. With great confidence they prophesied the final extinction and decay of the inshore fisherman.

The North Sea has had to bear the full brunt of this exploitation by intensive modern trawling methods, and as a result the capital resources of the North Sea have been most seriously depleted. A consequence of that is that the trawlers themselves have been driven further and further afield in order to get fish. In the early days they went to the waters round Orkney and Shetland, then they passed on to the Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland, and now they go to the Bear Island, Spitzbergen and the White Sea. Because of the improved methods they have now of storing the fish and because of the very much larger catches they can get on these very prolific grounds, they have been able to cut down expense. One section of trawlers has not been able to adapt itself to these conditions, the old steam trawlers, fishing in the North Sea. That section seems to be dying naturally to-day of its own success. The wheel seems to have come full cycle now. The method of trawling and of catching fish which was supposed to open up a wonderful future for the trawling industry in the North Sea has proved in the end a broken reed. The consequence of that will be that these North Sea trawlers, unable to get what they used to get in the North Sea and unable because of their size and other reasons to proceed to distant grounds, will tend to press more and more heavily on the inshore fishing grounds.

How has this impoverishment been brought about? Normally, a haddock lives for nine or 10 years but at the present day a haddock will not survive beyond four years in the North Sea. A great many of them are caught and destroyed when entirely immature at about two years old, when they are big enough to be caught. What happens is that the trawler makes a shot on some bank, finds haddock, sends out a wireless and along come trawlers, all gathering on that bank. They fish intensively until the fish are all used up. In that way a good brood may be exhausted long before they reach full maturity. It may easily follow nowadays that two bad broods may occur in succession, in which case a very bad fishing season will follow in due course. If left to itself the sea will build up great reserves of fish. In the old days before trawling was so general the effects of a bad brood were never felt, because there was at all times a big capital reserve of fish in the sea. Now there is nothing left.

One other disastrous effect of trawling upon fish in the North Sea is that it interferes most seriously with the reproductive capacity of the stock. In the ordinary course of events the egg-producing capacity of the mature haddock is very much greater than that of the immature haddock. The effect upon the stock of destroying the mature haddock can very well be imagined. It is no wonder that marine biologists say that trawling is an industry which burns the candle at both ends, and that some of them are recommending that the only thing to do is completely to close the North Sea to trawling, in the interests of the inshore fishermen.

I want now to consider the effect that this intensified system of fishing has had on the industry itself. The inshore fisherman, also, depends mainly on the haddock for his livelihood, but his method of fishing is entirely different. He takes the mature fish, and does not damage any other fish in the process. He does not take the immature fish, which are left in the sea to reach maturity in due course. The total fish supply of this country is not seriously affected by the fact that the North Sea fisheries have been so largely destroyed. The reason for that is the enormously increased capacity of the section of the trawling industry which works in distant waters. That section of the industry is, therefore, able to ensure that this country gets all the fish that it needs. Not long ago a Measure was passed enabling restrictions to be placed on the catching activities of that section of the industry at certain seasons of the year, in order to avoid gluts, so that, whatever happens in the North Sea, we need never fear that our vital supplies of fish will be reduced to any extent that would matter. Actually, 99 per cent. of the fish that come to this country is caught by the trawlers, liners, and other vessels working in distant fishing grounds, and only 1 per cent. is supplied by the inshore fishing industry. That is a rather remarkable fact when we consider that over one-third of the fishermen are inshore fishermen. We may ask, how do they manage to make a living? One reason is that they have a special market, in which they get a premium for fish of good quality; and another reason is that their methods of fishing, their boats, and inshore fishing methods generally, are much more economical than trawling.

I come now to a matter which I think is fundamental to the whole question, and that is the three-mile limit. I firmly believe that the ultimate fate of the inshore fishing industry of this country is intimately bound up with this question of the three-mile limit. As far as I can make out, it was only 1818 that this question of the limit first came up. It arose in negotiations between this country and the United States of America with regard to fishing rights on the East Coast of North America. It arose as a fishery question, not as a question of territorial waters. Later, juridical authorities have not agreed with the figure of three miles, and have argued that very much larger areas should, as was the common practice in the past, be included within territorial waters. For one thing, straits and arms of the sea have from remote times been regarded as part of the domain of the country in which they occur, and as territorial waters within that country's jurisdiction. The North Sea fisheries are regulated by a convention, signed in 1882, giving extensive fishery rights within the three-mile limit to the fishermen of the various countries that signed the convention. At that time there was a great outcry from the inshore fishermen because of the serious effect that trawling was already, even then, having on their livelihood, and we made use of that convention, therefore, to prohibit all trawling within the three-mile limit.

The three-mile limit is not binding in international law. It has never been universally accepted as a fishery limit, and all the people who live on the fringes of the North Sea are bitterly opposed to this three-mile limit which has been inflicted on them. I can speak for the inshore fishermen of the East Coast of Scotland, for the inshore fishermen of Orkney and Shetland, and for those of the Faroe Islands, Norway and Sweden. One and all they have always resented this permission that has been given to trawlers to work up to the three-mile limit. At least 15 countries refused to sign that convention. The three-mile limit is generally recognised as not inviolable. It has never gained the sanction of international law. All objecting countries maintain that the application of the three-mile limit to fishing rights which was adopted by Great Britain in negotiations with certain other countries, does not in the least ratify the three-mile limit as a universal limit of fishing rights, still less as a limit of territorial waters. The whole position in regard to the question of territorial waters is at the present time full of uncertainty, and I think it is high time that we should do what we have so often been urged to do, by the committee which reported recently on the fishing industry and by various other bodies, namely, call another international con- ference and have this matter thrashed out. It is long overdue.

I want to refer to the Norwegian standpoint on this question, because it is of great interest to inshore fishermen in our country. They do not admit, and never have admitted, a three-mile limit. The limit they fixed is one geographical mile, which is four English statutory miles, from their base-line; and note the way in which they draw their base-line. They do not follow all the little indentations of the coast; they draw a bold line from headland to headland, including even the outer "skerry-guard," and, having drawn that line, they say that for four miles outside it no trawlers shall work in those waters. They have stuck to it manfully, in spite of great pressure upon them to alter it, and they will never give it up. It was in 1745 that they first drew that line, and, when they did so, it was regarded as a great concession, because formerly they had taken a much larger area, so it is certain that they will never yield anything further in that direction. It is a little galling to the people of Orkney and Shetland, which for 800 years formed part of the kingdom of Norway, and which, when their islands passed under the Scottish Crown as a pledge, were given guarantees that they should retain all their odal laws and customs. These have all been taken away, but there across the North Sea our kith and kin, the fishing people of Norway, enjoy a sensible practice in regard to their fishery limit. We ought to be enjoying exactly the same benefits, and, if we were, we would be supporting in consequence a large fishing industry, of which we are practically deprived at the present time. I prefer the attitude of James IV in this matter. Not for him the wiggly line following round the coastline. He like a wide canvas and a bold brush. He drew his line from Duncansby Head to Rattray Head, and from there to St. Abbs Head, converting the whole of the East Coast of Scotland into two great bays, and woe betide Englishmen or anyone else who attempted to fish within his very sensible limits.

There is also the question of the Moray Firth, with which I shall not deal, but on which my hon. Friend the Member for Banff (Sir E. Findlay) will no doubt have something to say. We have there a most ridiculous situation. The judges of Scotland have held all sea infra fauces terram —within the jaws of the land—to be territorial waters, and from time immemorial that was Scottish practice; but nevertheless we allow foreigners to fish within those limits, while excluding our own trawlers from them. It is not fair to our inshore fishermen or to our trawling industry. It is an illogical situation, and the Committee on the Fishing Industry recommended that the time had come for putting an end to it. The Firth of Clyde is in exactly the same situation as the Moray Firth; indeed, it could even more be held to be "within the jaws of the land." Then there is the Minch, and, as the Secretary of State for Scotland knows, I have corresponded with him on many occasions about the North Sound in Orkney, the Burra Haaf in Shetland, and various other places. It is high time that this matter was brought under consideration. It is in a hopeless muddle at the present time.

The questions of the fishery limit and of the territorial limit are tied up together. I am not sure that there is any reason why they should be the same. I can quite see the point that, if there is a state of war, the territorial limit must be supreme, but is there any reason why it should coincide with the fishery limit in peacetime? In the opinion of many people, matters have gone so far that the North Sea ought to be closed to trawling, and scientifically that is correct, though it would not be practicable, because there are large trawling interests to be considered, and it would be almost impossible to compensate them. But could we not have a new conception with regard to territorial waters, or at any rate with regard to fishery limits? My own view is that we ought to adopt the Norwegian practice, and get back to what was the practice in Scotland—I do not know about England. Let us, like Norway, draw a line right round our coasts, fixing a limit of 15 miles outside that, and keeping all trawlers out. I would not have the limit any less than 15 miles. We ought to have a fairer share of the seabed for our inshore fishing industry. That industry has had a raw deal for many years, and it is time it received redress.

Hon. Members will ask me, very naturally, one or two questions arising out of what I have said. For instance, can we expect the North Sea fisheries to revive again? Fortunately, we know the answer to that question, because during the Great War the North Sea had an almost complete rest from trawling. When, after the War, fishing began again, it was found that the stocks of fish in the North Sea had been replenished, and, as a result of the replenishment, good fishings were had for a number of years, until once again intensive trawling got the upper hand, and the whole pitch was queered for the inshore fishermen. Then I may be asked, in view of what I have said about the earnings of a number of Northumbrian men, whether the inshore fishing industry can make a living. That question also can be answered in the affirmative, provided that there is an adequate supply of fish to catch. Among my own constituents are inshore fishermen whose earnings have been known to average from 20s. to 25s. a day, while one boat is known to have shared out, at the end of a week's work, £20 per man. That is what the inshore fishermen can do when they get a chance to do it. The trouble is that mostly they are struggling against terrible odds in fishing on grounds depleted by trawlers.

As I have said, the whole question appears to me to be bound up with the question of the three-mile limit. If that is tackled, and if, having readjusted it, we can guarantee to our inshore fishermen a better share of the fishing industry, we shall have a chance of restoring the inshore fishing industry to prosperity. Certainly I see no reason why, if the inshore fishermen can supply only 1 per cent. of the fish we consume, we should not treble the number of men now employed and provide what the market wants, namely, a larger supply of fish of prime quality. Many of the schemes which come before this House involve the expenditure of large sums of money, and we are apt to judge the improvement by the amount that is spent. But here is something that would cost nothing; it is simply an elementary piece of justice that we want now.

I want to say a few words on the subject of the inshore fishermen and the sea services. It is true that not many inshore fishermen or their sons join the Royal Navy, but they have played a very great part in the past in keeping up the strength of the Royal Naval Reserve. They are also a most important recruiting ground for the Merchant Navy, and they provide practically the whole of the personnel of the lifeboat service. I am sorry to say that there has been in many parts a big decline in the number of inshore fishermen joining the Royal Naval Reserve. This is partly due to the decline in the number of inshore fishermen and partly due to dislike of the present training arrangements. In the last War the Admiralty cashed in very largely on the results of the old training system which was done away with by the late Admiral Lord Fisher in 1910. The Navy had no fewer than 4,000 auxiliary craft during the War and 90 per cent. of the personnel came from the fishing industry. Stornoway in the first week of the War sent 3,300 trained Reservists. Could they send 300 to-day? Newfoundland sent over 500, Shetland, with a population of 21,000 men, women and children, supplied the remarkable total of 4,650 men for the naval services during the War. Great tribute has been paid to these men in the inshore fishing Industry. A retired naval officer, who was the first officer to command drifters in the Great War, says that he found these men trained in the Royal Naval Reserve absolutely invaluable to him, especially those who had been trained in gunnery. The late Lord Balfour, when First Lord of the Admiralty, said in 1916: In minesweepers and armed trawlers vast numbers of men, alone and unsupported, in circumstances of great difficulty, often of great peril, have done work of incalculable magnitude. I cannot do justice to all that I feel about the work of these men. Necessarily, it is little known to the public. Small crews in stormy seas, suddenly face to face with unexpected perils, they have never seemed to fail. The debt of this country to them is almost incalculable. And there is another remarkable tribute which I took down when it was delivered over the wireless a few years ago. It was by Vice-Admiral Sir George Chetwode. He made special reference to the seaman of Shetland, and alluded to their outstanding success during the Great War, notably their skill in handling boats engaged in boarding other vessels. Regular Navy men and sailors, he said, thought they knew all about handling these boats, but when they saw the sturdy Shetland men doing the job in heavy seas and during gales they realised that they all had a lot to learn from them. The Admiral particularly mentioned the valuable services of Shetland seamen who were in vessels attached to the 10th Cruiser Squadron, which was engaged in intercepting and boarding all passing vessels in distant northern waters. We would do well to remember that the Admiralty will have to depend for the manning of auxiliary craft once more on these inshore fishermen. What help is being given to keep them alive? What is being done to train these men? So far as help to keep the industry alive is concerned, I contend that the Admiralty, by their attitude over the territorial limit, are doing their level best—I do not say intentionally, but that is the result—to destroy this industry.

Mr. Boothby

I wonder whether my hon. and gallant Friend is aware—this will strengthen his case—that the Admiralty have laid it down that they have no use in war for the inshore fishermen.

Major Neven-Spence

I have not seen that, but I am certain that this country will not be able to do without either its auxiliary craft or its inshore fishermen. I feel that the Admiralty ought really to reconsider their attitude over this. They should perhaps try to make more contacts than they do with the fishing industry and to get hold of these men. In 1910 they did away with the training batteries and the training ships. The men have never liked this business of making a journey of a couple of thousand miles to Portsmouth and back. They want to do their training at home. The old system, after all, produced the goods; that was shown in the War. To-day nothing at all is being produced. I often wonder whether the Admiralty are not going to run into some difficulties over this question of manpower. Beatty said in 1933 that the Navy got 16,000 men from the Merchant Marine. He asked, could they get 1,000 to-day? and added that he doubted it very much. If that is true, does it not emphasise the necessity for getting hold of these inshore fishermen, keeping their industry alive, and training them in case war breaks out?

I think I have shown that this question touches the national interest at many points. We ought to refuse to assess this problem, as the old trawler owners would have it assessed, purely in terms of economics. We ought to refuse to assess it, as the Admiralty would have it assessed, purely in terms of strategy. It is a problem of vital national interest, which must be assessed in terms of human values. In no industry, except perhaps agriculture, has the small producer survived so persistently under such extraordinarily discouraging circumstances. The men are as good as ever they were; the sea spirit is in them still, but they must be enabled to live. The inshore fisherman is worthy of all the help we can give; he and his wife and family are the best types of citizens this country produces; and if this Debate results in anything being done for these men I shall feel happy at having had the opportunity of introducing this Motion.

4.54 p.m.

Mr. Beechman

I beg to second the Motion.

I should like to emphasise what has already been indicated by my hon. and gallant Friend, namely, that this tragic decline in the inshore fishing industry is not in the least due, as is sometimes asserted, to any disinclination on the part of the fishing community to go out to sea. If the young men go in search of other jobs, it is not because they prefer them; it is only because they cannot, as things are, get a moderately reasonable livelihood out of the fishing industry. In spite of the hardships and the special difficulties which attend a life at sea, the men in fishing villages would far prefer to earn their living by going to sea, even though they could make a better living by other means. Only last Saturday I had an opportunity to discuss the fishing industry with a number of fishermen at a small fishing village near the Lizard, called Cadgwith. I was impressed at finding the young men desperately anxious to carry on the industry, and not knowing what to do in order to avoid disaster. In that little room in which we were speaking, there were the complete crew of two lifeboats—that of the Lizard and that of Cadgwith. I thought, "If this industry goes out of existence we shall lose these men who man these lifeboats, and"—as my hon. and gallant Friend has said—"who manned the 'Q' ships and minesweepers in the War."

My hon. and gallant Friend has referred to the scarcity of fish. It is quite true that there is a scarcity of fish, but in spite of this scarcity there is no reason why the men should not carry on. The scarcity in the West country is due, as my hon. and gallant Friend pointed out, to excessive trawling, but I think that, in order that the whole picture should be before the House, I should allude to another reason. But first let me say that I completely endorse what my hon. and gallant Friend has said in regard to excessive trawling and in regard to the re-definition of the territorial limit. There is no doubt that a scarcity of fish has particularly shown itself, from the year 1930, in the western region, and to some extent this is, no doubt, due to a shifting of currents, which has taken away some of the small animal and vegetable substances upon which the fish feed. This is sometimes stated as an argument by those who wish to maintain that the industry cannot be saved from destruction. All experience goes to show that these shifts of currents are only temporary, and there can be no doubt at all that the fish will return; but, as things are, there will be no fishermen left then to catch them.

It is most urgent to make sure that while this depletion lasts we shall maintain the industry. Do not think there is no industry to maintain. There is a most active inshore fishing industry in the West country—and particularly in Cornwall, which is the part that I know best. The total value of landings at Newlyn alone—of course, there are other fishing ports, such as St. Ives and Porthleven—for 1938 amounted to £101,754, and for 1937 to £85,656—so it will be seen that the value has gone up. It is very interesting to compare that with the amount for 1929, before this depletion started. In 1929 the value of landings at Newlyn was £121,894.

Viscountess Astor

Is that by inshore fishermen?

Mr. Beechman

The hon. Lady has asked a useful question. I am bound to explain that the figure for 1938 includes a large quantity of Belgian landings, which were not contained in the figure for 1929. To that extent the figure requires analysis. But it is sufficient to show that there is an industry which is worth saving.

What are the remedies? I should like to begin by saying what is not the remedy. In the White Sea-Fish Bill, which has now become law, we passed measures in regard to co-operation. I am very far from asserting that the fishermen will not co-operate, because I know the contrary to be true. They are indeed great individualists, but I have the honour of being the President of the West Cornwall Fishermen's Council, and I have the great pleasure and interest of hearing fishermen who come up from the little ports and fishing villages all round the coast of West Cornwall to discuss their troubles around a table. There is no doubt at all that the fishermen, intelligent as they are, are perfectly willing to cooperate if it will help them. At Cadgwith on Saturday the fishermen suggested revising the co-operative society which they used to have, but, in my judgment, I would not like to take the responsibility of encouraging the reforming of that cooperative society, at any rate without the assurance that it would help the fishermen to carry on. If you form a small cooperative society in a small fishing village the price may be kept up artificially temporarily, but it will be undercut by offerings elsewhere.

Therefore, it seems plain that no cooperative scheme for the inshore fishermen will be of any validity unless it covers a large area, and I am not even sure that Cornwall itself is large enough. It would have to cover the whole of the West Country. It may be that in the course of time something of the sort will develop, but this is an urgent matter, and I am sure that it would be quite impossible, in anything like a short time, to develop a co-operative scheme even for the whole of Cornwall, although I think it might possibly be done for the West Country in a certain length of time.

Mr. Petherick

A co-operative selling scheme.

Mr. Beechman

A selling scheme. I am obliged to my hon. Friend, I mean co-operation with regard to selling. In my view the remedies are various, mostly quite simple, and many of them inexpensive. But remedies cannot be found unless those concerned will apply themselves to the realities of the situation. I believe, too, that a great deal of the trouble has arisen because there are many Ministries concerned in a subsidiary sense with this matter. There is the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, and I cannot help thinking that even our new energetic Minister, who has so deeply at heart the primary producer and has already made a very favourable impression in the West Country, cannot satisfactorily control two primary Ministries both relating to important matters which are being taken greater notice of than ever before—agriculture and fisheries.

I should like in particular to illustrate this difficulty of many Ministeries and many independent authorities by a tragic occurrence which has been in the minds of everybody in this House. My hon. and gallant Friend has referred to the absence of lifeboats. I refer to the recent lifeboat disaster at St. Ives, in which seven fishermen lost their lives. This tragedy shows how the younger people, too, are indeed fishermen. Not only were most of these young men fishermen, but two of them had just got a new boat which now will never be manned because they are lost and their father is dead also. What was the cause of the disaster? It was one which requires most careful consideration, because it affects fishermen throughout the country. It was that the facilities in St. Ives Bay are not adequate to launch a lifeboat of sufficient size to live in the type of gale which was encountered on that fatal night. This defect has been pointed out time and again ever since the year 1858, when there was a Commission which reported on this matter; and again in the year 1906, a most distinguished marine engineer, Sir William Matthews, pointed out that there was no harbour of refuge on the North Coast of Cornwall or Devon at all.

All these reports indicated that the right place for the purpose was St. Ives. The situation is such that a vessel wishing in a storm to round the point of England has to beat against a terrific sea because it cannot go back to take refuge anywhere and has to go right round England until it can get to Falmouth, or even further. The result is that boats of all sorts are continually in difficulties on this coast, which not only has the disadvantages I have described, but which is a cruel coast from the point of view of rocks. Fishing boats, if they are out, cannot get back; if they are in, they are smashed up by the great seas that roll in from the Atlantic because of the lack of proper protection on one side. Some of our Naval patrol boats were smashed up in the harbour during the War, and there was no proper refuge from enemy submarines, which infested these waters.

This matter, as I say, has been raised time and again. I myself, before this disaster, which I realised was quite inevitable from what I had been told and from what I have seen at St. Ives, went from Ministry to Ministry last year. This well illustrates the difficulties in which fishermen find themselves because of the multiplicity of Departments which consider them as being in a subsidiary industry. I went to the Ministry of Transport which is responsible for harbours, and I was told that it could not help because St. Ives was not officially a harbour. I said the answer was that it ought to be. The Admiralty, in spite of the smashing up of patrol boats, showed very little interest at the time, but I am happy to say that they are showing more interest now. The Board of Trade said that they were not concerned with fishermen, although I have shown that the fishermen manned the lifeboats, and 34 merchant seamen have already been drowned this year from this very cause off St. Ives. The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries—and I should like to take this opportunity of thanking my right hon. and gallant Friend the Minister for the interest he is showing—put an application for a grant of money before the Development Commissioners and as recently as November it was turned down.

It is obvious—and this applies all round the coast—that a little town like St. Ives, with a few inhabitants, none of them rich, is not in a position to build these works. I can conceive that the cost would be quite considerable, but it is a matter of national importance, and therefore the country must find the money. The cost would be far less than the cost of the ships which have been lost in the last 10 years because of this terrible defect. It is also the task of Governments, when such a defect is revealed, to produce a scheme. It is one of the failings of the Departments that they are inclined to wait for some person of good will at St. Ives to devise a plan or a scheme, instead of immediately devising a scheme themselves.

I will give another illustration from St. Ives Bay which is of universal application in regard to these defects which arise in the fishing industry because of the inadequacy of proper provision either by some independent body or by some Government Department. At the end of St. Ives Bay there stands a lighthouse which guards the bay, or rather I should say, which should guard the bay, called the Godrevy Light. Three years ago that light, for the sake of economy, was depleted. It stands near the "Stones," certain rocks of a most dangerous character on which the lifeboat was recently cast up. They are rocks of immense danger to fishermen. I went to Trinity House, the proper body as I was told, and asked them to restore this light. I may explain, as is the fact, that whereas you can see gas lights at St. Ives from six or seven miles out at sea, it is only when you get right in close to the shore, when it is far too late, that you can make out this light. There is no doubt at all, that seamen imagine this weak light to be a lighthouse further away or perhaps the lights of the town of St. Ives itself.

I went to Trinity House and they told me that they had no funds for fishermen's purposes, but they supplied, on the Stones, a lighted buoy which has now been swept away. I am sorry that I expressed my gratitude—it is true that I received the utmost courtesy—because I have now discovered that Trinity House greatly misconceived their legal obligations. They informed me that they had no money for fishermen, and therefore they adopted the attitude that they were making an ex gratia grant of this inadequate lighted buoy. I have since discovered that by the Merchant Shipping Act, 1898, in the Second Schedule, the fishermen are expressly exempted from paying dues, no doubt because they are far too poor so to do. But none the less, by the Act of 1894, Trinity House has the obligation to maintain and superintend lighthouses. It is amazing, when one looks through the whole corpus of legislation dealing with lighthouses, that it is impossible to be sure that there is any obligation upon anybody to establish a lighthouse. At any rate you find, when one is there, that it has to be superintended, and I feel it my duty to observe—and I hope that my words will be noticed outside this House in this respect—that Trinity House is liable for an action for negligence.

If, after a warning on matters of this sort, ships are wrecked again and there Is anybody left to give evidence—there was nobody saved last time—I only hope that the relatives of those victims or the shiping companies or the insurance companies will seriously consider bringing an action for negligence against the Elder Brethren of Trinity House. It is possible that the action will lie jointly and severally against the Elder Brethren, that is, against leading members of the Government in per- son, together with, I may add, such people as Lord Baldwin and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill).

I would like to call attention to another matter which indicates lack of proper surveillance. I refer to the inadequacy of the patrolling of our territorial waters. I am credibly informed—and from what I have seen myself, I believe it—that there is only one patrol boat in operation—I am not saying in commission—from Hampshire in the South right round the West Coast to Wales in the North. I know there is one that infrequently comes along, a great steam sloop, a lumbering thing, and slow. The French and the Belgians know that it is coming. They are like the street boys who wait for the policeman to pass on his beat. When it is on the north coast, the French come in within the three miles limit to the South. Near the Lizard recently the French constantly infringed the three miles limit, and they have smashed the gear of our fishermen. Our fishermen have complained to the coastguard, but no action has been taken. Therefore, I would ask for closer co-operation between the coastguards and the authorities responsible in this matter. The Belgians have quite recently infringed the three miles limit in the Isles of Scilly. While on the subject of the delinquencies of foreigners, I should like to emphasise the fact that even now the French have not come into the general convention about the size of the mesh. Again and again the matter has been raised in the House, and again and again we have been told that something is going to be done. I can only say that it is an absolute outrage that the French have not yet signalised their assent to that convention, as other civilised fishing countries have done.

I should like to say a few words on the quota arrangements. It seems to me that the quota has not been arranged with sufficient consideration of the realities of the situation. Under the quota arrangement as it now exists the Belgian trawl fish comes in at the very peak of our own season—in May, June, July and August. It ought to be arranged that the Belgian fish is landed from October, or, say, in the month of December. That would be a great blessing, because it would mean that the local fish-workers would have work at a time when local fishing is not so operative. Certain other disadvantages follow from this state of affairs. The great virtue of inshore fish is that it is fresh. The inshore fisherman lands his fish within three day of putting out to sea. He may even go 100 miles or more in his little boat, but the fish he lands is fresh, and not fish carried for days and weeks on ice. As a result of the Belgian trawl fish coming in at the same time as our fresh fish, the two supplies get mixed together and the local inshore fisherman loses some of the great value of his product. I should like to see some arrangement made, perhaps by grading, so that our inshore fishermen may have the recognition of having caught fresh fish in their small boats, and also that the public may realise the great distinction there is between freshly caught fish and fish that has spent days on ice.

Let me refer to the pilchard fishing industry. Although the pilchards are caught in Cornish waters, they are sold substantially in Italy. I heard this morning that for the quarter January to March no licence has yet been issued. I hope this matter will be taken up at once, because it is urgent for the pilchard fishing industry, which is a great support to Cornwall. The chief trouble of this industry is that of payment. The Italian buyer pays into the clearing house under the scheme, but the delay in obtaining payment has been absolutely terrible. The local buyer, the small man in Cornwall, naturally, has not the financial resources to be able to leave his money outstanding for a great length of time, but as things are he has to wait as much as 12 months before he gets his money. There is a perfectly simple remedy, and I have pressed it time and again upon the Board of Trade. I hope that if I go on pressing I shall have something done about it. Once the money has been paid into the bank in Italy there is no doubt that it will ultimately be paid to the Cornish exporter. The Government should, therefore, advance the price to the local Cornish exporter as soon as the money has been paid by the Italian buyer into his bank. The local Cornish buyer is perfectly willing to treat this as an ordinary mercantile deal and to pay commission in the ordinary way.

Another matter that arises out of the pilchard fishing is that the quota is a joint one for herring and pilchards. The present quota is based on that of 1934 and is 80 per cent., but because of the inclusion of herring in the same quota it now works out for pilchards at only 40 per cent. The trouble is that the Italians, perhaps since our own herring propaganda has been in operation, are being induced to buy herring instead of pilchards. I have no doubt the Secretary of State for Scotland is pleased at that. We all know, as the result of our discussion about the herring boats, that we who live in England felt that the money was being directed to the North. I could not help feeling that what we wanted was a Secretary of State for Cornwall.

That brings me to the provision for boats. In Cornwall we have boats 70 years old and more. There are cases where a man badly needs a new boat and new gear. Our fishermen have to compete with very much superior boats used by foreigners, and for which they have subsidies. I am not asking for subsidies. In fact, I was struck by the attitude of the Cornish fishermen. I am not sure that they were wise or that I support them in it, but they said they did not want subsidies but they wanted credits for boats. They want help to obtain new boats, and I would add that they ought to be granted subsidies for that purpose. I hope that when regulations governing the grants under the new herring legislation are formulated we shall not find that West Country fishermen are excluded from obtaining grants for their boats.

Now I come to prices. In this matter there ought to be an inquiry. The fault does not lie, so far as I can discover, with the local buyers, but it is clear that there are rings in Billingsgate and elsewhere, and the fishermen derive no advantages comparable with the enormous efforts they have to make, and the terrible hazards they have to encounter. Let me give a few examples of prices. One day, mackerel in the West Country were fetching for the fishermen 6d. per long hundred of 120, and they sold in the shops for 2d. each. Turbot was fetching 3½d. a lb. in Newlyn market, and to the housewife it was selling at 1s. 6d. a lb. Ling, weighing 15 lbs., a fish of the cod type, were being sold for 6d. each. Under the new fishing legislation there is a commission. I hope it will do some work and that one of the first things it will do will be to inquire into the price structure of the fishing industry and into the question of distribution. We want to remedy such an absurd state of affairs as that fish caught in Newlyn goes to Grimsby and comes back to the West Country.

I should like to say something about the position of the fishermen in regard to social services. After the greatest difficulty, the inshore fishermen have been brought within the scope of the Unemployment Insurance Act. I know the very room in which Sir William Beveridge sat, explaining to the fishermen what they should do. The fishermen are anxious to fish. They do not want to avail themselves of the Unemployment Insurance Act when they can catch fish, as is sometimes so light-heartedly said by people who do not know them. Although they were encouraged by Sir William Beveridge and have been brought within the scope of the Act, every conceivable attempt has been made to disqualify them.

During the last two months or so over 100 cases have been fought in West Cornwall, and having some knowledge of the law I have been able to assist them to combat the attempts which have been made to disqualify them. If the fishermen had not had behind them people who could help them, intelligent as they are they could not possibly have won their cases, because the most complicated matters of law and fact were raised. Chicanery is not too serious a word to use in regard to the attempts made to disqualify the fishermen. It was, for instance, alleged that a fisherman was not unemployed because his boat happened to be on the beach and had not been moved away. The point has also been taken that where a fisherman tries to work when he is not fishing and attempts to grow some bulbs he is disqualified on the ground that he is not a fisherman. We have won almost all these cases. We have shown that although they may grow bulbs, they may make little or nothing by growing the bulbs and if they do, make no attempt to obtain benefit and are still fishermen.

My hon. and gallant Friend has referred to the importance of linking up fishermen with the Royal Naval Reserve. The fishermen have again and again expressed to me their anxiety to collaborate with the Royal Naval Reserve, and again and again I have pointed out that the amount they are offered is insufficient for the purpose of bringing them into contact with the Royal Naval Reserve and of encouraging the fishing industry. The offer is £6 to £10 a year. I have said that the remedies for the fishing industry are sometimes minor and therefore inexpensive. Here is a good example. If the fishermen could be given £30 a year for this service, which they are anxious to render, it would make an enormous difference to the inshore fishermen, and it would encourage the young people to come into the industry, because they would know that, at any rate, they would have that sum of money.

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Colville)

Would the hon. Member restrict that to the inshore fishermen.

Mr. Beechman

If I used the term "inshore fishermen," I had them in mind, but I should like to see the principle applied all round. It is also of the greatest importance to make better arrangements with regard to the seasonal training. So far as I know, the training season coincides with the peak of the pilchard season. Perhaps that matter might be looked into. Reference has been made to the depletion of the fish in the sea. To some extent that is due to natural conditions, but natural conditions may be materially affected by people who take the trouble to get to know something of the realities of the matter.

One of the troubles in the Isles of Scilly and places like Sennen is that there has been a great absence of shell-fish. We have been setting up artificial hatcheries of lobsters around the coast of West Cornwall. They first came from Scandinavia and have proved a success in jersey and in the Scilly Isles, and we have some round the coast of Cornwall. I have seen enough of this matter to be quite sure that it is possible to hatch out lobsters in large numbers, but the trouble is that it takes several years for lobsters to mature, and they have to be looked after at various stages. It should not be left for amateurs like myself and local philanthropists to tackle a matter of this sort. If it is to be successful it must be taken in hand by the State, and as I have said the expense is extremely small. I hope that some of the matters to which I have referred will be taken in hand. There is no doubt that these brave men are a dying race but since their problems can be solved, there is no reason at all why this race of men should die out and, therefore, I hope that some attention will be given to what I have said.

5.32 p.m.

Mr. Garro Jones

The hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. Beechman) has conducted us on a very long but interesting fishing voyage, and he has improved the occasion by endeavouring to get something done to the harbour at St. Ives. I want to begin my brief remarks by saying something in support of his plea. No one who has ever found himself off that inhospitable coast and in need of a harbour of refuge can doubt the human appeal which the hon. Member has made. Looking at the matter purely from the point of view of defence, there is no stretch of coast which is at once so inhospitable in regard to its currents and winds and so inadequately provided with natural or other harbours which are so important in the matter of coastal services. But the hon. Member for St. Ives suffered from one disadvantage throughout all his remarks. He did not know to which Minister to address his remarks. There is a formidable array of Ministers, I am glad to see, on the Front Bench, but not one of them can say that he is responsible for any single one of the points raised by the hon. Member.

The fishing industry, the inshore fishermen, and the trawling industry' have suffered for 50 years from this lack. Repeatedly we have made a plea that there should be some co-ordination, that instead of a Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries there should be a Minister of Marine and Fisheries. I do not say this in any way as a discouragement to the right hon. Gentleman who has just embarked on such a tremendous task, but I think that the interest of the Minister of Agriculture is going to be very small in fisheries, his interest in herring will be directed more to their value as manure for the land than as a source of revenue to the inshore fishermen. It was strange to hear the hon. Member for St. Ives saying that this matter must be tackled by the State. It is remarkable with what increasing frequency we are hearing that plea from Members opposite. There was a time when it was regarded as treachery to the old Conservative principles for anyone ever to utter such a proposal.

Mr. Beechman

I am prepared to judge all these matters on their merits. There is room for private initiative and for State enterprise.

Mr. Garro Jones

It is satisfactory to me that I am able to support the Motion. In fact, I very much doubt whether anyone would find any difficulty in supporting it, because all it does is to ask the Government to carry into effect practical measures for putting the industry on its feet. Let me state briefly what I consider the main trouble of the inshore fishermen. I hope it will not come to be regarded as a conflict between inshore fishermen and deep sea fishermen. I represent a deep sea fishing port, but I have always found the greatest sympathy on personal and economic grounds with the inshore fishermen. I agree with the hon. and gallant Member for Orkney and Shetland (Major Neven-Spence) that the scientific investigations which are being made in the North Sea are not receiving adequate attention from the Government. I wonder whether any one of the Ministers on the Front Bench knows that you cannot catch fish to-day in the North Sea which are more than four years old, or that if you catch one and mark it you will certainly find that same marked fish within two years.

That indicates a state of affairs which imperatively demands the attention of the State. That cannot be done by any cooperative measures on the part of the fishermen of one nation. It applies equally to other nations bordering on the North Sea, and, in addition, there is no Minister who can acknowledge that the initiative rests with him. As a result, initiative is not exercised at all. I contend that the inshore fishermen will never be provided with an adequate living until they are properly organised in respect of equipment, prices and the distribution of their catch. What happens at the present time if an inshore fisherman requires a little more equipment? He goes to the man in the nearest big town to whom he generally sells his fish, and says that if he will provide him with a bigger trawl or finance him by means of a small loan, he will be able to sell him more fish. The individual, who is always in a position to bargain with the inshore fisherman, is always ready to give him some assistance of that kind, and afterwards the fisherman is in the hands of the man who has advanced him money. You can go round to any of these small fishing ports and find a fisherman who has been labouring for two or three days with a trammel or a trawl, or long lines, or with lobster pots and who has a boat full of fish, because he has been persevering, who will not know on landing whether he is going to get £5 or 5s. for his fish. That is not an exaggeration.

I contend that the Government must take this matter in hand if they feel that the industry is sufficiently important to be preserved. No one will deny that from the human aspect, as well as from the Defence aspect, this is an industry which must be saved. The Admiralty do not take the slightest interest in the matter. I have tried for years to get them interested. They imagine that they can train the type of man to do this work in the Fleet. That is not so. The men who are capable of carrying out this type of work do not lend themselves to the disciplinary training which is necessary when they join the Fleet. He is a type of man who dislikes training; he likes an independent existence, and the Admiralty are making a big mistake if they think they can develop by the ordinary methods of training the qualities which these men possess. I say that if this industry is worth saving the State will have to take the matter up on other lines.

I would make one practical suggestion, and that is that the State should set up a Government broker at all these fishing ports, and establish a fixed price for every grade of fish caught by inshore fishermen with equipment below a certain size. Then the fisherman would go out, catch his fish, send it to the inshore market and get a fixed price for it all the year round. There should be no variation. There is no doubt that the Government broker would be able to find some sort of a market for the fish; sometimes he would make a substantial profit. We have been told of mackerel selling at 6d. per hundred to the fishermen and at 2d. each retail. I think that Government brokers would pay for themselves. They would take the fish which is now often destroyed. I was in a fishing port not long ago and saw a couple of boatloads of fish come in. They could not find a market at all. My suggestion, I think, would solve the problem of equipment, distribution and prices. Ordinary in- shore fish are not susceptible of distribution by means of private enterprise. It is too irregular and would not pay any distributive machinery to be set up, but if the Government would take this simple step it would go far to save this industry from further decline.

5.43 p.m.

Viscountess Astor

The case has been so very well put by the Mover and Seconder of the Motion that there is very little to be said. The hon. Member for North Aberdeen (Mr. Garro Jones) wants the Government to guarantee profits to the fishermen. The new Minister of Agriculture certainly has my complete sympathy, and if his intelligence is as great as his courage we may expect great things. It takes a very courageous man to go to the Ministry of Agriculture at the present moment. I do not think that the Government are able to guarantee profits to anybody.

Mr. Garro Jones

Prices.

Viscountess Astor

I do not believe a Socialist Government would guarantee profits. I do not think that that is the answer to this problem. I support the plea of the hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. Beechman) in regard to these fishermen. A nation which can produce men like those which man our lifeboats to-day should take great care to keep them. We in Plymouth have been trying to watch them, but what has happened? In 1920, we had 250 boats and 1,000 men; in 1936, we had 32 boats and 250 men; and in 1939, 12 boats and just about a couple of score of men. The Chambers of Commerce inquired into this question in 1927 and in their report they said: The fishing has gone to sea, and you can't get it back. The inshore grounds are yielding less fish and the business has gone into the hands of fleets or individual vessels which can stay out a week or ten days and exploit the nearer ocean grounds, and to the long distance fleets which can stay out at sea a month or more. I do not believe we shall be able to do a great deal for inshore fishermen, but there is something we can do, and ought to do if we are to save them. The Government are lavish in dealing with agriculture, in spite of the complaints of the farmers, and this year the wheat subsidies will cost us £10,000,000. If the Government can spend all that money on agriculture, they might spend a little to save our inshore fishermen. I know people who spend their lives in inshore fishing, and in the West country recently, I asked one of these men what we could do for them. I do not want to paint a pitiful picture of the fishermen, but that could be done. There are no men in the country who are more gallant, independent, hardworking, or better family men than the inshore fishermen. One has only to go into the houses of these people to see that. An extraordinary thing about them is that although they sometimes live in houses which are 200 or 300 years old, they manage to keep them cleaner than some of the new council houses, where the people have all facilities for washing and cooking. I remember hearing hon. Members talk about the tragedies of the mines—and they are tragedies—but the miners are not braver than the fishermen. In a mine there is always the same climate, but when a man goes to sea, he does not know what is coming.

The tragedy of the inshore fishermen is that they are individualists and unorganised. If they had been organised, as the miners are, the Government would have done something for them years ago. [An HON. MEMBER: "Why do they not organise?"] The very conditions of their life make it almost impossible. The Government ought to give more attention to these unorganised people, and not simply to wait until there is political pressure from organised people. I feel strongly that now is the time for the Government to do something for the inshore fishermen. I hope that the new Minister of Agriculture will not attempt to do it himself; let him say to the Government that they must set up a Ministry of Fisheries, which everybody knows is necessary. There is is a great deal that can be done and ought to be done, but I do not believe it will be done as long as fisheries come under the Ministry of Agriculture. The farmers are organised, as nobody knows better than the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Minister of Agriculture. They will try through organisation to get what they want; I do not know whether they will get it, but they will make a brave effort. The fishermen are unorganised, and cannot make the same effort. Yet it is essential to the country, not only from the humanitarian point of view, but from the National Defence point of view, that we should save the inshore fishermen. During the War they gave enormous and magnificent services to the Navy.

What can be done for these fishermen? First of all, there ought to be a Ministry of Fisheries, with a Minister whose business it is to see how much can be done to save the inshore fishermen. Nearly every country which has fishermen is taking more interest in the question than we are. In Belgium, the fishermen are much better organised than they are in this country. That is because, after the War, a very remarkable man organised them, and through co-operation, they got modem ships and trawlers that could go much faster than ours and were much better equipped. That was done, through private enterprise and organisation, by a man with vision. We need such a man at the head of a Ministry of Fisheries, for I do not believe that, with the best will in the world, the Minister of Agriculture has either the time or the knowledge to do what needs to be done.

The second thing that ought to be done is to protect the fisheries, particularly in the West Country. In the West Country, there are many inlets and bays, which are the breeding places of the fish, and we ought to do what has been done in Belgium and other countries, that is to say, protect these inlets and bays by measuring the three-mile limit outside a line drawn from headland to headland and not, as now, following the contour of the coast, and thus prevent foreign trawlers from fishing in them. It may be said that that cannot be done now, and that it is a little difficult to make a territorial change of that sort; but surely we could prevent foreign trawlers from coming into these inlets and bays as they do now. It is a scandal, particularly as they fish with a small mesh. One hon. Member said that we ought to come to an understanding on this matter with France. Now is our time to get what we like out of France. It might have been a good thing if the Prime Minister, when he was in Rome, had mentioned fishing to Signor Mussolini. After all, the last Prime Minister took an interest in broccoli. I feel that now is the time to come to an understanding with Belgium and France, and get them to use the same mesh as our fishermen use.

The third matter on which something ought to be done has reference to the selling of fish by foreigners. In other countries, no fish can be sold in their markets until their own fish has been cleared out. The same thing ought to happen here. In Plymouth, one day not long ago, the French or Belgian boats came in at 7.30 in the morning, with a large catch which they sold out before our fishermen got back. Our fishermen are not allowed to do that in foreign countries, and I do not see why foreign fishermen should be allowed to do it here. With regard to protection of the fisheries, one hon. Member said that it would be useful if we had even one sloop to see that the foreigners do not get the fish. The reason we have not got them in the West Country is that they are all around Scotland.

Mr. Colville

We have our own.

Viscountess Astor

The right hon. Gentleman says they have their own, but from where did they get them? They do not pay for them; we are paying for them in this country. That is not good enough for us in the West Country; it is a scandal.

Mr. Colville

I gather that the Noble Lady suggests that a naval vessel is assisting the Fisheries Patrol in Scotland. The Scottish Fishing Board have a patrol fleet of their own, and in the main that conducts the patrol for Scotland. There is only one naval vessel on patrol there.

Viscountess Astor

I do not think that in asking for these things I am asking too much. The trawlers go out and stay away for a week and sometimes a month, and of course they beat the inshore fishermen; but the inshore fishermen have the advantage that during a war we should need their fish. In the West Country, we maintain that something can be and should be done, and I do not think we are asking for something which it is impossible to give. A little attention should be paid to the position of the inshore fishermen. It is no good the Government saying they are doing all that they can: if what they are doing is all that they can do, then let them appoint somebody who can do more.

I ask the Government seriously to consider setting up a Ministry of Fisheries. I ask them to take up the questions of the three-mile limit and the mesh, and try to get France and Belgium to do something in regard to these matters. I ask them also to remember that in the West Country there must be an effective regional control; for the problem there is quite a different one from that of the North Sea. One of the most important questions is that of the bays and inlets which are the breeding grounds of the fish. In Plymouth there is a Biological Institute, which is one of the best in the world, and they have said for years that unless there is better protection of these breeding grounds, they will be seriously damaged. There is no shortage of fish in the North Sea, but the inshore fishermen bring in fresh fish, and a great many people would rather pay a little more for fresh fish than have trawled fish which have been out so long. I do not suggest there should be a subsidy, but I feel that there should be some organisation and real protection for the inshore fishermen, and I ask the Government to remember that these men are some of the very best of our citizens and are really needed. It is the Government's job to protect them, particularly as they are not organised and cannot protect themselves.

5.57 p.m

Mr. R. Acland

As many hon. Members wish to speak, I shall be brief; and in associating myself and my Liberal friends with this Motion, if I do not repeat the high praise which has been bestowed on the inshore fishermen, I am sure that neither the House nor the fishermen will feel that it is because I do not endorse everything that has been said on that subject. As the hon. Member for North Aberdeen (Mr. Garro Jones) reminded us, the Admiralty seem to hold the view that they would not need these men in time of war. This very day we have heard that—

The Civil Lord of the Admiralty (Colonel Llewellin)

As this statement has been made twice in the Debate, I hope the hon. Member will forgive me if I interrupt to point out that the Admiralty have made it clear that they do look upon the inshore fishermen as a very valuable reserve for the Royal Navy. I wish to make quite clear that the Admiralty consider these men as a valuable reserve, and we like to see them join—as they do—the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, and bodies of that sort.

Mr. Acland

Then the hon. Member for North Aberdeen and I are mistaken, and I am grateful for the hon. and gallant Gentleman's correction. However, I wish to call attention once again to the suggestion which has often been made by the leader of my party that some sort of retaining fee should be paid to these men on condition that they qualify in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. The Beveridge Committee, in 1936, considered that the discontinuance of these facilities for joining the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve was one of the three primary causes for the decline in the industry. This industry is one which has not enjoyed any very obvious benefits from the present Government. Hon. Members have referred to the principal problem as being the closing of foreign markets. Of course, I maintain, as the hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. Beechman) used to maintain, that if one puts tariffs on goods coming into the country, one is likely to export less goods, and also, as a political consequence, to provoke counter measures from other countries. I have a feeling that the ever-increasing unwillingness of foreign countries to receive our fish which operates to the detriment of our inshore fishermen, is in part the consequence of the policies which the Government pursue and which, when they do confer any benefit upon any particular section, are claimed by candidates on the Government side—

Mr. Beechman

Will the hon. Gentleman state which foreign countries are refusing to take our fish?

Mr. Acland

I listened attentively to the hon. Member when he was describing the unwillingness of the Italians to take our pilchards.

Mr. Beechman

That is not even remotely connected with tariffs, but is due to the policy of sanctions which the hon. Member and his friends advocated so strenuously.

Mr. Acland

Hon. Members opposite, with a very few exceptions, such as the hon. Member for South Croydon (Mr. H. G. Williams), in their election speeches favoured this very policy. Were they not all returned on that very same policy? However, I suggest to hon. Members like the hon. Member opposite that they should remember a little of their lost Liberalism and demand that the Government should pursue a policy of greater liberality in our treatment of foreign countries, so that we may get better treatment for our fishermen.

Vice-Admiral Taylor

Is it not a fact that since the introduction of the tariff policy, and by means of it, we have had a bargaining weapon which has enabled us to bring about trade agreements and increase our trade?

Mr. Acland

I can only say that it has not been used to the advantage of the fishing industry. But I shall endeavour not to allow myself to be led away any further by interruptions, because I know that many hon. Members wish to speak. On the question to which the hon. Member for St. Ives has referred, I would call attention to the report of the Duncan Committee published in 1936. One of the members of that committee was the right hon. Member for Aldershot (Viscount Wolmer) and the report calls special attention to the position in Devon and Cornwall. It says: Landings at individual places are neither regular enough nor large enough to attract sufficient buyers to constitute either a market or an auction. … Organisation and cooperation do not find ready acceptance in this area. Localised efforts to secure co-operation even within a cove, such as those made by the Fisheries Organisation Society have generally met with little encouragement. The report goes on to make this suggestion: The Ministry—which has always shown a close interest in the inshore fisheries—should initiate a marketing investigation with special reference to the Devon and Cornwall fisheries, enlisting for the purpose the help of someone of standing and experience in Billingsgate market. We are not willing to assume that within the structure of an organised white fish industry, these inshore fisheries, with their reputation for freshness, cannot find an economic outlet, provided the various interests sink their individual prejudices and lend themselves to real co-operative effort. We have it in mind that if a wide enough scheme for area co-operation can be devised, embracing all the fishings of Devon and Cornwall, the Ministry might render financial support to the organisation for a limited period until it can take its place in any wider marketing scheme that is arranged for the industry. This recommendation of this authoritative committee has been before the Government now for over two years, and I ask whether any official or servant of the Ministry has given five minutes of thought or attention to carrying into practice that very important and direct recommendation. It seems a pity that we should use up the time of public men in making inquiries and then, when definite recommendations come from them, take no action upon those recommendations. It only needs the responsible Minister to say to one of his permanent officials, "There is a recommendation. Now do it. I do not want to hear from you again, but get this done." It is a pity that when we have these reports and recommendations nothing is done and the thing fizzles out.

On the question of the North Sea it is rather much to ask that any international agreement should be reached at this time, but would it not be worth while to see whether we could not persuade all countries interested in the North Sea to agree to leaving a substantial area of the spawning beds permanently free from trawlers? I confess that I have done no more than listen to other people discussing this subject, but it does seem that the solution of the difficulties to which reference has been made is to have one area of the spawning beds which is not trawled. I can see enormous political difficulties in the way of getting such an agreement, but I cannot see any practical difficulties in the way of carrying it out. I would ask the Government to turn their attention to it, and I would also support the demand for better supervision of the three-mile limit law. That is very much like the 30 miles an hour speed limit on roads. It is not a question of wanting bigger penalties. What is wanted is the more frequent detection of offences.

There is another recommendation by a committee to which I would draw attention. I refer to the report of the Beveridge Committee on inshore fishermen and share fishermen in relation to unemployment. In that report, they point out all the difficulties involved in that question, and I am not surprised that many technically difficult cases should arise, but the special difficulty is that there is a temptation to try, in some way, to turn a man, who for ordinary economic purposes would be a share fisherman, into an employed fisherman on a guaranteed cash wage basis. There are even cases quoted in the report such as that in which the captain of a boat got employment from a merchant to whom he sold his fish, for eight hours a week as a fish packer. That is a device, and a rather unsatisfactory device. It is particularly unsatisfactory if it is easier for the junior members of the partnership, by accepting some form of cash wages, to bring themselves within the scope of the Unemployment Insurance Act than it is for the leaders or skippers in the partnership and the boat owners. There is general resentment among the boat owners when they are left out while the junior members of the partnership are advised that they can be brought in. Here is the recommendation of the Beveridge Committee: We hope that some authority with a wider reference than our own will take up the issues raised by our investigations. They were concerned strictly with unemployment insurance: Unemployment insurance is the wrong remedy for the troubles that the investigation has brought to light. Neither its uniform scale of relatively high benefits, nor its requirement of standing idle and available for other work as the condition of benefit, fit the case of the working owner and his partners. Nor can the scheme of unemployment insurance be extended to cover all working fishermen without departing from the central principle of the scheme and establishing unanswerable precedents for extension to all others working on their own account. …Unemployment insurance cannot help and may hinder improvements of method and organisation required to meet the changing conditions of demand for fish. But the working fisherman has a need of security like others, and, perhaps, has a special claim for help in obtaining it. We suggest that steps should be taken to explore the possibility of designing measures of assistance and of security for fishermen, both against accidents and against unavoidable idleness, which shall be appropriate to their needs. That was recommended in 1936. Has anything been done to carry it into effect? I have pleasure in supporting the Motion.

6.10 p.m.

Commander Bower

I am sorry that the Minister of Agriculture has, for the time, left his place on the Front Bench, but I welcome this opportunity of giving him another of those somewhat fishy bouquets which have been thrown at him to-day, and I would also impress upon him the necessity of not forgetting that he is the Minister of Fisheries as well of Agriculture. As an ex-naval officer who has spent over 20 years in the Navy, I can claim to have had a good deal of experience of the men about whom we have been talking to-day, and I have no hesitation in saying that the country cannot do without them. They are the salt of the earth. When I was in a cruiser with the Battle Cruiser Fleet, during the War, we had a great many of these men as naval reservists, and most of them came from Stornoway. They were wonderful seamen, and if they did not take very kindly to the frills and furbelows of the Royal Navy, I do not think that was anything to their discredit, because with all deference to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for North Portsmouth (Sir R. Keyes), I have never had an overdue respect myself for the brass hat.

As an example of these men's independence I recall an incident which happened when his late Majesty King George V was inspecting us. Lord Beatty brought His Majesty on board my ship and, walking past a line of these Stornoway men, the Admiral became almost lyrical in praise of them. He selected one man and pointed him out to the King as a typical example of these toilers of the sea, commenting on his weather-beaten face and all the rest of it, when the man interrupted him to say, "No, Sir, I have been a house painter all my life." These men are valued by the Navy, and I cannot help feeling that the hon. Member who said that the Admiralty did not require them must have got hold of some very inaccurate information. During the War they served all over the world, mostly in jobs in which there was danger, monotony, daily hardship, and not much limelight. They had to do all the dangerous chores of maritime warfare, and we should pay them every possible respect for having done so. Hundreds, indeed thousands, of them died. To-day the story is the same all up and down the coast. Starting in Scotland and going to the other extremity of the country, everywhere there are moving stories of how this industry is declining.

In my own constituency there is a village called Staithes on the most rockbound part of the North-East coast. Most of the people there are of Scandinavian origin. They are descended from squatters who arrived there in past centuries and built themselves houses, and up to a few years ago that village had hundreds of fishermen. Now the number has dwindled to a mere handful, mostly of older men. Three years ago, I thought it might be possible to get some of the ex-service men back into the fishing industry. I got the British Legion to undertake to put up money to buy two motor cobles complete with gear, and to set up such of these ex-service men as might want to start fishing again. After a lot of consideration the men turned the scheme down, because, they said, it was impossible for them to make a living and at the same time to pay back the cost of the boats and gear even over as long a period as 20 years, which is what I had hoped to arrange for repayment.

Hon. Members have given many general reasons for the decline of this industry, but there are also, I think, certain special reasons. For instance, in the particular village to which I have just referred all their bait has to come from the mussel beds at Morecambe, right across the other side of England, and with the industry in its present condition it is impossible for them to pay the freight on their bait right across the country and make a decent living. I suggest that perhaps this question of bait is another which might well be investigated, because practically the only capital in the industry is the capital in the sea. These men have no money, and they cannot, even on cooperative lines, lay down their own mussel beds and start an undertaking of that sort. I think that if they were in such parts of the country given some Government assistance towards the provision of cheap bait, or a subsidy, it might help them. Again, I feel that there must be some kind of separate marketing scheme for fresh fish, as opposed to this trawler fish of which we have heard so much. The men should be given the opportunity of reaping the harvest which they themselves gather.

The right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Agriculture is appropriately enough today the Minister of Fisheries as well, because he, of all people, I think, should repudiate the suggestion which is sometimes made that this is the natural trend of the industry and that there is nothing much to be done about it. Only in the last few weeks we have seen the people of the country rise up and repudiate beyond a doubt the idea that the natural trend of our agriculture is in the direction of stock breeding and against the growing of more foodstuffs. It is the people of this country who have repudiated that idea, and I hope the Minister will realise, in dealing with the inshore fishing industry, that exactly the same state of affairs exists there. I do not see why the small man should go out of business. There is room for the small man everywhere, otherwise in ordinary trade and industry you would have everything concentrated in the hands of the big combines and the co-operative societies. We do not want that sort of thing to happen.

We want to give the small man every opportunity he can get, and all that we ask is that the inshore fishing industry should get the attention which it deserves and that something should be done to let these men feel that the Government have their interests at heart, and, above all, to let them know with whom they have to deal. I will not elaborate what has been said by other hon. Members on this subject, but really, in any question concerning the inshore fishing industry, you have to search around all over the place and sometimes take a week or more to find out whether you have to deal with the Board of Trade, with Trinity House, with the Admiralty, with the Ministry of Agriculture, or with some other Department. A simplification of the problems of these people is required, and if the Minister will admit straight out that he has all he can do with agriculture and persuade the Prime Minister that somebody else must deal with fisheries, preferably someone who knows all about it, as he does about agriculture, I think there will be some hope and that these men, who are now on the verge of despair, will be saved to carry on the wonderful work which they have always done for their country.

6.20 p.m.

Mr. Malcolm MacMillan

I am not concerned so much as some hon. Members have been with the question whether we can supply so many people for the British Navy; I am more concerned to urge upon the Government in every way they can to take steps to help provide an independent livelihood for the inshore fishermen and the agricultural hinterland, which is partly dependent upon them, in time of peace as well as in time of war. Much has been said about what these men have done for their country in the past, and I have no doubt at all that under the stress of circumstances they would defend their country again as they have done before. We have in the last two days been able in this House to take up the case of the fishermen, and especially those of Scotland. The Debate to-night has almost developed into a Scottish Debate again, though it is by no means exclusively a Scottish question. I should like to congratulate by hon. and gallant Friend and neighbour, the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Major Neven-Spence) on his luck in the ballot and on his choice of a subject for discussion. I should like also to repudiate emphatically some of the attacks which have been made upon Highland Members for not having represented as fully and energetically as they ought to have done the case for improved conditions in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. If that charge should be made against anybody, surely it should be made against those who have the power to remedy the position, and they, I think, must be recognised to be the Government themselves.

The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for Scotland will, I suppose, remember that in December, 1933, the House of Commons passed a Resolution to the effect that the maintenance of a prosperous fishing population was essential for the national welfare, and in 1936 a Resolution was unanimously accepted urging the Government to take early and vigorous action to deal with the problem of distress in the Highlands. There are no people who have suffered more from the economic degeneration of the Highland and Island counties than the inshore fishermen generally. The House is, or should be, familiar with the question of the depopulation of the Highlands, and the Secretary of State for Scotland certainly knows about it very well. If he had not heard of it, however, we have now before us the Economic Report on the Highlands and Islands, which deals with the position to some extent, though not fully enough, in my view, of the inshore fishermen in particular and of fishermen generally. There are a few suggestion in that report which are valuable to them, and I would urge on the Minister to take the report into his consideration, for action and not simply for consideration.

The general position is that the Minister tells me that such and such matters are under consideration by an economic sub-committee or some other unofficial body. Then, two years later, when they have produced a report, I hear this week that the Minister is studying it, and again next week, and in the following week he is studying it carefully. Then I hear that it will he under review, and then that it will be considered whether there are any practical suggestions in the report which he can implement. Year after year this sort of reviewing and delaying goes on, and, in practical terms of the livelihood of these people and of the depopulation of the Highlands, delay means decay. The Minister knows the position with regard to this depopulation in the Highlands and Islands, and he knows—

Mr. Colville

I reminded the House only last night that in the last 10 years the depopulation of the Highlands has almost ceased and that the problem has now become one rather of age groups.

Mr. MacMillan

Yes, and one of the obvious reasons for that is that the people who are left, the old people and the very young people, are not suitable for emigration. All the men who can go have gone already. I would add that in the present condition of the country there is not much hope for these people to emigrate to the Southern parts of the country, where there is now no more employment to be had than elsewhere. The question came up some time ago what to do with these fishermen, and the Secretary of State for Scotland dealt with it in the House. The suggestion then came forward that we should send away some of these fishermen, as a solution of the unemployment question, to Vancouver and other parts of the world, but that did not turn out to be a practical suggestion. It was only put forward for the obvious reason that no policy was being advocated by the Government. It was a last desperate suggestion arising as a counsel of despair, to emigrate these people, to send them abroad, because there was no hope for them in their own districts.

What proposals have been before the House to-night that could be adopted? Take the inshore fishermen in the Western Islands. We are not going to be content with having the Minister considering this report for the next few years. We desire urgent action, and I think hon. Members on all sides of the House have impressed that fact upon the Minister, though really they do not need to do so, because he already knows very well the urgency of the situation in which these people find themselves. One thing has been before him for years, a suggestion endorsed by people of all political views and of no political views. It is the suggestion that the Government should close the Minch altogether to trawlers. The fact that the Government felt that a special inquiry was necessary in these islands was at least an implicit recognition that this was an area which required special investigation for special action, because of the distress in that area which was agreed by this House a few years ago to exist.

The suggestion was that the Minch should be closed to trawlers between a line drawn from Barra Head to Tiree and from the Butt of Lewis to Cape Wrath. I know that there might be international complications, and that it might very easily become a Foreign Office or a Board of Trade question, but it is also a question of the inshore fishermen and for the Secretary of State for Scotland, who is, after all, for all practical purposes the Minister for Fisheries as well as for Agriculture. On that question I wish to stress the fact that it is more than ever the desire of the people of these islands that the Minch should be closed to trawlers or that some international agreement, if that should be found to be necessary, should be brought into operation to extend the existing limits to 12 or 13 miles, to do which the Minister, I think, could use powers granted by this House some time in the last century, in about 1895, I think it was. I think the right hon. Gentleman himself will agree that the trawler menace is no less a menace now than it was five or six years ago, and that word very quickly goes round when the fishery cruiser has left a particular district. In some places the matter has been cleared up, I admit, but unfortunately there are still lapses. An insolent attitude is still adopted by the trawlers which go in for illegal fishing in spite of the fishery cruisers. I suggest that not only should there be confiscation of the gear and a fine in cases of illegal trawling, especially in repeated offences, but that there should be a detention of the vessel to prevent it engaging in illegal trawling for such period as the court may determine.

I would suggest to the Minister that he can, in co-operation with the Minister of Transport, do a great deal to help the inshore fishermen by introducing better transport and improved facilities, especially as they have been badly hit by the high freight charges on things like lobsters and, indeed, on fresh fish of all kinds. Another thing could be done with regard to the lobster fisheries. The Minister could seek powers to help by allowing monetary grants for the setting up of artificial ponds for lobstors. I cannot now go into a detailed description of what we would suggest in the way of co-operative marketing, but if the Minister does not know, I can supply him with a great deal of information. There may be half a dozen middlemen taking an unnecessary part of the profits of the men who risk their lives and give their labour to the fishing industry A great deal of that money which is given to the middlemen should go into the pockets of the fishermen. I suggest a marketing board or a marketing bureau, which is probably all that is necessary in the Outer Islands, in order to facilitate the sale of lobsters at lucrative prices. This might be quite a lucrative little industry if it were properly looked at by the Ministry of Fisheries and others who are, or ought to be, responsible. With regard to grants for boats, I support the suggestion that the small boats are as important to the small men as the big boats are to the big firms. The small inshore fisherman is as much in need of financial assistance for his boats as the big companies and the others are for the grants awarded under the Herring Industry Act.

I will make this final appeal to the Minister, that he should, after all the years in which members of Highland constituencies have been urging him to do something, consider giving some assistance to provide slips and jetties in the little villages to enable them to get supplies of fresh food. This would be of great help to villages where the men have to drag their boats for 50 or 100 yards almost up the face of the cliffs. That is a very arduous part of the day's labour, and the Minister could help a great deal in many of these small districts if he were to seek assistance from the Treasury to enable the people to make jetties and slips. I do not ask the Minister to make elaborate promises on the points I have raised or any promises which the Treasury would make it impossible for him to fulfil. At the same time, it is for the Scottish Office, if it is being blocked by the Treasury, to fight the Treasury. I hope we can look forward to the time when we have a Scottish Secretary who is at last prepared to fight the Treasury for something which he is supposed to represent.

6.36 p.m.

Mr. Colville

I am obliged to the hon. Member for his suggestion in the last part of his speech. Before I went to the Scottish Office, however, I was employed in the Treasury as Financial Secretary, and it may or may not stand me in good stead, but the hon. Gentleman is mistaken if he imagines that the relationship of the two Departments is on the basis he suggested. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Major Neven-Spence) need make no apology for raising this subject, and I hope that the House will accept the Motion. My hon. and gallant Friend began his speech by passing some bouquets to my right hon. and gallant Friend the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, and I should like to say on his behalf that I know there is no side of the work in which he is more keenly interested than that about which we are speaking to-day. It is suggested that he has too much to do to look after agriculture as well as fisheries. The Secretary of State for Scotland, however, might at times envy him for having only these two main interests for the Secretary of State has to look after some ten different subjects. I do not underrate the importance of the side of his work of which we are speaking to-day.

I have been chosen to reply because it was a Scottish Member who drew a place in the Ballot, and it was supposed that he would concentrate mainly on the Scottish side of the question. I may not be able to deal with many of the points raised by English Members, but I can assure them that the points they have raised in the Debate will be carefully examined to see whether they are practicable. The great utility of a Private Member's day is not only that Motions are proposed, but that constructive suggestions are made about trade or industry, and that those suggestions, which are duly recorded, are examined and, if possible, acted upon.

Sir Ronald Ross

I hope that in examining them my right hon. Friend will remember that this is a United Kingdom matter, and not a Scottish matter.

Mr. Colville

Certainly. I thought I made it plain why I had been selected to reply.

Mr. Maxton

Will the right hon. Gentleman realise that he has no right to interfere with the internal affairs of the self-governing Dominions?

Sir R. Ross

Will the hon. Gentleman tell me to what self-governing Dominion he is alluding?

Mr. Maxton

The one from which the hon. Member comes.

Mr. Colville

If I were to pursue the point raised by the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton) we should depart a long way from the question of inshore fishing. While the inshore fishermen of Great Britain contribute a relatively small proportion of the total supplies of fish, they have a great value to the nation over and above the value of their catches. The men possess an unrivalled knowledge of the local coasts, and they form an important reservoir of man-power for the various services, such as lifeboats, coastal defence and the naval services. I would like to reiterate what my hon. and gallant Friend the Civil Lord of the Admiralty said earlier in the Debate, that it is untrue to say that the Admiralty have no use for inshore fishermen. The answer to a Parliamentary question of 11th May last showed that the position is quite the reverse. The Admiralty realise that these men are a valuable reservoir of personnel.

When the Admiralty are asked, however, as one hon. Member proposed, to raise the Royal Naval Reserve bounty of these men, which now ranges according to rank from £6 to £10, to £30, it must be borne in mind that that would have to be done not only for inshore fishermen but for men in other services as well. Retaining fees in the Territorial Army, for instance, would have to be taken into account. When the hon. Member puts this suggestion forward for the inshore fishermen, he must remember that it has much wider implications. The £10 is a retainer, and the men who join the Royal Naval Reserve also get pay during the time they do their annual training. The hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. Beechman) said there was difficulty about the time of training. I am assured by my hon. and gallant Friend the Civil Lord that the time of the annual training in the Royal Naval Reserve can be fitted in with the time of the year when fishing is slack. I hope that will be reassuring, because it would be unfortunate if it were thought to be impossible for such men to train for the Royal Naval Reserve. It may interest the House to know that for the Patrol Service and the Royal Naval Reserve, for which inshore fishermen are regarded as the most suitable type, recruiting is exceedingly good; in fact the service is now 300 men over strength. Recruiting for the Royal Naval Reserve and the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve is also very satisfactory. It would be a pity if from this Debate there went out any idea that there is difficulty in getting men for our naval service. I would emphasise that the response to recruiting for these three services is satisfactory.

Vice-Admiral Taylor

Are the Admiralty satisfied, in view of the continued depreciation in the numbers of men, not only in the fishing industry but in the Mercantile Marine, that in the event of the country being involved in war they would be able to obtain the services of sufficient fishermen who could be employed on purely naval service as they had during the last War?

Mr. Colville

I am assured that there is no ground for disquiet at the present time in regard to the point which my hon. and gallant Friend raises.

I will proceed to analyse some of the difficulties from which inshore fishermen suffer. I am not attempting to minimise the difficulties that have been put forward, but I think that some speakers have tended to exaggerate the position a little. For example, my hon. and gallant Friend who moved the Motion said that only 1 per cent. of the landings of white fish come from the inshore fishermen. The figure, I am advised, is nearer 4 per cent. The inshore fishermen provide 550,000 cwts. which amounts to 3 or 4 per cent. In Scotland the landings are of relatively greater importance than in England. The total inshore catches in Scotland amounted to over 15 per cent. of the total of Scottish white fish catches, and the value last year was £516,000. That is a considerable share of the Scottish trade. It is, therefore, a side of the industry we are anxious to preserve and to help in any way we can.

Lieut.-Colonel Heneage

Does that percentage include landings from foreign vessels or refer only to British vessels?

Mr. Colville

All landings. In addition to white fish, the inshore fishermen of Great Britain land certain quantities of herring, and are the sole source of the supply of shell fish of an annual value of, approximately, £500,000. I am sorry that the hon. Member for the Western Isles (Mr. Malcolm MacMillan) has not been able to remain, because I was going to answer some points which he made about shell fishing and lobster fishing in the Western Isles, but perhaps another occasion will give me an opportunity. For a number of years, unfortunately, inshore fisheries have been declining in many districts, to some extent on account of modern economic tendencies. Mass production methods have led to the concentration of fishing in the large ports and to a lowering of prices. But the small unit of production naturally finds it difficult to compete with these methods, handicapped as he also is by his distance from markets. Notwithstanding that it is interesting to note the degree to which he is holding his own, and that is particularly true of Scotland, because seine net fishing has developed in several ports, notably Lossiemouth. Last autumn I spent some time in visiting fishing ports in Scotland, both in the east and in the west—unfortunately I was unable, owing to certain events in September, to reach Orkney and Shetland—and I was very much impressed with the development of the seine net fishing industry at Lossiemouth. It has been and will continue to be the general policy of the Scottish Fishery Board to encourage this method of fishing, always with due regard to local interests and to the conservation of the stock of fish.

I must make this proviso because indiscriminate, or, rather, illegal seine net fishing can do a great deal of damage, as the hon. Member for East Fife (Mr. Henderson Stewart) knows, if it is not checked; but, subject to that proviso, I hope that method of fishing can be encouraged. I assure the House that it was a cheering sight to see Lossiemouth at the height of the fishing season with the seine net fishing boats coming in. There has been an improvement in Shetland itself in recent years. The value of the total landings of white fish in 1933 was £15,119 and in 1938, £20,479, an increase of some £5,000 and most of this was caught by small hand lines. In Orkney the figures are smaller, and between the two years quoted there has not been much change. The shell fisheries of the country are of considerable value and importance, and the recommendations of the Highlands and Islands Sub-Committee of the Scottish Economic Council with regard to their possible development are receiving my consideration just now.

I am afraid that I must alternate between Scottish points and points which concern the rest of the country, and I will now deal with a point concerning the United Kingdom. It is satisfactory to note that the average price of white fish in the United Kingdom in 1938 was up by 2s. per cwt. over 1937. I think that is clearly to the benefit of the inshore men, who in general provide the best quality fish and therefore command good prices. Now I come back to a Scottish point, and hope to answer the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton), who cast doubts upon the strength and efficiency of the Scottish fishery protection fleet. One measure taken in recent years to maintain the Scottish inshore fisheries has been the strengthening of the Scottish fishery protection fleet. The fleet now numbers 11 vessels, made up of four steam vessels, two large motor vessels, two small motor vessels and three hired drifters. In addition, the services of a naval vessel are placed at the disposal of the Scottish Fishery Board for protection purposes. Three new vessels have been added to the Scottish fleet since 1935, two of which are in replacement of vessels no longer fit for service and the third is an addition to the permanent fleet. A fourth vessel to replace an existing cruiser was launched last month and is expected to be put into commission shortly.

It is one of the duties, or perhaps I should say one of the perquisites, of the Secretary of State for Scotland to make voyages in the Scottish fishery cruisers for the purpose of visiting fishing ports and other places, and I have certainly taken advantage of that custom in interesting myself in the work of the fishery fleet. We have one vessel which is of the Q boat type. She is disguised to resemble a trawler, but is equipped with engines which give her a high speed, and theoretically she should be able to creep up without being recognised by any poaching trawler. It is perhaps too much to hope that she can always retain her disguise, as any vessel of that sort soon becomes known. As I have said, the Scottish fishery fleet, including our Q vessel, now comprises 11 ships. Excluding the Admiralty vessel the total cost of the protection service in Scotland amounts to about £53,000 annually. That is spent mainly for the benefit of the inshore fishermen. When hon. Members ask what we are doing to preserve these inshore fishermen, I reply that our fishery protection fleet, which exists to a considerable extent to maintain the inshore fishermen, and costs us £53,000 a year, is a contribution to their preservation. The report of the Highlands and Islands Sub-committee which investigated conditions in the Highlands states that illegal trawling has now been provided against as efficiently as is reasonably practicable by increased penalties and intensification of the Fishery Patrol Service. The House will recollect that in the Sea Fish Industry Act, 1938, provision was made for increased penalties for illegal fishing in the waters of England and Wales, and I should like to refer now to the strength of the English patrol. I am advised that the Sea Fisheries Committee of England and Wales possess for the purpose of enforcing by-laws some 10 patrol vessels of various types, and in addition there are available eight naval fishery patrol vessels for the prevention of poaching by foreign trawlers. The question of closing extra-territorial waters to trawling is a very difficult one indeed, and I do not think the House will expect me to make a pronouncement upon it to-night. I have noted the views expressed by several hon. Members and this only I can say, that successive Governments which have had this problem under review have adopted the view that the balance of advantage to the greatest number of fishermen has lain in the direction of not disturbing present arrangements. To that I would only add that what has been said to-day in the House by those who support particularly the cause of the inshore fishermen will be taken carefully into account. The same may be said of the suggested extension of the three-mile-limit for fishery purposes. It could only be done by international agreement. It was said by one hon. Member that certain countries claim a distance greater than three miles, but the British Government have never accepted those claims. For example, Russia has claimed a 12-mile-limit, but there is a provision in the Soviet Agreement which allows fishing by British fishing vessels between the 3 and the 12-mile limits. Whenever foreign countries have claimed that their limit is not three miles but some greater distance, the British Government have always declined to recognise that claim and in certain cases, as in the one which I have mentioned, have secured special fishing rights for our people.

There are one or two other specific points to which I shall refer. There was the question of the mesh of nets. The Noble Lady the Member for Plymouth (Viscountess Astor) asked why we did not approach the French to get them to adopt another standard. I can give the House some reassurance on that point. It was a question of a convention to which France was unable to be a signatory, but the French Government have since passed a decree, which became operative in January, increasing the size of the mesh of nets used by French fishing vessels in nearer European waters to a figure which approximates very closely to that embodied in the convention. That is a matter of considerable importance to our Channel fishers, and I hope it will go a long way to remedy the difficulty which is felt. I cannot give the exact size of the mesh, but I am assured that it approximates very closely to the mesh laid down in the convention.

The hon. Member for St. Ives referred to the deplorable disaster to the lifeboat at St. Ives, and said that there ought to be a larger harbour. That question is being examined by the Ministry and by other Departments concerned, and I cannot add to that statement except to assure him that every aspect of the matter is being deal with. It is not only a question of cost but of practicability.

Mr. Garro Jones

To which Ministry does the right hon. Gentleman refer?

Mr. Colville

The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. The hon. Member also referred to the difficulties of the sale of pilchards in the Italian markets and particularly the time taken by the clearing house to make payments to British exporters. I think he said there was a delay of a year in some cases. From inquiries I have made it appears that there are delays of about five months. It is a matter which is under negotiation with the Italians, and I hope there will be an improvement in the rate of payment. The marketing difficulties of the inshore fishermen have been under consideration following the report of the inquiry by the Sea Fish Commission. In the Sea Fish Industry Act, 1938, provision was made for the introduction of marketing schemes designed to assist inshore fishermen. The White Fish Commission which was established in July last have been busily occupied in com- piling a register of persons in the white fish industry, and I anticipate that shortly they will be able to consider the possibility of taking action under the Act for the benefit of the inshore fishermen.

There are many aspects of the problem of the fishing industry on which I have not been able to touch, but in replying, primarily as Secretary of State for Scotland, to one of my Scottish colleagues, I hope that I have indicated at the same time the great interest which the Government as a whole have in this question. When in the opening words of my speech I said that proposals put forward in the course of the Debate would be examined carefully to see whether they were practicable I used that phrase deliberately. If any of the proposals are thought to be practicable I can assure the House that they will be adopted, and I say again that I think the House would do well to accept this Motion and I congratulate my hon. and gallant Friend who introduced it.

7.0 p.m.

Mr. Adamson

I fear that the assurances of the Secretary of State for Scotland with regard to the position of the inshore fishermen have hardly met the situation as outlined in the Motion. Whilst his final observations indicated that all the proposals that have been put forward would receive due consideration, unfortunately on practically every occasion when these matters have been up for discussion the same assurances have been given. There have been no specific guarantees to-day that the Department intend to explore the position of the inshore fishermen as it affects their daily calling, as to the credits that are essential for the provision of better equipped vessels, or even as to the giving of facilities which would make for the better harbour arrangements which are required for these fishing districts, whether in the North or in the South-West. Whilst we have had a very ample discussion and explored many aspects of the difficulties of inshore fishermen, I think it would have been better if the Minister had boldly stated that it was impossible under the economic pressure of other sections of the fishing industry for the Government to do anything to assist the inshore men. That, however, would be fatal from the right hon. Gentleman's point of view and fatal for any confidence that the inshore fishermen might have in the Government.

But there are undoubtedly steps that could be taken to better the present conditions of the inshore fishermen. It is unfortunate perhaps that they are very largely individualists, not connected with the other sections of the industry, such as the trawler section. The development has been merely in the direction of maintaining what has applied for generations. I was rather disappointed that the Secretary of State for Scotland did not definitely state whether the Sea Fish Commission have made any investigation as to the possibility of adopting those sections of the Sea Fish Industry Act which provide for co-operative selling in order to assist the inshore fishermen. The right hon. Gentleman said that the Commission had been in operation only since July of last year, but surely after nine months some progress ought to have been made in that direction.

Of course I am aware that the Scottish Office is directly affected by the provisions of the Sea Fishery Industry Act, but the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries has also a responsibility. I am sure he has in his Department experts who have been in touch with every section of the fishing industry, and that they might have given the Secretary of State for Scotland some indication of what they were doing in the direction of setting up these co-operative schemes for the inshore fishermen. The hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. Beechman) indicated that it might be essential to take a much wider area than that of the South-West coast alone, but at least there should have been some conclusion arrived at by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries by this time as to how they are going to tackle that problem. Under the provisions of the Act the responsibility is placed upon the Sea Fish Commissioners to carry out the initial stages before a co-operative scheme can be adopted, and I am sure that at least some proposal could have been prepared for submission to the men engaged in the industry in the North of Scotland, in the South-West of England and in some parts of Wales. I am afraid that some pressure will have to be used before these selling schemes are put into operation.

I was interested too in the figures which the Secretary of State for Scotland gave as to the proportion of white fish landed by the inshore fishermen. I believe he gave the figure of 15 per cent. for Scotland.

Mr. Colville

May I correct a misstatement I inadvertently made in reply to a supplementary question? The percentage I gave—4 per cent. for England and 15 per cent. for Scotland—was for British landings, and does not include foreign landings. I said "all landings"; it should be "British landings."

Mr. Adamson

The ratio of the rest of the British Isles as compared with Scotland is, of course, very small. My own estimate would be somewhere between one and two per cent. for England and Wales. It is at any rate a very small percentage of the actual landings of white fish in this country. However, I want to emphasise some points with regard to the facilities that might be given to resuscitate this section of the fishing industry, which is unfortunately still declining. So far as I can see from the returns both of the personnel of the crews and of the number of vessels engaged in inshore fishing, they are declining year by year. The inshore fishermen are not in the normal markets for the sale of fish. Perhaps at certain seasons of the year they may have a considerable demand at seaside resorts, but it is a fluctuating trade and has no stability. That is why I am anxious that some progress should be made in the marketing arrangements to assist in the stabilisation of prices.

However, I do not want to trespass too long on the time of the House, because I understand there are still Members who desire to speak, but I would press the Government to give some greater consideration to this section of the industry. I know its weakness through lack of organisation, which places it at a disadvantage as compared with the other sections of the fishing industry. They might be called the Cinderella of the fishing fleet, and they have always to take what remains after the trawling and the other fleets are satisfied. But if some marketing arrangements could be made for the disposal of their fish and greater guarantees could be given for the stabilisation of prices, the inshore fishermen might be able to rehabilitate themselves, and thus a very essential service in the interests of the nation would be continued and maintained.

7.13 p.m.

Captain McEwen

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman who has just resumed his seat for allowing me an opportunity of saying a few words. I have only one point to put, and it concerns my own division. It is a point to which I have called the attention of the Scottish Office on previous occasions. A few weeks ago the winter herring operations started from the port of Eyemouth in Berwickshire. The crews up to the time they signed on had been on unemployment allowance, which they gave up in order to attempt to earn a livelihood. The result of these operations, not for the first time unfortunately, has been a complete failure. The men have earned little or nothing, and consequently several vessels have had to be laid up, as the men not unreasonably argued that at least they had their unemployment allowance when ashore, or in some cases insurance benefit, whereas afloat they only have their 10s. a week, plus the food allowance, and in many cases even this 10s. has not been earned, and has had to come out of the pockets of the owners, who are in most cases every bit as poor as the men they employ. The result is that to-day at the port of Eyemouth there are no fewer than eight vessels tied up to the quayside, withdrawn altogether from the fishery, and these vessels employ on the average crews of eight or nine men. It has been suggested that there should be an allowance made by the Unemployment Assistance Board to make up the deficiency when the wage level is below the Board's scale. There are obvious disadvantages in such a course, but this matter is a serious one, and either by that or some other method it is clear that action is urgently required.

7.15 p.m.

Mr. Rathbone

I wish to take this opportunity to say one or two words more on the question of pilchards because it has a rather particular interest for places around the coast of Cornwall and perhaps of Devon. The difficulty, as has been pointed out, has been the question of the clearance of payments from Italy, but that rather draws attention to the fact that the industry has revived to a great degree on that one market for the disposal of all those pilchards. I will not claim that it was an original idea, as I do not suppose any Member here has not heard the cry that the home market and the home producer must come first, but not long ago experiments were tried in this country in canning pilchards. Indeed, the first question I put in this House asked the Chairman of the Kitchen Committee to provide Cornish pilchards at least as well as, if not instead of, the foreign pilchards which were being served here in the Refreshment Department. He did so, but I regret that whenever I see hon. Members eating pilchards with their meals the pilchards have almost invariably been foreign, coming largely from America.

Mr. Ellis Smith

How do you know the difference?

Mr. Rathbone

The difference can be told very plainly from the tin. The British pilchards can also be ensured by asking for the British article. I believe that everybody who has spoken has shown a very keen desire to support the British article. The suggestion was made by the hon. Member for Barnstaple (Mr. Acland) that half the trouble was caused by tariffs, but I suggest that it is rather because of the freedom that foreign countries have in dumping their pilchards here. In 1936, a total of 60,000 cwts. of canned pilchards was dumped in this country. That total went up in 1937 to 71,000 cwts., and they came largely from America, although an increasing quantity comes from Japan. I should have thought that there was room for improvement in the reservation of the British market for British pilchards.

A further point is that we understand that various food supplies have been laid down by the Government in readiness for emergency, food that can be turned over gradually and which will keep for a considerable duration of time. I have never heard anybody doubt the nutritional value of pilchards as they are canned to-day, both as sardines, that is to say in oil, or in tomato sauce, as some people seem to prefer them. I want to throw out a suggestion which might be considered by the Government—although the person responsible for this sort of thing is not here to-day—that scores of pilchards might well be put down among the other things, if such stores are being laid down.

In regard to fishery protection vessels, we had a most reassuring statement from the right hon. Gentleman about protection for the Scottish fishery, but although he told us that there were 18 vessels to protect English fisheries he did not go into details as to how the vessels are distributed or how many of them are in com- mission. Various speakers have given the impression that a good many of the vessels are not in commission.

Mr. Colville

I understand that all those vessels I mentioned are in fact in commission, but I cannot tell my hon. Friend where their patrols are.

Mr. Rathbone

It is a relief to know that all those 18 vessels are in commission, and we should be able to see more than one of them patrolling the coast all the way round from Hampshire to Wales, where there are extremely important fishing grounds and where the amount of poaching and of damage done by French trawlers has been very considerable. As tar as I know, this has not slackened off in any way.

I have only one more point. On the subject of aids to navigation, mention has been made of the need of St. Ives for a breakwater, and also of Godvery Light. There is an extremely dangerous rock outside Fowey and it is known as the Cannis. It is exactly on the line of navigation east and west of some of the smaller ports, from Looe to Polperro, through Charleston, Par, Mevagissey, and so on. That rock is marked at low tide by a single rusty iron bar which can be seen only when you are almost upon it. At high tide even that bar is covered by water. I gather that this question has been put up to the Board of Trade and to Trinity House, but that nobody accepts responsibility for these things. Here is another example of what I complain of. I would like to know exactly whom one should approach and whether something could not perhaps be done to assist fishermen, both as to marks and lights. In another small port, Polperro, which is now rapidly turning over its activity from fishing to the entertainment of visitors in the summer—this is rapidly becoming its sole means of support—those who are still fishing have to pay port dues in order to keep a sort of barrier across the mouth of the harbour to keep out storms. They have heavy repair bills, and they have also to keep their light going. It is no small matter to do these things in a small port.

The impressive part of to-day's Debate has been the fact that hardly any subject raised has not been mentioned a dozen times before and has not been put up to all sorts of Government Departments. These matters have been brought up to-day just as though they had been given a fresh coat of paint, but they look very familiar, and no hope has been given that anything will be done. I am a great seeker after truth, and I remember that in the Bible we learn that the multitude was fed with five loaves and two small fishes. We have every confidence that the five loaves are going to be well looked after; I hope that we may also have the two small fishes.

7.23 p.m.

Lieut.-Colonel Sir A. Lambert Ward

We have listened with a great deal of sympathy to the case that has been put forward on behalf of inshore fishermen, but I must enter a word of protest with regard to the attack which has been made upon the trawling industry by one or two speakers. This conflict between various kinds of fishing is almost as old as the hills, but one does not seem to get any nearer to a solution of the problem. From the point of view of this country, and of all maritime countries, the depletion of the sea is an extremely serious matter, and anyone who is prepared to face the facts and to be frank will not deny that the depletion of the sea is due to trawling, but for one reason only. It is due to the fact that it is the trawlers which catch the fish; in other words, the trawlers can deliver the goods. If it were not for the trawlers, the toiling masses in London, Lancashire, the West Riding and parts of Scotland would never see or taste fish from one year's end to another. I think that I am right in saying that fish is one of the most satisfactory and nourishing foods available.

What is to me a new definition of an inshore fisherman was advanced by the hon. and gallant Member for Orkney and Shetland (Major Neven-Spence). He said that the inshore fisherman was a man who worked in a boat which had no sleeping accommodation, but surely that is far from being a watertight definition. After all, in the summer it is no great hardship to spend the night in an open boat. I have often done it when I have been fishing and have thoroughly enjoyed it. It seems to me that the definition which we have in Yorkshire is a very much better one. There an inshore fisherman is defined as one whose normal fishing grounds lie within the three-mile limit. The area of the fisherman who works in home waters is defined as east of a line from Ushant to the Faroe Islands. The distant water fisherman is he who plies his trade in the Bear Islands, the White Sea and the Spitzbergen fishing ground. It is almostly entirely from these grounds that the large amount of fish comes which forms the bulk of the supply to the fried-fish shops all over the country. The men who ply their trade in what is known as the home waters supply more the luxury fish which are eaten largely in London and the richer towns, but it is not these men who make the long journeys to the Arctic and who are responsible for supplying the needs in the working centres of the country.

Several suggestions have been advanced for dealing with depletion, but in my opinion one of the great difficulties is that we do not know enough about the habits of the fish. On several occasions I have suggested or pleaded with the Minister of Agriculture that more money should be expended on research. For example, we do not know a great deal about the habits of that very valuable food fish, the sole. We know that it spawns in shallow waters in the North Sea and on the Dogger Bank, but not whether it spawns also in the deeper waters further north and in the Atlantic. If we knew those things we should be able to legislate with greater certainty in order to stop the depletion of that kind of fish. The suggestion put forward by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland that the whole of the North Sea should be closed to trawling is an impossible one, for the very simple reason that it would entail international agreement. Everybody knows that that is far from easy to arrive at. The Secretary of State for Scotland referred to the difficulty which he had experienced in coming to an agreement with France on the subject of the mesh of the net. I cannot help regretting that he did not tell us what definite size of mesh the French had agreed to adopt. I should have thought that the right hon. Gentleman, who has occupied the position of Financial Secretary, would have been capable of translating into inches the centimetres or millimetres of their measurements of mesh. At the same time, we appreciate very much the agreement that has been arrived at.

I am afraid that I have no more time. I should like to conclude by saying that we all regret the case of the inshore fishermen, but we beg that the supplies of cheap food in this country shall not be imperilled by any legislation which the Government may bring forward.

Question put, and agreed to.

Resolved, That this House, recognising the great importance to the nation of the inshore fishing industry which supplies the population with an essential part of its food and the Royal and Merchant Navies with men whose unique character and experience are invaluable to the country both in peace and war, urges His Majesty's Government to take every practicable measure to preserve this industry from the extinction with which it is threatened.