The Fisheries Minister George Eustice just received a petition signed by himself, calling on himself to implement the measures George Eustice believes that George Eustice should take in redistributing fishing quota to small, sustainable, fishing vessels.
That's a great sentence to write. It's not everyday that Government Ministers lobby themselves - though we're yet to hear if this is a parliamentary first. So what's this all about...?
Today, Greenpeace rocked up with a big yellow boat outside DEFRA - the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. It was the same boat you may remember from our Coastal Champions tour back in April.
In the run up to the general election, Greenpeace and the small-scale fishers organisation NUTFA, toured 25 key coastal constituencies promoting an action plan which called on the Government to reallocate fishing quota from large industrial vessels to local, low-impact, boats in order to create jobs in coastal economies and improve fish stocks.
Thousands of people from coastal communities and over 120 parliamentary candidates - including one George Eustice - turned out to support the tour and back the campaign. Here's George sitting on our boat, the Rising Tide, back in April: the same boat we've just taken to DEFRA to deliver the petition which George signed!
Prioritising small fishermen over big industrial vessels just makes sense. Local, low-impact, boats represent almost 80% of the English and Welsh fishing fleet, but receive a mere 6% of the quota, with the vast majority given to less sustainable industrial vessels. Giving local fishers more quota could help to create thousands of jobs in struggling coastal economies, as well as protecting the marine environment.
The Government has recently announced some short-term concessions to small-scale fishers, but its largely refused to change its allocation process since the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy in 2013, despite fighting alongside Greenpeace for those reforms. All too often politicians are happy to make promises ahead of elections - but following through with actions is the hard part.
It's time that the Fisheries Minister listened to himself.
