Last week myself and Hull West and Hessle MP Emma Hardy secured an urgent meeting with Fishing Minister Victoria Prentice on the future of Hull’s distant-water fishing future and The Kirkella trawler, which has been left without access to many of its traditional fishing grounds due to the UK Government’s abandoning of quota negotiations with Norway three weeks ago.

Securing today’s meeting is an important step, but it is just the start. The Kirkella’s crew were completely sold out when the government didn’t bother to negotiate quotas, but we will not let them be betrayed.

We’re deeply proud of our city’s fishing heritage in Hull, and rightly so, but it deserves to be part of our future too, and the government need to get back around the negotiating table to allow that to happen. Failure to do so would be a national embarrassment.