Jenny Lewis, who runs the family business, organised the meeting after discussing with Derek Thomas some of the issues affecting local fishermen at Derek's Ruan Minor 'Meet the Candidate' event.
Fishermen present raised their concerns about how the recent quota arrangements adversely affected the 'under 10m' fishing fleet along this part of the Cornish Coast.
George Eustice, who was able to give some reasoning behind some of the recent changes and offer some reassurance that measures were being taken to support and safeguard the inshore fishing fleet said, "Derek has regularly contacted me on behalf of the West Cornwall fish industry. I wanted to visit Mullion to meet some of our inshore fishermen. The Government is permanently transferring some additional quota from larger vessels to the smaller fleet to increase fishing opportunities for small boats, which is particularly relevant to the fishermen I met today. "
A scheme known as permanent realignment allows the Government to take unused quota from the producers' organisations and transfer it permanently into the under 10m quota pool. It is estimated that this will increase their quota by up to 12%. A further increase in quota will occur in January 2016 when the discard ban is implemented. This is good news for the Cornish Inshore Fleet.
Prospective MP, Derek Thomas said, "I recognise how important our fishing industry is to this part of West Cornwall and I have been working hard to ensure the concerns our fishermen have and the challenges they face are taken on board by those who regulate the industry. Our inshore fleet around the Lizard Peninsula can be overlooked so I wanted to give them a chance to speak directly to the Fisheries Minister ."
Derek has organised a number of visits by the Fisheries Minister (past and present) to meet with Cornish Fishermen since becoming the Prospective MP, including a visit soon after the storms of 2014 which caused the loss of valuable fishing equipment for shell fish fishermen.
Derek concluded "If elected in May, I will continue to do all I can to support our fish industry. One area of concern is the lack of youngsters coming into commercial fishing and we need to meet this challenge head-on if we want a viable fish industry for the future"