MP secures funding for fishing emergency stop buttons

Sheryll Murray has been campaigning for emergency stop buttons since losing her husband in a fishing accident

A Cornish MP has secured an offer of European funding for fishermen to put emergency stop buttons on their boats.

South East Cornwall's Sheryll Murray has been campaigning on the issue since losing her husband in a fishing accident in March 2011.

An official accident report described how a toggle on Neil Murray's hood got tangled in a fishing net and pulled him onto a drum which hauls the net.

It suggested an emergency stop button might have saved his life.

Mr Murray had been fishing alone on his boat Our Boy Andrew when the fatal accident occurred.

Emergency stop buttons are used to force a shut down of a machine or a process.

Mrs Murray has lobbied for cash from Europe to be available for the equipment to be fitted to older vessels that do not have them.

"It's quite expensive to fit these emergency stop buttons. It's somewhere between £1,000 to £1,300 but with the European grant that would bring it down to about £600.

"I am hoping that fishermen will take up this offer, because let's face it, nobody knows better than I do what the price is, if you don't do it."