Fisheries Bill (Fourth sitting)

Alan Brown Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

Q Griffin, you have talked in quite a lot of detail about the reallocation of quota. From my perspective, representing a community that is a have-not, shall we say, that is music to my ears, but I am wary of the legal implications of that. I agree that fishing is a public right, but as we have heard in our evidence sessions, by ill fortune or bad management, it has acquired certain proprietorial rights. How far, legally, do you think we are able to go? The important thing is that this Fisheries Bill must be determined and made by this House, not by lawyers.

Griffin Carpenter: Absolutely. I am not a lawyer—I am an economist—but the legal advice I have heard is that the use of a notice period goes a long way. I mentioned the international examples. We have to make some claim on FQAs as a public resource. Where you might get buy-in for this across the whole sector, including the large-scale fleet, is on something such as flagged vessels. When you hear about Spanish vessels in UK waters, they are almost never Spanish vessels in the sense that they have a Spanish flag and are fishing the Spanish quota; they have purchased UK fishing vessels and are fishing with UK quota, and a lot of coastal communities do not like that. For example, in Wales, most of the quota is caught by those vessels and either landed in Ireland or taken straight to Spain.

The problem is that, if you want to address this issue of flagged vessels—those who are foreign nationals but have UK quota—you must do so by saying, “FQAs are a public resource and we are going to take that away from you and then revisit the issue of distribution.” In a political sense, you can get buy-in for that idea. In a legal sense, I get that the notice period goes a long way. We heard the point made this morning that, because this is new legislation, some of the case law around the previous FQA distribution under the common fisheries policy might not apply. I am actually not sure about that.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

Q Sticking to the quota theme, you have already touched on the debate between this being enabling legislation and how much detail needs to be in the Bill. Do you think there needs to be more on how the quota allocation will work in future? You also mentioned potential quota reserves for new entrants—small-scale recreational anglers have also been mentioned—so is it your view that there should be more in the Bill?

Griffin Carpenter: I think that is a political question. I understand the idea that it is enabling legislation and that for most fisheries legislation all the detail will come in secondary legislation, but if you have some priorities that you absolutely want to ensure are in future UK fisheries, here is an opportunity to introduce them. I understand that some of the ideas we are discussing might be incongruous with the tone, at least, of the rest of the Bill, but here is an opportunity where we can say, “Starting now, we are only in 2018 and we are already thinking about this issue. We are guaranteeing it is in the fisheries legislation, first and foremost.” From a political perspective, that is valid.

[David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)]

On the redistribution of quota, obviously, if you are a larger owner of quota versus a smaller owner of quota, or an owner of no quota, you will certainly feel that you are going to be worse off in this situation. How do you cater for the fact that a lot of the smaller vessel owners perhaps previously owned quota that they sold, benefiting greatly financially, and then moved into smaller vessels for which they did not need quota? How would you avoid that kind of gaming happening again in the future?

Griffin Carpenter: That is a good question. The line that has always been used on quota allocation in the past was, “You’re robbing Peter to pay Paul, and we don’t want that in the industry.” Now we have the idea of a Brexit dividend of extra quota, we are robbing Pierre to pay Paul, so that is fine. We are fine as long as Peter is protected.

The idea of quota shares is actually a bit confusing because they are percentages rather than tonnage. Now that stocks are recovering, and the quota increases each year, you can have a situation, even if you are taking from Peter and giving to Paul, where everybody is better off. You can have this as a conditional reallocation. Let us say you get a certain share in the large-scale fleet—you have a large-scale vessel—and you are guaranteed 1,000 tonnes every year. If the quota is going up, some of the surplus quota of that year can be reallocated to the small-scale fleet in a pool or through whatever system you do that. There is a bit of a difference between tonnage, which is what actually affects your bottom line, and the percentage. I suggest that we can have these thresholds in place.

The other thing is that, with additional fishing opportunities potentially coming in, hopefully, we can do a reallocation all at once so, again, the large-scale fleet will not necessarily be worse off. They might have a smaller percentage of haddock, let us say, or some demersal stock that the small-scale fleet really wants, but they are getting all the extra herring and other species from the North sea from our EU colleagues. There is the potential for doing all this at once: revisiting the allocation system and making everyone better off.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Eustice]

Q The Bill envisages a joint fisheries statement, but also something called a Secretary of State’s statement, which would include a whole plan for the English fleet about how it contributes to coastal communities and supports livelihoods. In what way does that fall short of what you are seeking? It is a clear commitment for a plan that will outline how we allocate fishing opportunities to help those objectives.

Griffin Carpenter: It is a commitment for a plan, but I am saying we should think about that plan right now and what should be in it, rather than leave it to each Government to decide. We have seen that, through article 17, it has always been in UK jurisdiction to decide how to allocate quotas. That is not a power that the EU had that we are taking back; it was always up to us and we have not taken that opportunity. Now is the right time to have that conversation, and the Bill is a piece of legislation that we can put that in.

It is roughly the same with the discussion about MSYs. Yes, in the fisheries statement, they can say how we are doing—how the stocks are doing in reference to those MSY values—but we should have that as a duty. Be specific in the Bill and say, “You cannot fish above MSY.” We are going to be post 2020, so you might as well just say, “We will be fishing in line with MSY.” We are past the deadline.

[Alan Brown]

Q A few witnesses have commented that they do not think there is enough information or transparency regarding the discards prevention scheme that is in the Bill and how it will actually work in future. Do you have any views on that?

Griffin Carpenter: It is an interesting question. From my reading of it, it seems to take from the Norway model, which is that some discards are landed but there is a fee attached to that. Instead of the landing obligation, we will say, “The quota is set at this level. You cannot fish above that, otherwise you get choke problems.” It is more of an economic incentive, rather than a hard line.

That needs to be compensated for with lower quota, because we are saying that there is going to be some fishing above that line, but we will have an economic incentive so you do not land as much. I think the principle is a fair one—switching incentives—but that should be compensated for in our expectations about how much above that quota we are actually going to fish.

[The Chair]

Q We are into the last 45 seconds or so of the session. Is there anything you wish to say that has not been said so far, Mr Carpenter?

Griffin Carpenter: One quick point, if I may. We have spoken a lot about quota, but non-quota species are very important. More work should be done on stock assessments. That is something that could be in the Bill to say, “We are not going to be fishing stocks anymore if we have no idea how much we can be fishing.”