Fishing Industry
Debate between Barry Gardiner and Angus Brendan MacNeil(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Barry Gardiner
I would have to rely on the Mandy Rice-Davies defence—“They would say that, wouldn’t they?” The point is that anecdote is not the basis of sound policy. We have to establish the facts. I am as keen to establish them as the hon. Gentleman and, I am sure, the fishermen in his community. Once we have established the facts, we can proceed with certainty.
Mr MacNeil
When politicians talk about science, in reality, as we have just seen with mackerel, the science has followed what is happening. The ICES advice for the increase in TAC in 2014 is a 65% to 79% increase, which in effect is only a 3% increase in what was caught in 2013 owing to fishermen in other states having a certain view of what was happening in the sea. Another issue—this relates to what the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said—is that there are other areas where there is a cod recovery plan in operation but where there were no cod anyway. However, because of the catch compositions the cod recovery plan is leading to the dumping of haddock, and as haddock are being dumped and not landed, consumers will have to choose anther fish, and they will choose cod, so the plan will have the opposite effect to the one intended.
Barry Gardiner
It is important to remember that for every hour spent fishing nowadays—in boats bristling with the latest satellite technology to identify the movement of the stocks, with all the modern gear on board—fishers now land just 6% of what they did 120 years ago.
Of course, fishermen always want to maximise their catch, and rightly so—they are business men—but we have to recognise that the loss of our fishing communities up and down the coastline of Britain has happened because of overfishing. There is no getting away from that fact. We have to put in place a regime that can restore biomass and maximum sustainable yield but also ensure that we get to the point where those communities have secure jobs and secure economic benefits because we have enough fish for everyone.
Common Fisheries Policy
Debate between Barry Gardiner and Angus Brendan MacNeil(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
First, I apologise to the House because I was introducing a debate in Westminster Hall at the beginning of the debate and was therefore unable to listen to the remarks of the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), who chairs the Select Committee. I pay tribute to her for the report. I also pay tribute to the Minister, who has worked assiduously on these matters. I know that he is trying to get a very reasonable voice heard in Europe, where Commissioner Damanaki is doing a wonderful job, but is meeting rather large obstacles along the way.
Decades of intensive fishing in European waters have led to dramatic declines in once-abundant fish populations. It is estimated that 88% of all the assessed fish stocks are over-exploited and that almost a third of all assessed stocks are being fished beyond safe biological limits, threatening their very future. Of the stocks for which a scientific assessment is available, 60% of north Atlantic stocks and 40% of Mediterranean stocks are currently outside safe biological limits. Continuous over-fishing has resulted in less productive fisheries and a gradual loss of jobs and livelihoods. Words such as overfishing, discarding, habitat destruction, unemployment and subsidy dependence characterise EU fisheries. However, we have a unique opportunity, with the reform of the common fisheries policy, to rectify some of those failures.
At the heart of the motion is the demand that CFP reforms should adopt greater regional ecosystem-based management, but if such management is to succeed, it must recognise and respect the commercial interests of fishing communities. Ecological sustainability must go hand in hand with economic sustainability. The New Economics Foundation recently published a report that concluded that more than €3 billion is lost every year due to over-fishing. That money could support an extra 100,000 jobs in the industry. When fish stocks are mismanaged, fishers, their communities and the whole economy suffer.
Some people misinterpret ecosystem-management as putting the benefit of fish before that of fishers, but without sustainable fish stocks there is no fishing industry. The history of our coastal areas sadly bears witness to that, as fishing communities from Stonehaven to Newcastle and from Grimsby to Cornwall have declined over the past century and a half. It is always comfortable for Members of Parliament to support small fishing communities, particularly those in their constituency, but we should also have the courage to point out that the demise of fishing communities is the result of their parents and grandparents’ over-fishing.
The ecosystem-based approach is fundamental to sustainable environmental management. It establishes a strategy for the management and sustainable use of natural resources by considering them in the context of their role in the entire ecosystem. The current CFP and the EU marine strategy framework directive already commit the EU in principle to that approach. Indeed, the CFP was significantly reformed in 2002 with a view to implementing the principles of ecosystem-based management. The tragedy is that that has not been reflected in practice. True ecosystem-based fisheries management would require systemic reform through the introduction of a regionalised management framework. A regionalised management system within Europe would divide EU fisheries into management regions according to ecosystems rather than nations. Unfortunately, fish do not carry passports and do not know when they are travelling from one nation’s waters into another’s, so we must look at ecosystems and not simply national boundaries.
Mr MacNeil
When the hon. Gentleman talks about ecosystems, is he talking about migratory stocks, non-migratory stocks or straddling stocks? What sorts of stocks does he mean?
Barry Gardiner
Let me give the hon. Gentleman a good example: the Baltic ecosystem and the surrounding countries engaged in its regional management structure. He will know that in recent years east Baltic cod had gone into sharp decline. As a result of the regionally based management structure in the Baltic, those countries agreed, on the advice of the regional fisheries management organisation, to halt the catching of east Baltic cod. After putting that moratorium in place, they then allowed an increase each year of only 15%, which was actually below the fishing maximum sustainable yield; if they had had FMSY the biomass of the stock would actually have recovered less quickly. They put that moratorium in place on a regional basis and in accordance with the ecosystem, and those stocks have now recovered to a level that has far surpassed what they were and what they would have been had those countries opted for FMSY: the stocks have actually achieved biomass MSY.
Mr MacNeil
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way again and allowing the debate to continue. Does he not see that one stock’s ecosystem is not the same as another’s? When he moved to ecosystem management he would start to have a geographical impact and to impose geographical limits on that, and very quickly he would go down the slippery slope with the common fisheries policy, which at the moment is an utter mess.
Fisheries
Debate between Barry Gardiner and Angus Brendan MacNeil(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Barry Gardiner
No, I am already pressed enough for time.
Certain decision-making powers would be devolved to regional management bodies, in consultation with local stakeholders, in order to tailor the application of central policy objectives for EU fisheries to the specifics of each ecosystem. A fully regionalised management system would include the following features: quotas allocated on the basis of ecosystem regions in order to manage fishing pressure according to the necessities of the different ecosystems; regular scientific assessment of all marine species, not just fish stocks, within a given eco-region to establish the impact of fishing on the ecosystem as a whole; quota allocation on the basis of eco-regions with different licences used in different ecosystem regions and no transfers between the regions.
The discards in the North sea are between 40% and 60% of total catch, while in other European fisheries, such as that for west of Scotland cod, they can total as much as 90%. The vast majority of fish discarded overboard of course die. In an effort to limit fishing to sustainable levels, EU regulations under the common fisheries policy prohibit the landing of commercial species above a given annual quota. However, in practice this often results in the discarding of thousands of tonnes of saleable fish—the over-quota discards—as fishers are forced to cast overboard their excess or non-target catch before landing, so as not to contravene EU law.
The result is a policy that fails to prevent fish mortality above levels deemed biologically sustainable. That is a particular problem in mixed fisheries—the majority of EU fisheries—where fishers will catch more than their landing quota for one species as they continue fishing for others that swim with it, in order to maintain fishing throughout the year. The Government estimate that over-quota species account for about 22% of English and Welsh discards.
The introduction of catch quotas in place of the current landing quotas would make fishers accountable for their total catch, rather than for what they land, thereby eliminating the legal catch and discard of over-quota fish. The current CFP also prohibits the landing of quota species below a certain minimum landing size—MLS—to ensure that they are not caught before reaching maturity, thus preserving the reproductive capacity of the stock. In practice, however, many under-sized fish are still caught and simply discarded at sea. An estimated 24% of discards are quota species below legal MLS, so too small to land. The introduction of minimum catch sizes in place of minimum landing sizes has been successful in Norway in incentivising the use of selective gear in fisheries and minimising the catch and mortality of under-sized fish.
An estimated 54% of English and Welsh discards are of non-commercial species caught as by-catch. Stimulating the creation of new or stronger markets for under-utilised sustainable species such as dab and coley in UK fisheries could result in the elimination of unnecessary waste, greater profits for fishers and a reduction in fishing pressure on other more popular and over-exploited species. We need to be careful, however, that that policy does not encourage the creation of markets for species whose population could not support a sudden increase in harvesting.
There is currently no obligation to conduct regular stock assessments for most non-commercial species in EU waters, as they are not subject to quota restrictions, so there is little understanding of the impact that increased fishing of them would have on their stocks and on the wider ecosystem. The first priority of any policy that aims to eliminate discards and improve demand for under-utilised species, therefore, should be to mandate regular stock assessments for all species, with a view to introducing management plans, including catch quotas, for all species caught in EU fisheries.
At the Johannesburg world summit on sustainable development in 2002, the EU committed to achieving a maximum sustainable yield for all fish stocks by 2015 at the latest, but in 2010 it estimated that 72% of its fisheries remained overfished, with 20% fished beyond safe biological limits, risking the wholesale collapse of those fisheries.
The EU marine strategy framework directive requires that all EU fisheries achieve good environmental status by 2020, which includes the attainment of sustainable fishing levels for all stocks. The European Commission requests scientific advice for the establishment of fisheries management plans on the basis of sustainability, but the European Council is under no obligation to adhere to that advice when agreeing total annual quotas for stocks. The result is that the European Council sets total allowable catch limits that are on average 34% higher than the scientifically recommended sustainable limits.
Ensuring that all fish and shellfish are harvested at sustainable levels is an absolute prerequisite of the future profitability and survival of EU fisheries. By requiring the delivery of that target by 2015, we will ensure that the EU fulfils its international and domestic commitments to achieve sustainable fisheries and end overfishing.
A legal requirement to end overfishing of all fish and shellfish by 2015 will necessitate the following key measures: first, rendering scientific advice binding, thus preventing quotas from exceeding biologically sustainable limits; and secondly, introducing stock assessments and management plans for all fish and shellfish, including non-commercial species that are currently unmanaged, in order to establish sustainable limits for harvesting.
Co-management is an approach whereby Government authorities involve local communities and other stakeholders in management decision making, monitoring and surveillance. The approach aims to encourage co-operation and a shared sense of responsibility, and it has been shown to improve compliance with regulations as well as to improve the effectiveness of management measures, because it draws upon community knowledge to address local socio-economic and ecological issues.
The establishment of regional advisory councils is cited as a key success of the 2002 CFP reform, because they have served as forums for stakeholders to inform policy implementation at the regional level, but they have no decision-making powers.
Small-scale and artisanal fishing represents a vital link between the industry and historical coastal fishing communities, and often utilises lower-impact methods—more environmentally sustainable methods of fishing that draw on local traditional knowledge. A future common fisheries policy must reverse the balance of incentives by allocating access rights to fisheries on the basis of environmental sustainability, so giving priority to vessels that utilise selective gear and low-impact methods of fishing. By enabling the UK to introduce higher standards of management and conservation for UK and foreign fishing vessels within its inshore fisheries, without recourse to the European Commission, we would regain powers to determine and manage our coastal marine ecosystems and the livelihoods that depend on them.
The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) spoke of the importance of ITQs—individual transferable quotas—and the problems that will arise from them. Under this proposal, which is probably the most dramatic in impact of any EU proposal, skippers would be guaranteed shares of national quotas for periods of at least 15 years, which they could trade among themselves—even, if the relevant national Government agree, with fleets from other countries. This is already practised on a smaller scale in several EU member states, including the UK, but it has been taken much further in other countries.
A global survey published three years ago showed that fisheries managed using ITQs were half as likely to collapse as others, which is one of the reasons why the Commission is so enthusiastic about them. However, the blanket nature of its proposals gives rise to serious concerns, and I echo those that the hon. Gentleman expressed. Ecologically, ITQs diminish overfishing and seek to protect the sustainability of fishing in the area concerned, but experience shows that they can give rise to the privatisation of fisheries. That is a very serious point, which the Minister has to take on board.