Fisheries Bill (Third sitting)

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Luke Pollard]

Q One of the areas about redistributing quota, both new and potential if we get any drawdown from our EU friends, is allocating that on more economic, environmental and social grounds. Is that an area where, from your point of view, there could be benefits in terms of environmental protection and investment in coastal communities? Is that an area that you would support?

Rebecca Newsom: Absolutely. Greenpeace is working with the Greener UK coalition as well as the New Under Ten Fishermen’s Association, the Scottish Creel Fishermen’s Federation and Charles Clover’s Blue Marine Foundation, to push for a more robust approach to distributing quota—existing, new and future—on the basis of environmental and social criteria. It stands to benefit the entire fishing industry in terms of driving a race to the top for fleets of all sizes, which would have the opportunity to access fishing opportunities as long as they conformed to environmental standards and things such as giving local employment to communities. We see that as a huge opportunity.

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

Q What importance do you feel the Government attach in this Bill to conservation, sustainability and protection of the ecosystem?

Andrew Clayton: Referring to the objectives again, I think the fanfare with which the Bill was published emphasised sustainability and put it at the heart of what the Government are trying to achieve. The language in the objectives is ambitious to the extent that it mirrors some of the existing commitments. I have already described the serious concerns I have about the shortfall in the sustainability and precautionary objective.

Learning the lessons from the CFP, the important thing under this Bill is that the Government pave the way for implementation—that is why it requires slightly more binding commitments in it—and through the joint statements, to ensure that is implemented in practice, with sufficient deadlines and some concrete detail. Fisheries is a policy area that suffers constantly from short-termism and highly politicised annual decisions. It is important that future Fisheries Ministers are not put under as much pressure to make short-term, short-sighted decisions as previous Fisheries Ministers have been.

Debbie Crockard: The ambition here is for world-leading sustainable fisheries management. At the moment we do not have a duty in this Fisheries Bill to meet the objectives in the Bill. Those objectives cover a lot of very good things—sustainability and a precautionary approach—but without the duty there is no clear obligation to deliver those objectives. Without that clear obligation you are in a situation where they might not be met and there is no obligation to meet.

[Brendan O'Hara]

Q Do you think that the Bill as it stands improves or will adversely affect conservation, sustainability and the eco-environment?

Debbie Crockard: It has the potential to improve it if it becomes binding. A lot of these objectives are very good, but they have to be binding; they have to allow us to make those steps to world-leading sustainable fisheries. Without that binding obligation and without the obligation for MSY and without the improvements in CCTV and monitoring and information and data collection, we will struggle to prove that we are even making those changes to sustainability.

[Brendan O'Hara]

Q How confident are you that, without that binding mechanism, this will work?

Debbie Crockard: I think you just have to look, as Andrew said earlier, at the common fisheries policy. We have the binding objectives there, but there is still a lack of political push in many aspects to actually meet those things. MSY was supposed to be put in place by 2015, but it has been pushed back and back to the very last point, which will be 2020. Without that binding obligation, there is a lack of motivation.

Helen McLachlan: That was demonstrated by the CFP. The last reform introduced that binding commitment for a deadline. Prior to that, we consistently set limits over and above that recommended by scientists. Since that binding commitment was brought in, we have started to see those trends going the right way: biomass increasing, fishing mortality decreasing, and trying to balance our fleet sizes appropriately to the resources available to them. This is good in terms of the commitment, but the application will be absolutely critical. To have that duty and also the mechanisms around it in terms of monitoring what is coming up in the net, what we are removing from the sea and how we are being accountable for what we are removing, will be key to the success and the ability to say that we are talking about world leading fisheries. At the minute, without that, we are falling behind.

Andrew Clayton: Also, it is not just about the application. The removal of the requirement to set fishing limits at sustainable levels is a clear signal that we will aim lower, so it is not just the application. As drafted, it sends a message that we will go lower than the EU.

[Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)]

Q Sustainability is clearly important. Several of you have mentioned the remote electronic monitoring equipment, as have other witnesses. Is that technology sufficiently developed to do what we want it to do? Is there any evidence from where it is being used in other countries?

Helen McLachlan: Yes, very much so. Electronic monitoring systems have developed quite rapidly in the last decade and are now standard operational practice in certain fisheries around the world. In the US, for example, the national administration there has taken the decision that there is no need for further piloting; they just need to get on and do it. They currently have between 25% and 30% of their fleets covered by electronic monitoring. New Zealand has just taken the decision to roll it out across the whole of their fleet. That is in the process of happening.

Numerous other countries have started to adopt it, not just as a means of monitoring but in recognition the things that New Zealand cited, for example: reduction of waste, so it incentivises more selectivity; reduction of discards; and greater economic returns, because you are no longer taking out lots of smaller fish but allowing them to stay in the water longer. Your biomass and the health of your stock in terms of the make-up of age classes is better. Also, in terms of public confidence in the fisheries, the ability to say, “This comes from a highly sustainable fishery,” is a great thing. Coming back to your point on data provision, Mr Pollard, and the data coming out of the system, being able to build into the assessments gives greater confidence in that management. Quite often, if you have higher confidence levels in what you are talking about, your quotas start to increase because your confidence is greater.

There are benefits all around, and I think more and more Governments across the world are realising that. It is a cost-effective and robust means of doing that. Here in the UK we have several vessels currently operating with it and saying that they have benefited from it, because it has been able to demonstrate that sometimes what fishermen see in the water is not what they are being recommended by scientists, so they have said, “We can use this as a great tool to be able to say, ‘Actually, what we’re seeing is here.’” There is an ability to be very responsive in the management, turning it around very quickly—not quite in real time, but very close to it—and allowing adaptive management.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Order. I am advised that free movement is beyond the scope of the Bill.

[Brendan O'Hara]

Q I have a question for Mr Brown about the importance of the shellfish industry. As the Member of Parliament for Argyll and Bute, I understand the importance of shellfish to my west of Scotland constituency the. Do you think that the shellfish industry has been adequately heard in the debate, or do you feel that you have been slightly subsumed into the big fishing producers and big organisations? Are your concerns adequately covered in the Bill?

Andrew Brown: Obviously, fisheries have played a prominent role in Brexit and there has been a lot of publicity about the possibility of additional quotas. The fact that inshore fisheries and shellfish fisheries will not gain from that has probably been underplayed. There is certainly that aspect to it. We want to see tools in the Bill to allow Ministers to manage shellfish stock sustainably. If anything, shellfish stock management has probably lagged considerably behind demersal and pelagic management because of some inherent difficulties in the stocks, given their patchy distribution across UK waters.

However, it has always been the kind of fishery that new entrants have come into, because if you are a new entrant to a fishery you need three things: a licence, a vessel and a quota. Those are all expensive, but to get into the shellfish sector you do not need your quota, because they are non-quota stocks. The main way to get into the fishing industry is through the shellfish sector, and to try to build up a quota from there. That means that the entrance to shellfish fisheries is not very well controlled. Consequently, it is difficult to use management levers.

We would try to increase the significance, or the relative importance, that shellfish fisheries have in the Bill. Scallop shellfish fisheries are the most important fisheries in England, and the third most important fisheries in the whole of the UK, in terms of value. They have not been given the kind of management, attention and science that they need.

[Brendan O'Hara]

Q You talked about the financial and time cost of any barriers being put up. It is essential that a lot of the live product gets to continental Europe as quickly as it can. Are you confident from what you have seen in the Bill, and from what you have heard from the debate surrounding the Bill, that those time costs in particular will not damage your industry?

Andrew Brown: I am not sure that much can be done on this on the face of the Bill, but obviously, on how ports are managed and facilities maintained, within the Bill there is certainly the power to award grants to support infrastructure to someplace where you might have looked into their storage and freezing facilities. But yes, you are right; any kind of delay becomes quite significant. A two-hour delay on a motorway heading towards a port can mean you miss the ferry, which can lead to a day’s delay. An awful lot needs to be done to ensure the smooth running of this. Local authorities are involved as well, because we need export health certificates from them. There is a lot of work to be done to ensure that delays are minimised to the smallest amount possible.

[Brendan O'Hara]

Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr Robertson; I am sure my esteemed colleague has now reworded his question.

[The Chair]

We will come back to Mr Brown, but we have to move over to the other side.