Fisheries Bill (Second sitting)

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2018 Public Bill Committees

[George Eustice]

Q I have two other points that we raised in the White Paper that I want your views on. First, do you think that the under-10-metre category is still the right criteria to use, or should we look at other measures, such as engine capacity or the zone in which they fish, so that there would be a different way of defining the artisanal, small-scale fleet? Secondly, we have obviously had quite a lot of representations about the possibility of moving more to an effort-based regime for the inshore fleet rather than a quota system. What is your view of that?

Jerry Percy: In response to your first question, there is no doubt that the arbitrary under-10/over-10 metre divider has been an unnecessary nuisance, frankly, especially as time has gone on. Yes, 20 or 30 years there was a very significant difference between what was in the ’90s a much more artisanal fleet and today’s under-10 metre boats, which can be 9.99 metres and highly efficient. One of the purposes of developing the coastal PO initiative was that, rather like other examples one might think about in the current climate, you tend not to go to war with people you are trading with, and there has always been a difference of opinion between under-10s and over-10s and their POs.

Losing the 10-metre measure in the fullness of time would be a very positive step forward. Clearly, if you look at the breakdown of the under-10s, which are some thousands of vessels, you see that the vast majority are less than 8 metres in length, and again you can go down. So there is a strong argument for taking any boat up to 6 metres completely out of the quota system, whether or not you replace it with something like effort management. I can speak from experience. While a modern under-10 metre boat has a very significant fishing capacity, far in excess of what it would have been 20 or 30 years ago, it remains the case that boats that are less than 18 feet would really struggle to make any significant impact on stocks.

At the same time, we have said all the way along that although the effort management suggestion is ostensibly a fairer way of allocating access to the resource than quota, with all its issues and problems, we really need to have a proper, full-scale and focused trial before anybody could say unequivocally, “This would be the most effective and efficient way forward.”

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q A real consensus is emerging around the Bill that there should be more focus on giving more quota—more fishing opportunities—to the smaller boats. The question is about how we do it. From your point of view, what would be the best way within the Bill, and within the powers it contains, to encourage more fishing opportunities to be held by smaller boats, which generally speaking are the least impactful on the environment and contribute more to their coastal communities?

Jerry Percy: There are two main answers to that question. At the moment, despite the claims that we are going to be an independent coastal state and take back control, nearly 50% of the UK’s allocation of quota is held in foreign hands. Now, although a lot of that is the pelagic species, such as mackerel, herring and blue whiting, nevertheless fish quota, whether we like it or not—we do not—has become a commodity and gaining more access and a fairer balance post Brexit, when the Bill comes in, would be a particular opportunity.

There are opportunities. The Government have always been concerned that if you tried to repatriate quota, then you get a whole queue of people lining up for a judicial review, but it was clear from the judicial review in 2012 and from legal advice subsequently that that is entirely practical. In fact, the Faroe Islands has just instigated a similar sort of system. Rather than us arguing that one should rob Peter to pay Paul, it is at heart the allocation system that is at fault. It is based on historical rights.

As I said, I go back far too many years in this business. In the 1990s, the Government said to the over-10-metre vessels, “Go out and fish and record all your catches, and we will take a three-year average and provide you with your fixed quota allocation—your proportion of the overall UK cake.” Not surprisingly—the larger-scale representatives admitted this in the judicial review I mentioned—they did ghost fishing. If you went out and caught 10 tonnes, you might put down 12 or 14 tonnes just to make sure that you had good opportunities. I dare say that if I had been in that position I might have thought the same. The whole thing was predicated on a lie, frankly, and it has gone on ever since. Historical rights are really not an effective method, for any number of reasons.

The answer to your question, which we put forward in our response to the Bill, is that clause 20 effectively takes in article 17 of the common fisheries policy. We suggest that should be amended so that quotas are allocated according to social and environmental criteria and economic benefit for coastal communities. Some 80% of the under-10 metre fleet use passive rather than mobile gear, so their environmental credentials are better, and their economic credentials are certainly more significant. We would take our chances with everybody else, but that would provide a level playing field, irrespective of size of vessel, and your allocation of the resource would be based on environmental, social and economic criteria.

[Luke Pollard]

Q This morning I asked about strengthening the economic link, so if you catch fish under a UK quota you should land at least half of it in a UK port. Can you explain where the under-10 fleet—the small boats—mainly land their fish? Do they land it in UK ports already, or is a sizeable portion landed in foreign countries?

Jerry Percy: No, it is almost exclusively landed into UK ports, although of course a very significant element is then exported to markets in France, where our European neighbours tend to pay far more for it. I think it is relevant to mention at this point that, with all due respect, we must not focus just on the quota issue, although that is vital because the quota has been so unfairly dealt out in the past. A very significant proportion of the under-10-metre fleet relies on non-quota species such as cuttlefish, shellfish, lobster and crab, and they in turn rely on direct export. About 90% gets exported, mainly to France and Spain, so the export market is key.

[Luke Pollard]

Q Finally, I have a question that is not about quotas—it is about marine safety. The Bill talks about our potentially being able to allocate quota that is drawn down from our EU friends in a slightly different manner from the FQA system we have at the moment, and to apply different conditions to that. You mentioned social, economic and environmental criteria potentially being some of those conditions. Marine safety is an issue for many small boats because of the pressures on those boats and the fact that the 10-metre limit has led to lots of dumpy boats with strength rather than stability. Would you give us a sense of the implications for the sector of amendments to the Bill that introduced a requirement for marine safety to be such a condition, to ensure that people who go out to catch our fish are safe, and tell us what the current safety levels are in the sector?

Jerry Percy: Fishing, unfortunately, still carries the record as the most dangerous occupation in the world. I sit here having lost any number of friends and colleagues over the years in pursuit of fish. I do not think having to carry more fish should be a significant safety issue. It is going to be more relevant in terms of the forthcoming landings obligation, under which we can no longer discard any fish so we have to keep it all aboard. There are of course safety issues in that respect.

The Sea Fish Industry Authority monitors and measures, and ensures that vessels are safe to go to sea. We are effectively talking about capsize as a result of overloading, which is actually quite rare. It is perhaps more common in the pelagic fisheries, where a great bulk of fish is landed. For most small-scale fish fleets, I think fishermen and the authorities would ensure that there was no safety issue. Even in my wildest dreams, safety has never come to mind as being an issue if we had significantly more quota. I have never thought, “Oh, I’m going to catch too much fish and put myself at risk.” It does happen—even now, with non-quota species, you never throw it back.

[Luke Pollard]

Q On that point, there seems to be universal agreement that personal locator beacons attached to lifejackets are a good thing, but we know there is a cost to fishermen of buying new lifejackets with PLBs and registering them. Do you think that, if there were a specified improvement on marine safety in the Bill, lifejackets with PLBs could be one area that might make a big improvement in marine safety?

Jerry Percy: Yes. Under the International Labour Organisation’s convention 188, it is now mandatory for fishermen to wear lifejackets unless the owner and/or skipper of the vessel can prove that he has sufficient guards in place to ensure that fishermen do not go over the side.

I still go to sea quite often. I have a personal locator beacon that I bought myself for about £170. It will tell the rescue people where I am in the water anywhere in the world. It is cheap. As far as I understand it, European funding would probably cover it because it is not a mandatory requirement, but surely, in terms of safety, it is a few pounds and it makes all the difference in the world.

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

Q My question is a variation on the Opposition spokesman’s point. It is commonly recognised that the inshore fleet—the under-10s—has had a raw deal as far as access to quota and fishing opportunities is concerned. The Bill is largely based on the assumption that an increase in opportunities, as a result of taking back control of our waters, will give us an uplift that will provide additional fishing opportunities for the inshore fleet. Do you think that goes far enough, or do we need to look at something bolder and more radical in terms of quota allocation or fishing opportunities?

Jerry Percy: Our main concern is that the Bill is predicated on a successful fisheries Brexit, if I may call it that, with a significant windfall of quota. Again, with the greatest respect, that would get the Government out of the hole that successive Governments have painted themselves into—if I may mix my metaphors—in that because there is only so much in the UK pie of quota, they are somewhat hamstrung, in their view, in their ability to reallocate more fairly and effectively. Not surprisingly, we disagree with that version and there is legal argument that they could do so, albeit slowly—that was said by the judge in a judicial review in 2012.

I gave an answer earlier about moving the method of allocation to become genuinely reliant on the social, environmental and economic criteria, but I do say genuinely because the UK Government are also already subject to article 17 of the common fisheries policy, which says something similar about allocating quota on those three criteria. The Government have argued that they meet those criteria. I personally do not think that they even remotely reach them in many respects. If we are going to have a revised method of allocation, we need an undertaking or to ensure that the Bill does what it says on the tin.

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[George Eustice]

Q I have one other final point. Enforcement is obviously devolved, so what you have described is what is taking place and what is planned for in England. Could you describe how the challenge differs, for instance in Scotland, where we obviously have a large interest? What work do we do with Marine Scotland and its enforcement vessels?

Phil Haslam: Fisheries enforcement is devolved, as you state. The way the Scottish do it is to have three vessels that conduct enforcement up to 330 days a year within their waters. They contract two aircraft as well, to provide oversight. At this moment, they have the kind of surveillance capability and control and enforcement capability that we are building up to.

[Luke Pollard]

Q A moment ago you gave the figure of 2,000 hours of surveillance. Could you give us a sense of how the number of hours that have been deployed for enforcement has changed since 2010?

Phil Haslam: Yes. Royal Navy vessels used to be contracted on a 24-hour-day basis. That was always non-exclusive, so they were not passed to the MMO, where we would have command and control of them; they would conduct our business but always with the risk of higher priority national tasking taking them away. But we did have more of them in 2010, and over time, with reductions in the MMO budget, we have had to roll back the number of hours, or days, we can contract, moving from 24-hour days to 12-hour days and then to nine-hour days.

When I came into this job we were relatively constrained regarding where we could deploy them for that part of the day. The idea of going to hours was to give us the flexibility to deploy them where the need was, rather than where they were shackled. So there has been a reduction, but on the other side of that, with the vessel monitoring system we have an understanding of what is going on in our waters. We have a picture against which we can patrol. So it was risk-based.

[Luke Pollard]

Q The figures I have seen suggest that in 2010 there were 16,000 hours, and now we have 2,000. That trajectory, that path, that reduction of enforcement, at a time when we will probably, based on risk assessments, need to protect and enforce our waters to a greater extent than in the past, concerns me. It seems quite a challenge. What is your assessment of whether we will see more things like the scallop wars, not in French waters but in UK waters, after Brexit? Do you think sufficient resource is provided to ensure that UK waters are kept safe and protected and that our regulations are properly enforced?

Phil Haslam: There is always a risk of tensions unearthing themselves within a fishing thing, but I must say that what we saw with the baie de Seine scallop wars was an expression of discontent based on using fishing vessel rather than on non-compliance with fisheries regulation, which is what the MMO does. There is a risk—that is the risk we have analysed—and against that risk we have built a bid for increased surveillance to meet and mitigate it.

[Luke Pollard]

Q The Batch 2 River class that you are getting as part of the fishery patrol vessels are very capable ships, and not having the Batch ones retired is a good move. That total fleet, though, relies on numbers of people to put them to sea and we know that there is huge pressure within the Royal Navy to provide people. Given your former experience with the Fishery Protection Squadron, could you enlighten us a little bit? Having more hulls is a good thing, but is there a sufficient number of people to man those hulls to ensure that we have the necessary enforcement capacity?

Phil Haslam: We have to be careful. The vessels the Royal Navy deploys to meet any MMO contract that is signed in the future is within its gift. It may be Batch 2s or Batch 1s, but that is the call of the commander of the squadron. In terms of manning the ships, it is similar. If the demand is there and it is required, the Royal Navy, being as innovative as it is, will come up with manning solutions to meet what it needs to do.

[Luke Pollard]

Q Finally, you mentioned the consultation on inshore vessel monitoring systems. It seems to be a good thing to switch from an automatic identification system. Anecdotal evidence suggests that fishermen turn their AIS off if they find fish so as not to alert their friends as to where there is a good catch, but I-VMS does not come with that switch. Is that right? Can you explain what difference that would make to vessel monitoring with regard to enforcement and safety?

Phil Haslam: The automatic information system, which is fitted to vessels of 300 gross tonnage and above is predominantly an anti-collision device. It is to create situational awareness at sea. It is an open-source mechanism by which you can find out information about any given ship, where it is going and what type it is. In fishing, a fisherman’s mark of where he is fishing and what he is getting from it is commercially sensitive and we would not wish to openly display that. I-VMS—the inshore vessel monitoring system—is a similar system to the one on smaller vessels. It gives us a picture of what is going on within the fishery. To conduct a fishery, you need to know what the input is so that you can control the output. That is not something we have at the moment. Also, it covers off that commercial sensitivity. We are not transmitting where a fisherman is. There is a point-to-point transmission of that data, which we will take into a hub so that we have a picture of what is going on in our waters, but that is not widely accessible.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

Q Could you give us a brief insight into the kinds of enforcement actions you have to take now and whether they are likely in future to be different in type or in quantity, or in both?

Phil Haslam: The enforcement action we take now is that we enforce the requirements of the common fisheries policy. In a routine inspection, when you board a fishing vessel you check the paperwork. Is the vessel licensed, in the first instance? Does it have quota for its catch? Then you would go into the mechanics of, “What have you caught? How have you caught them? Which area have you caught them in?” Then you do an inspection to see whether what is reflected in the logbook is manifest within the fishing vessel. That is what we do at sea in terms of inspection. It is everything from paperwork, to gear inspection, through to the actual catch. Ashore it is similar: it is about taking data from the logbook and then inspecting to see whether what is being landed matches that, and then goes through to the marketplace as well. All of it is in pursuit of assuring sustainable practice, but also the traceability of fish. That underpins the sustainability.

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[The Chair]

We have five minutes left for any further questions from the Government side. If not, Luke Pollard.

[Luke Pollard]

Q I want to pick up on your earlier answer where you described the inshore vessel monitoring system. Will foreign boats fishing in UK waters have a requirement to have IVMS on their boats, so you will be able to track where they are when they are in UK waters?

Phil Haslam: We have the latitude to make that a condition of the permit to enter.

[Luke Pollard]

Q So you have that power currently.

Phil Haslam: That is what we can do as an independent coastal state. Access to our waters will be granted by a permit, and the conditions we put on that permit are for the country to determine, so yes we can.

[Luke Pollard]

Q Just so I understand, you are saying that the UK will have that power in the future. Should that power be set out in the Bill—that this should be a requirement? My concern is that UK boats might have to have IVMS, but foreign boats might not, depending on what option we decide to put in the licence. There should be a level playing field between UK boats and foreign boats in UK waters, so should all boats not have to have IVMS on them?

Phil Haslam: The power in the Bill gives us the ability to regulate who comes into our waters by granting permission. I do not think the conditions of permission need to be explicit in the Bill, but they can be part of that, among other things that we would require any vessel within our waters to comply with.

[Mike Hill]

Q On the point you made about IVMS, would that extend to what I consider to be leisure fishing craft as well?

Phil Haslam: There will be a cut-off of who actually gets fitted with it, because the point is to try to develop a picture of what is the main input into the fishery in terms of effort on vessels out there. There will be some vessels—there will be a line below which we will not need to go. At the moment we are looking to catch—not catch, that is the wrong word—fit IVMS to the active fishing vessels.

[Mike Hill]

To commercial vessels.

Phil Haslam: To commercially active fishing vessels, yes.

[Luke Pollard]

Q The Bill includes provision for the Secretary of State to allocate fishing opportunities based on days at sea, as well as the fixed quota allocation. How does your enforcement action differ when you are looking at a boat using days at sea versus looking at a boat fishing against an FQA?

[The Chair]

Can you answer that question quickly, Mr Haslam, because one other Member wishes to ask a question?

Phil Haslam: Okay. In terms of an effort scheme, we would just need a data flow to track how often that vessel is put to sea, and whether it is in the bounds of the effort that is available. We have effort schemes that we run now.

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[George Eustice]

Q Do you think a legal power is needed to do that? They passed legislation in the Faroes that effectively put people on notice, and said that after 10 years they would depart from an FQA system. Our view is that the Government could state that intention, at which point the clock would start ticking without the need to have a provision on the face of the Bill.

Dr Appleby: We reallocated quota last time—unused quota—without compensation or additional legislation, so I think we could do that. I think you have to be careful when you do that, because a lot of people borrow money by using their quota as collateral. One the one hand, there are some very rich people sitting on quota—the quota barons we read about—but on the other hand, there are people who use quota to support their running a business. You would need to think about what you will do, but I think you can do that under the current legislation.

What has happened here is that it has been beefed up. We have put some more suggestions forward. There are two things that you could do. You could vest the fishery so that it actually becomes public property. We have done a heck a lot of research at UWE on who owns it, and we reckon it was set up by some sort of implied Crown trust that goes back to the middle ages. One of my PhD students is working on this at the moment.

It would be easier just to state in the Bill that it is a public asset and put it in some sort of trust, and then you would get the kind of things that you would normally expect when disposing of a public asset to the commercial sector. That is the way I would approach it. I appreciate that we did not start there; we started with an open-access resource, which we have tried to deal with through legislation. We are in a transition.

[Luke Pollard]

Q You mention fisheries management and how that is missing from the Bill. In particular, fisheries management and how that fits with marine plans in the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 seems to be omitted. Can you just expand on what you think the Bill is missing in fisheries management?

Dr Appleby: I am not sure. In common with previous speakers, I liked the idea of a scientific adviser, which would be a lovely thing to have. Its constitution is probably the same size as the Act, so you can imagine the bunfight about who sits on the advisory panel, whether it is peer reviewed and whether it is devolved. That is a huge conversation to have, and it needs to be had in public. That is something I would like to see. If we had more time, I would like to see that go in the Bill.

There is a mirror piece of legislation, which is the Environmental Principles and Governance Bill. Does that apply to fishing or not? When we leave the EU, we will lose the right to infraction proceedings against recalcitrant UK—all parts of the UK. Should Scotland do something, it is the UK that gets infracted. We will lose that, and we have not quite been able to replace that kind of thing.

Those are just two examples: a good, robust, scientific, forward-looking body that looks at how to make the most of our resources, and some sort of regulatory regime to punish the hindmost, if you want to be quite so curt.

[Luke Pollard]

Q On the dispute resolution mechanism that you are talking about, the Government seem to think that they have the powers to resolve disputes between the devolved administrations and the UK Government at the moment. Is it your view that that is the case, or would an explicit dispute mechanism requirement in the Bill make that easier in the future?

Dr Appleby: I think you can put one in. I would love to, but given the timeframe to which we are working—having this Bill ready for March—it would almost be a wrecking amendment if we tried to put something like that in. You are going into devolution which is an enormously emotive topic, especially at the moment. In terms of the Government’s position of being able to hit the devolved administrations with a stick: it is a devolved matter. I do not think the Government can do that.

When you look at most of the Act, it is consensual and they are consulting one another. That is how it should be, to be honest. The four nations should be able to work together and that is right. At some level we have lost the outside influence that we had. The way everything is drafted is, unfortunately, currently predicated on having a common fisheries policy that kept everything together. I am talking around the subject because were you to put a drafting pen in front of me and say, “Get on and draft that,” it would be incredibly difficult. My sympathies go out to the Government for what they have done.

[Luke Pollard]

Q Finally, one of the areas that seems to be weaker in the Bill than in the common fisheries policy is the area around maximum sustainable yield and the removal of a commitment to achieve it by 2020. Where there are difficulties in achieving maximum sustainable yield by 2020, do you think that the MSY provisions in the Fisheries Bill are sufficiently robust to make sure that we are restoring stock levels in our oceans, especially as climate change seems to be missing as a theme from much of the Bill? Is that something that we could address?

Dr Appleby: What does maximum sustainable yield actually mean? The European Union defines it as something like the highest theoretical equilibrium yield. It says something like that in the basic regulation. You take a basket of theories and you use the highest one. It has been knocked around as a term for a long time. Our rights in our EEZ only go up to maximum sustainable yield and we do not have a right to fish beyond it. We can take the interest off our fish stock outside our territorial waters, but we cannot spend the capital. This is the way to look at it.

To some extent, that is all the rights we have. I have not explicitly looked at that, but my sense on the way this works is that we would be bound by MSY targets anyway. The other thing is that the UK has access to judicial review, whereas trying to review the European Commission is interesting. It is very difficult to get a standing in the European Court of Justice, particularly on maximum sustainable yield. A few years the World Wildlife Fund tried to get access on cod quotas, I think, and they failed. So the European Union is good at giving rules to other people, but not so good at looking after itself. From an environmental charity point of view, we are not so concerned as long as there is something in there that does allow some conversation about moving to the right stocks that produce more fish, more jobs and a better environment. We could get hung up on this if we are not careful.

[Peter Aldous]

Q Tom, you were expressing concern at how a public asset might have inadvertently become a property right, and how that might constrain more radical reforms of the quota system. Could we go back to the court case of 2012-13 when Lord Justice Coulson put down his determination? I have heard some suggestions that the Secretary of State won that case against the POs, because what he was proposing was very reasonable and small-scale, and the POs were acting unreasonably. Is that a view that you would share, or would you say that Coulson allows one to go a step further?

Dr Appleby: An FQA is a possession under the European convention on human rights. There is a distinction. “Quota” is once it is distributed, and FQA units are about your expectation of how much of a share of the UK’s TAC you are going get every year. That was based on the historical landings data, traditionally. He said that unused FQA units could be reallocated without compensation. FQA units are a possession, so the corollary of that is that used FQA units—and most of them are used—would require some sort of compensation payment. I have not been privy to the subsequent legal advice, and I took a sharp intake of breath when he said that at the time. In fact, I went to court to watch some of the court proceedings—it was quite interesting; it was right up my field. It is inherent in the UK that we do not take assets off people without compensation. It is part of our culture—way before the European convention.

There is another point about that redistribution and the immediate way it would have ramifications on how the whole commercial sector is constructed, which you need to be mindful of. Once you put that whole lot into a bag and shake it up, you could design a scheme to reallocate quota, but it would need to be done in a sensible, crafted way.

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[George Eustice]

Q Just to clarify, there is a different purpose behind a White Paper, which sets out your policy and what you seek to do with the powers, and a Bill that establishes the legal powers you need to deliver your policy. We would not need a specific clause to say, “You must run a trial,” in order to be able to run a trial; the legal powers to run a trial are in the existing clauses of the Bill.

Coming back to the principle, the difficulty with fisheries is that, while you have said effort does not work, nothing quite works on fisheries. That is why it becomes a circular argument. You seem to be arguing for a return to catch composition rules, which themselves became slightly discredited so that people tried to move away from them. The challenge is that an effort regime works best in a mixed fishery where it is harder to segregate out the fish, but a tonnage system works best in, say, the pelagic.

Aaron Brown: Absolutely. We would say for pelagic species, where you are catching an individual bulk species and vessels can reasonably accurately target that, although at times you do get it wrong, a quota system is fine. The problem is that dynamic mixed fishery—the white fish; we include nephrops in that mixed fishery. What we are saying is catch compositions but not arbitrary limits, which, again, is a problem. It has flexibility.

To avoid a race to fish, to avoid giving people a blunt dollop of time and their going off and targeting the highest value species because the economic incentive is there, what you are effectively doing under this system is a buffer scheme, if you like. It is a trading scheme. “Okay, I’ve caught the wrong fish. It’s worth money”. Then, rather than discard it into the sea unrecorded and keep on fishing and killing more of that species while trying to find one you can keep, what you are moving towards is trading overall ceiling of effort for that wrong fish. So it is a compensation scheme, effectively, in which you get the financial benefit of that fish and your men get their pay—we will come on to that with the system that DEFRA proposes for discards—but, overall, your ceiling in the year comes down to meet you.

That would solve the bass problem. You could put in a zero catch composition for bass. Any catches would have a time penalty. Boats could be tied up on the Monday but they would have that bass landed, and the financial benefit of it. It would work for spurdogs. We really believe there is a system here that merits a good look, and proper scrutiny and trial. As we say, we lose nothing if it fails and we gain everything if it succeeds.

[Luke Pollard]

Q Do you think that fish should be a public asset and that that should be defined in the Bill?

Aaron Brown: I think that absolutely, yes. I think there has always been that case. I was very pleased to hear Dr Tom Appleby state that, and many of the other non-governmental organisations have said it, about the idea of privatisation. Even with the FQA system, it says in the paperwork that people get through, that it should not be bartered, sold or bought. It just happens to be that the industry has gone and done it.

Fish always has been a public resource. Various judicial hearings have defined that as well. Indeed, it probably stretches all the way back into Magna Carta, right back through our constitution. At the end of the day, we as fishermen, as the members of the public who catch, are only custodians of what is the nation’s; we look after it and husband it well for current generations and future ones. We would very much like to see a clause put in towards that.

[Luke Pollard]

Q One of the questions asked earlier was about auctioning additional fishing opportunities, and one of the key concerns that Fishing for Leave has raised when we have met has been about how auctioning could favour people who already have a quota, who already have cash, which would not support the small boats, on which there should probably be the greater focus. Do you have any concerns about where auctioning sits?

Aaron Brown: That is one of the main five things that are in the Bill. As I said at the start, one thing that disappointed us more was what was missing from the Bill rather than what was in it. But out of the five things we are deeply concerned about, that auctioning clause is one of them. It runs coach and horses through the principle of it being a public resource. Practically, it will end up in the hands of the highest bidders.

There is no tightening of the economic link in the Fisheries Bill, which is one of the things we really want to see included, so without that, combined with auctioning, you could have massive, multinational, hugely wealthy seafood companies saying, “British fishing is on the up so we’ll come in and wave our cheque book and outbid everyone else.” Even the biggest companies in Britain could not compete with some of those far eastern ones.

If we go down the auctioning route, we have an opportunity to draw a line, as I think the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland said, between the current quota resources—how it has been divvied out, not in the way we would have chosen—and this clean slate of what comes back. If we go down the auctioning route, where it is monopolised into the hands of a few big interests, with their financial firepower, it rides coach and horses through the Government’s objective of rebuilding coastal communities and supporting family-based fishing.

[Luke Pollard]

Q You mentioned effort, and you suggested a hybrid scheme between FQAs and days at sea. There are concerns that the Bill gives the Secretary of State powers to allocate fishing opportunities simply on days at sea, without any qualification after that. But the White Paper spoke about there being a series of trials to assess whether days at sea would deliver against the objectives. Do you think that the simple inclusion of days at sea without any qualification that comes afterwards could make that more problematic?

Aaron Brown: One of the amendments we put in was to amend it to hours at sea. It might seem contrary to Members that fishermen would want to tighten what could be perceived as a noose on themselves. That amendment was to get towards what we really need to get towards, which is some kind of catch-per-unit effort system of fisheries management.

Over the years, one of the clauses in the Bill we would like to see amended is right at the start: clause 1. It says that management will “ensure that…activities are”, which suggests that the Government kind of take a hammer and beats down the industry to meet their requirements. We would like to see that reversed so that policy requires management that delivers. In other words, the onus should be on the Government to say, “Okay, here are the objectives we want to meet. How do we move towards that?” We want it changed to hours of soak time at sea, because that is a far more accurate method of delivering catch-per-unit effort. You would be getting accurate data to deliver management that actually achieves objectives rather than just trying to take a hammer to the industry to make it comply.

[Luke Pollard]

Q Finally, we have heard today that the way fishing is conducted in UK waters has changed over many years, with new technologies and greater efficiency in catching fish. There is a new development called electronic pulse-beam fishing, which I have a lot of problems with. Although this level of detail might not be included in a framework Bill such as this one, we received representations—I tend to agree with them—that that practice should be banned. Do you have strong views about where electronic pulse-beam fishing sits within acceptable fishing practices?

Aaron Brown: Absolutely. We feel it should be banned outright immediately. You could put a sub-clause in that says it should be banned until it is proved that it is not responsible for the environmental degradation that has been reported by fishermen all around the southern North sea, where the derogation has happened. I certainly do not think anyone could say that the Dutch, who are primarily responsible for this, have not taken the Michael—that’s the polite word. It started as a derogation against the ban on electric fishing that the European Commission itself got—let us remember that it was a derogation against the EU’s own scientific advice—for a trial of the method. That trial has gone on for 10 years and has 100 boats on it. That is a commercial fishery masquerading as a trial. Even the Dutch now hold their hands up to that. We would like to see that banned.

We would also like to see sandeel fishing banned in the central North sea. For years and years, that has taken away a key component of the food chain—the base of the food chain—for sea birds, fish and obviously fishermen. Neither method—pulse fishing or sandeel fishing—is of benefit to any UK vessels, and with sandeel fishing you have the double dunt that the sandeels are taken for pig feed, so the British bacon industry could see a competitor’s food costs go up.

There would be a massive environmental gain if we banned both practices. That would not affect any British industry. I am actually very surprised that a Government who extol their environmental credentials with plastic cups and wars on wet wipes have not taken the easy win of banning pulse fishing.

[The Chair]

There is considerable interest in asking questions in this session. We have to finish at 4 pm, so can I ask for short questions and shorter answers, please?