Fisheries Bill (Fourth sitting)

Owen Smith Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Peter Aldous]

Q The right hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), when he was Fisheries Minister, fought very hard in the 2015 review of the CFP, and the general consensus was that it was a good deal. One of the main things won was article 17, so you worry me by basically saying that no one takes any notice of it. In transposing article 17 to the Bill, what can we do to give it teeth, so that people take notice of it and it is implemented?

Griffin Carpenter: Exactly. This refers back to the first discussion we had. We as an organisation were one of the groups advocating for article 17 in the CFP. The CFP—people might disagree with this—actually gives quite a lot of power to member states, for better or worse. The EU did not want to say exactly how each member state should allocate its fishing opportunities. It just says, “Tell us how you are doing it. Be transparent and objective about how you are doing it. Is it based on historical catch records? Are you giving more to the small-scale fleet?” and so on. Every member state continued allocating quota as they were. The UK has done some things with unused quota, but never actually referred back to article 17. It was just that the small scale wanted more, so they gave some more.

The problem with transposing that is that it seems like we are missing an opportunity to be specific. Article 17 was vague so that each member state could use their own criteria. Now we are transposing that, but we are the member state—we are one entity—so we can say exactly, especially in the case of England, how we are going to do it, and we can say that right now. It seems strange to transpose something that was intentionally vague so each member state could be specific.

[Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

Q As a Welshman, I am obviously worried about the prospect of robbing Dai to pay Pedro. On the issue of flagged vessels that you mentioned, is there anything in the Bill that would stop the Welsh from addressing that issue?

Griffin Carpenter: Nothing that stops the Welsh from addressing the issue, but nothing that addresses the issue per se. Again, devolution is extremely awkward in fisheries, where we have a Bill that empowers the fisheries Administrations and stops there. It would be up to the Welsh Government to do something, presumably in their licensing.

[The Chair]

We have just over three minutes, if there are any further questions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Aldous]

Q So the new UK fishing policy can be better than the CFP when it comes to sustainable fisheries management.

Dr Carl O'Brien: I think so. I have forgotten who asked me the question earlier, but if you are going to allow vessels to come into our exclusive economic zone, we can put conditions on their access rights. If we decide we do not like pulse trawling and we have our own evidence base to say that, I assume we can just say, although it would not necessarily ban it, that any vessel with pulse cannot come in.

[Owen Smith]

Q Dr O’Brien, given your long experience of going to Council, how do you envisage our country being treated during the transition period, when we will effectively have observer status?

Dr Carl O'Brien: I do not know, because I am under the impression that this is my last December Council, as it is for the Minister, unless I have been misinformed.

[Owen Smith]

Q Given your experience in the past, do you think it will be a problem that we are effectively attending and being consulted with, but are not having direct influence as we have had previously?

Dr Carl O'Brien: My worry and fear is for the other member states. I have been to a number of Council negotiations, to coastal states negotiations on mackerel, blue whiting, Atlanto-Scandian herring and to EU-Norway negotiations. The other member states look to the UK to provide a lot of the science and the technical arguments. Countries will wave their arms and say, “We do not like the Commission’s proposals”, but when it comes to facts, hard data and evidence, the UK leads the world. We provide the arguments and we sit with the Minister, the presidency and the Commission and we argue our case based on facts and science. Other countries do not do that.

[Owen Smith]

Q No wonder they are petitioning for us to stay in. Can I ask you about recreational fishing? We have heard people petitioning that the recreational fishing industry ought to have a more official stakeholder role in future. Is that a view that you have sympathy with? What is your view of the potential value of designating certain fisheries and species for recreational fishing only?

Dr Carl O'Brien: One of the problems with recreational fishing, which is a disaster waiting to happen, is that when we carry out our bass assessments, we include commercial catches from trawlers and larger vessels and recreational catches, but the only other assessment that I am aware of that ICES carries out with recreational catches is the western Baltic cod. In the case of the western Baltic cod, the recreational catch is far in excess of the commercial fleet.

In future, we need to have a better understanding of recreational fishing. We cannot ignore it, but we have to come up with a policy where you balance commercial and recreational anglers. I would not want to see them being recognised independently of the commercial fisheries, because in a sense, regardless of whether they are selling their catch, they are competing with a commercial fishery. As I say, for the western Baltic cod, the catches of the recreational anglers are far in excess of the commercial fleet. The CFP has tried to constrain the commercial fleet—

[David Duguid]

Q On the science, one of the major frustrations—I was going to use the word “criticisms”, but that is too strong—I hear from fishermen is that the science tends to be at least two years old by the time it is actually applied, and they are seeing more fish in their nets or in the water than they are told to expect. Is there any way we can make the science more current, or is there anything we can do in the future to help with that situation?

Dr Carl O'Brien: Our Minister will know, because one of the first questions that every new Minister gets is, “Why are your scientists using data that is out of date?”. The reality is that, this year—2018—when we carried out our assessments, we had landings data only up to 2017. That is just a fact of life; we will not know the landings for this year until the end of the year. We have survey information, so when we predict next year’s quotas, we are doing that based on 2017 landings data and survey information that we have from this year, so that is where our two-year window comes from.

In terms of doing something that is more reactive, there are issues around juveniles. Certainly in Norwegian waters, they have real-time closures that are almost instantaneous—certainly within 24 hours. In the past, if fishermen found aggregations of very small fish, they would have fished them and dumped them, but now if they fish them they will have to land them, which will come off their quota. The sad thing is that by killing those fish, they are then not there to reproduce into the future to rebuild spawning stocks.

On the assessments, it is a fact of life that, essentially, they will be two years out of date in terms of the landings data, but we will have current information from research vessels and from fishermen. In terms of management, it would be a more adaptive and proactive management where you could keep an eye on what is going on in the sea and within our waters, in terms of whether you are seeing aggregations of juvenile fish or lots of older fish that are aggregating in certain areas and being targeted by vessels. You would want to have a more adaptive management framework—certainly more adaptive than we have with the common fisheries policy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bill Grant]

Q We should make the conditions and the financial rewards better and we could grow the industry in due course.

Elaine Whyte: Absolutely.

Dr Amy Pryor: I absolutely agree. The only thing I would add is that I think this is an opportunity to think about a more integrated approach to the way we do our training. I am talking about cross-sectoral training schemes and apprenticeships not only to spread the skills and highlight the fact that you can have multiple transferable skills, but to build relationships across sectors. We can build those better relationships between the different coastal sectors. To back that up, Sir John Armitt recommended this, as part of the Thames growth commission, as a way forward, because we are lacking skills in all our coastal and estuarine areas.

[Owen Smith]

Q We heard earlier from one of the big shellfish companies and we asked it about the impact of tariffs—potentially, 8% tariffs on shellfish. How would that impact on smaller producers?

Elaine Whyte: We are extremely worried about that and always have been. And apart from the tariffs, we are extremely concerned about disruption and action, possibly, by French and continental fishermen, who might not be too happy about us getting access. That could be just as big a problem as the tariffs, to be honest, so yes, we are very concerned.

[Owen Smith]

Q This is an enabling Bill, but what degree of certainty do you feel about what fishing is going to look like in Great Britain in the years to come as a result of the Bill? Are you confident?

Elaine Whyte: I heard a comment yesterday, I think, or the day before about how the market will take care of fishing. I do not think that is fair. I think that we have to try to support our industry, to get the best of national benefit for our fishermen. I am confident that we could have a better future, but it depends on a lot of things. We are not quite clear when we are coming out. We are not quite clear what this financial framework means, across all the sectors, for the UK. And what does that mean? Does it mean that every year that we are negotiating a deal with the EU we could barter fishing rights away for another sector? Those things are still a concern for us.

[George Eustice]

Q I want to come back to something that Elaine Whyte said earlier about the concern that there might be different rules for different parts of the fleet, with Northern Ireland having access to west of Scotland waters, for instance. Could you explain a bit more what your concern is? Obviously, the Bill is trying to resolve quite a difficult tension, which is that fisheries is a devolved matter, yet it is also highly affected by international negotiations, which are reserved. The way it does that is by giving each Administration the ability, through clause 10, to have licence conditions, but then separate to that, in clause 31 and schedule 6, it gives the Administrations the ability to set their own technical conservation measures, so if they wanted to have a closure, for instance, that would apply to everyone, whether or not it was on the vessel licence. There are two means of doing it, and I think the Bill squares that rather difficult circle through that means.

Elaine Whyte: It potentially does, but it does not square the tariff issue, so that is something that we would still have a concern about. Some of our members have mentioned the issue of nomadic rights, and of course we understand that, but we always think that there should be some link to the coastal communities around about. They should not be disadvantaged by lack of access to their own stocks, in a sense, as well. That is important to us domestically as well as between different countries and the UK.