(5 years, 8 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesQ
Dr Amy Pryor: I personally do, yes. There are great examples all around the country where it is already happening. The next step is for that to actively inform fisheries management. The IFCAs can create a byelaw using that data, but if there was a more proactive approach rather than a reactive approach, we would have very agile fisheries management.
Elaine Whyte: A lot of people talk about environmentalists and fishermen, and I think a good fisherman should be an environmentalist. We have been to Norway, looked at their system and studied real-time closures, and they can close a fjord based on the patterns that they see the fish recording. We could be far better at that, in terms of real-time closures, and that is something that we would support.
Q
Elaine Whyte: Again, a coastal fleet is not particularly just under-10s. Our median weight is probably about 14 metres, so I would consider them all in the same category. There is massive potential. We had some members who are quota holders, and we spoke to them at the beginning, thinking that they would want to protect their asset. They said to us, “We’ve had our money 10 times over. Let’s look at doing something fairer for the new guys who weren’t born when the system was brought in.” So yes, absolutely we see a fairer way to do this.
Q
Dr Amy Pryor: That is nonsense. Our fishermen have survived all sorts of adversity throughout the years. They are a massively untapped skill resource. You can learn all sorts of skills through working in the fishing industry and not necessarily become a fisherman. You can also learn a lot of skills that are peripheral to the fisheries industry so that you are more agile as a fisherman. When you do not have a quota or you have run out of days, whatever system is in place, you can move into another sector like boat engineering or boat maintenance—all sorts of stuff. Just because they do not want to talk to you, and they might be secretive about what their skills are, does not mean they do not have a huge amount of skill.
Elaine Whyte: I would add that if you can do your accounts and write a scientific report in a gale force wind while at sea, you are a very skilled businessman. That is something we should think about. We have a gap at the moment in skills, and we possibly need to look at foreign workers. It is important, particularly for rural areas. I would look at things like the “become a fisherman” scheme in Denmark, and how they have managed to turn things around in their country and repopulate rural areas just by proactive marketing. We need to do that. They are very skilled.
Q
Elaine Whyte: Yes, absolutely. There is a generational issue. We have missed a generation, but we can catch up. We should have young men coming out of places such as Glasgow, where there is a port 30 minutes away, and thinking, “Actually, I could go to sea.” That is something that we have to be proactive on with Government. But I think we need to look at what has gone wrong. We can look at somewhere such as Stornoway. Pre-1974, it was landing more than 85% of fin fish; it is now landing 1% of fin fish. That possibly has something to do with the EU; it possibly has something to do with domestic allocations as well, so we have to look at it in a holistic way and try to give men, and women, a reason to want to go into the job. Nobody wants to tail prawns on minimum wage forever; people want the opportunity to have their own boat and to progress.
Q
Elaine Whyte: We have a gap at the moment, and we have to make sure we are getting skilled workers in from wherever they come from. I would say that we are working towards a long-term domestic policy through marketing. I would use the example of Denmark again and say that, 10 years from now, that is what we should have. For now, we have to be realistic and make sure we have got people there to teach the new guys coming up.
Dr Amy Pryor: Can I add something to that? Certainly within the south-west and the south-east, fishermen have told us that there are plenty of skilled crewmen out there, but they move around a lot. They go where the opportunity is. Something as simple as a database that tells young fishermen where there is a fishing opportunity, and for how long, would go a long way towards filling those gaps and making it a bit more attractive to be a nomadic land-based fisherman going between different fishing communities to fill those holes.
Q
Dr Amy Pryor: I personally think it is a bit too vague at the moment. The examples that we have had through the European fisheries fund and the European maritime fisheries fund have gone a long way to enabling fishing communities—especially the community-led local development mechanism and fisheries local action groups. Where they have worked well, they have worked extremely well. They have had a huge impact and have gone on to bring millions in investment into the local economy, benefiting the whole coastal community. As an enabling Bill that says, “We are committing to provide financial assistance,” it is great, but it could be a lot more prescriptive and detailed. It could break that down and really represent the different sectors of the wider coastal community, as well as the fisheries.
Elaine Whyte: I would add that it is important that we somehow define fisheries through this, because I know a lot of instances where fisheries funds have been used for something that fishermen on the ground have probably never had any benefit from. It is good that we consider who the stakeholders are, how we want this to be used and whether fishermen will ultimately get the benefit of it. It is particularly important at a time when there is a lot of money coming into the fisheries policy sector from environment non-governmental organisations and charities and whatnot—I counted about £4 million into Scotland in the last couple of months for people influencing fisheries policy. We need to be enabling our fishermen to do something positive.
Q
Dr Amy Pryor: Absolutely. There are no other funding streams that are specifically for fisheries. There are none—absolutely none. Fishermen cannot access any of the other regional development growth funds or even the other European funding streams. Having something to replace it is essential, but there is an opportunity here to do things in a bit more of a holistic way, while benefiting the fishing industry.
Elaine Whyte: A small investment can make a big difference. Some of the ports in the Western Isles, such as Ceallan, have been European funded, and that has been a massive benefit to the community. Particularly in rural communities, it is a lifeline.
Q
Elaine Whyte: My colleague would never forgive me if I did not mention this. We would like to see communities having an opportunity to access things such as bluefin tuna, because it could make a difference to artisanal fisheries around the coast.
Dr Amy Pryor: We would like to see better recognition of our estuaries and the links with the land. Estuaries are the ovaries of the sea, and having them recognised formally as part of this, with potentially better and more sensitive management, would definitely be the way to go to safeguard our stocks for the future.
(5 years, 8 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesQ
Barrie Deas: That relates to the idea of an advisory council to run new ideas through a panel of experts—people who understand the complexities and nuances. It would be advisory. We understand that the job of Ministers and fisheries managers is to manage, but we think that an advisory council could add something, as it does in other countries—I would certainly recommend looking at the Australian model. It could make recommendations and provide advice on new legislation coming through. That is one of the areas where the Bill could be tweaked in the right direction.
Bertie Armstrong: In that clause, there is the little anomaly of adding the Marine Management Organisation. It is an organisation good and true, no doubt, but if you are talking about, as Barrie has described, a council of administrations, it is rather an ill fit for the MMO. Perhaps it would be a technical adviser.
Barrie Deas: To build on that point, when you see that consent is required from the Secretary of State, Ministers for Scotland, for Northern Ireland and for Wales, and then the MMO, which is the delivery arm of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, it does seem, as Bertie says, an anomalous situation.
I apologise to the remaining questioners, whom we have not been able to squeeze in. We have run out of time, bar a few seconds, so I shall simply say thank you very much to both witnesses for extremely useful evidence that will greatly add to our consideration of the Bill next week. Thank you very much for taking the time and trouble to come and give evidence to us this morning.
Examination of Witness
Andrew Kuyk gave evidence.
Q
Andrew Kuyk: That is not really within my area of responsibility, because we are processors and traders. Quite a lot of that is exported as fish; it is not processed. You could argue from first principles that, as a UK industry, we should be getting more added value from that. Some of that fish is landed directly in EU ports. Although there is a market for that, you could argue that there would be greater economic benefit if we could get some of that value added and export.
There clearly are markets elsewhere in the world. We are a deficit market. Just a bit of propaganda for the fish industry: fish is a healthy, nutritious product, and is a renewable resource if managed properly and sustainability. There are a lot of people in the world for whom fish is their sole source of protein. There is a big demand for fish in the global trade, so there will be opportunities there, but as in any kind of market, it depends on how competitive you are. For the sorts of export that we have at the moment, which are predominantly fresh exports, not processed products, you have obvious barriers of distance. You would have to do something to make it a product that you could sell further afield. There is potential there, but going back to my earlier point it would require investment and to make the investment there has to be a sound business case.
Q
Andrew Kuyk: I think that harks back to an earlier question. There is no surplus processing capacity to do that at the moment. You could legislate for what people have to do, in terms of where they land things, but I do not think you can legislate for how the processing industry or investors would respond to that opportunity. They might or they might not.
Q
Andrew Kuyk: Clearly, that would help solve the investment problem. Again, it would not be for me to pronounce on the use of public funds in that way for a particular sector of a particular industry, but if the Government chose to make grants available to do that, clearly that would help the business case for those kinds of investment.
Q
Andrew Kuyk: Again, that is straying outside my territory as representing processors and traders. Your previous witnesses would be involved in that. Without going into the history too much, the Committee will be generally aware of the ability of people to buy quota and so on; it was freely sold and it was freely acquired. That is the way that the market has operated up until now. Clearly, were more quota available it would be possible for the UK fleet to seek to exploit these value added opportunities and, as you say, to cut out the middleman.
It would not necessarily be my members who would be involved in that at the outset, because that it is not business that we are currently involved in. The people who export those pelagics are not my members; it is the large pelagic companies on the catching side of the industry. It is done with minimal processing and minimal value added. I think that is a missed opportunity for UK plc, but I am not sure how much you can legislate for that. If you provide a framework that is conducive to that, then clearly business will step in with the right incentives and will do its best to take advantage of those possibilities.
(5 years, 8 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesQ
Phil Haslam: The intent of redeploying aerial surveillance on a more routine basis is to cover off any risk that we do not continue to receive data that we receive now through the vessel monitoring system and the like. We would need a mechanism to build a picture of what was happening in our waters. If it is not derived remotely from a location device on board a vessel, we will have to actively go out and build that picture.
What the aerial surveillance does in the first instance is build situational awareness of what is going on in the water. If, once you have that, you see in among it non-compliant behaviour, it can operate as a queueing platform. Either it can queue in a surface vessel to come and take subsequent action, or you can warrant the air crew so that they can issue lawful orders, whether it be, “You are required to recover your gear and exit our waters,” or whatever it is. That can be passed from the aircraft.
It is not an entire panacea. It cannot stop non-compliant activity, because it is clearly airborne, but it gives you, first and foremost, that picture. It has a very clear deterrent capability, and it can start a compliance regime by queueing.
Q
Phil Haslam: Taking the first point, we work, as I said, on a risk-based, intelligence-led basis, so refining where we deploy our assets is based on that outlook. That is how we would deploy it. In terms of the differential between inspection rates of foreign vessels and UK vessels, I think that comes under the same cover. Where we perceive that there is risk and intelligence, we will take action on where it needs to go.
I am sorry, but I missed the second point about including something in the Bill.
Q
Phil Haslam: No, because I think it involves over time the introduction of technology that may come downstream. At the moment, the reason we do what we do in the manner that we do it is to get evidential quality, should we need to take compliance activity. We still need inspectors to step on board fishing vessels.
Q
Phil Haslam: We have spoken about increased surveillance as part of the package to deliver an enhanced control enforcement capability. People are central to that. In the first instance, we are recruiting additional people into the MMO, so I will go from the cadre of warranted officers I have now to an increased number. That is actively under way. Also, to provide contingency planning, we have looked within the Royal Navy at who is currently qualified to conduct warranted fisheries business and who has recently been qualified. There has to be a cut-off, because obviously you will time out. There is a cadre of people still within the Royal Navy who could, should the need arise, be deployable to carry a warrant and conduct the inspection capability.
Q
Aaron Brown: Yes, absolutely. That makes it worse. It pours petrol on the bonfire that I have described to you. In the transition, the EU has every incentive to run a bulldozer over the top of us. They can abolish the 12-mile limit; they could fully enforce the discard ban in choke species and, obviously, we would not be able to implement policy to mitigate that, such as suggested in the Bill. They would be able to barter UK resources in international swaps, because we will not be party to international agreements but the EU will be making them on our behalf.
The other thing that is really devastating right round the country is that currently the UK relies on a lot of swaps in the EU, to get in fish that would otherwise probably be ours under a zonal attachment. We will not be able to do that because we will not actually be sitting at the table any more. So we will be trapped in this kind of halfway house, where the EU has every incentive to take a great big stick and beat us with it like a piñata. It is not a position that I think is equitable for the survival of the industry. To be brutally honest, by the time we get round to a new British policy, if we are not shovelled into the backstop, of which there is a high likelihood, there will not be a fleet left to take advantage of anyway.
Q
Aaron Brown: I am fully supportive of that. We have gone further and said 60%, and not just for landings. There is a huge benefit from that. Currently just now, the flagship problem that Britain has, after the Factortame case, is that under freedom of establishment and freedom of movement, any EU national could come in and buy up British entitlement. Obviously, with the British fleet struggling with so much loss of its own resources, and regulatory ineptitude, many family fishermen felt compelled to sell. That is huge problem just now as we see on the west coast, in Lochinver. I think it was £30 million of fish went through Lochinver and there was not a single indigenous fishing boat. That needs to be tightened up on. There is a huge benefit, not just to the fisherman and their communities, but also to processors and market share.
Norway’s crowning glory is not actually its fishing fleet. Norway’s crowning glory is its dominance in processing and marketing globally. That is something that Britain could equally compete in with the resource we have got. We would like to see 60% landings into the UK, sold and processed, because otherwise people will just put them on the back of a lorry and run them down the road. We want to see 60% beneficial ownership of any British vessel—that is no different from the other Nordic countries—to avoid foreign nationals or conglomerates buying out the UK fleet.
We would also like to see 60% British crew, but with a five-year or thereabouts dispensation for foreign crew, until we rebuild the future generation back into the industry to replace the one we have lost. The economic link absolutely needs to be there and we implore you to accept that that is an amendment that needs to go in. The Conservatives tried to do it in 1988 with the Merchant Shipping Act. I argue that if it is good enough for Mrs Thatcher, then it should be good enough for this Government as well.
I think that brings us almost to the end of the session. It is good to hear Mrs Thatcher still being quoted 38 years after she gained office. On behalf of the Committee, thank you, Mr Brown, for your contribution.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned.—(George Eustice.)