UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE
To be published as HC 1563-ii

House of COMMONS

Oral EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE the

Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee

Reform of the Common Fisheries Policy

Tuesday 25 October 2011

Barrie Deas

Bertie Armstrong

Jerry Percy

Evidence heard in Public Questions 58 - 116

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee

on Tuesday 25 October 2011

Members present:

Anne McIntosh (Chair)

George Eustice

Thomas Docherty

Neil Parish

Amber Rudd

________________

Examination of Witness

Witness: Barrie Deas, Chief Executive, National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations, gave evidence.

Q58 Chair: Good morning and welcome, Mr Deas. Thank you very much indeed for agreeing to participate in our inquiry on the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy. Just for the record, could you say who you are and where you are from, please?

Barrie Deas: My name is Barrie Deas; I am the Chief Executive of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations.

Q59 Chair: Thank you. Obviously, you are aware that the microphone does not project; it is simply there to record. Could I ask you at the outset: what do you make of the present scientific basis on which the EU Fisheries Policy is currently based?

Barrie Deas: The advice is of course produced by ICES, the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. One of the problems that ICES faces is that something like 60% of the assessments do not have analytical status. There is a variety of reasons for that, and the Regional Advisory Councils in particular have established a dialogue with ICES on how to address that problem.

Our difficulties, though, are not primarily with the science; it is the Commission’s response and approach to the science. For example, in the current proposals, where ICES says that catches should not be increased, that is translated as a 25% or a 15% reduction. Where similar sort of things are said, zero TACs are applied to species like dogfish and the elasmobranchs; there are inappropriate management responses rather than a fundamental response to the science. I am not really surprised that there is confusion about which direction the stocks are headed in.

I attended a seminar in Brussels on the state of the stocks in September and we were told, in the company of the Directorate-General for Fisheries, that European stocks were improving. That was on 8 September. On 13 July, Commissioner Damanaki, on the "Today" programme, said that the stocks "are really collapsing", so you can see that there is plenty of scope for confusion in those statements. I think the reason is that different people have different political agendas. I also think, if you were looking for an objective view, the best is that of the STECF, the Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries-the EU Quality Control Committee as I call it-which said that in 2002, 10% of European fish stocks were fished sustainably, and by 2010, 40% of British fish stocks were fished sustainably, so there is a clear trend given by the scientists.

One of the problems is the changing definition of what "overfishing" means. Perhaps to lay people and to most people, overfishing would suggest stock depletion on the way to, perhaps, stock collapse or even extinction. That changed in the nineties as the precautionary approach was applied and it meant when a fishery was exploited outside precautionary limits. That has changed again to mean that we have not yet achieved, for that stock, maximum sustainable yield.

Q60 Chair: May I just stop you there? My concern is how we can establish whether any particular fish stock is being overfished if we do not have sound scientific evidence.

Barrie Deas: That is a very good point, and I agree. There needs to be a consensus agreement on the science and the stock assessments as a basis for sound policy. I think over the last decade there has been considerable progress in the dialogue between the industry and scientists at a number of different levels. I would be very happy to provide documentation on what those are; fisheries science partnerships of various kinds have sprung up. I do not think the problem lies with different views from the industry and scientists; there is now quite a close view. I think the problem is primarily at management level.

Q61 Amber Rudd: Just coming in, if I may, on that particular point , although we lament the fact that for 60% of fish stocks there is not scientific evidence, for the 40% on which there is scientific evidence it seems correct to say that the direction of travel is that fish stocks are going down. Would you agree that it is on that basis that it is being inferred that the direction of travel for the 60% is down rather than up?

Barrie Deas: I do not agree with either of those statements. The 60% for which there are no analytical assessments does not mean that we do not know anything about those stocks. There can be a variety of reasons: it can be the models that the scientists are using; it can be historical discard data that are missing; it can be current data that are missing. There is a variety of reasons why it might not be possible or even desirable to provide a population estimate and, therefore, an analytical assessment. What we do know of the stocks, as I said earlier is that, if you take some kind of simple indicator of sustainability, over the last decade the stocks that are fished sustainably have moved from 10% to 40%. That is in the opposite direction, so I would not agree that the stocks are heading in a downward manner. Of course, there are variations and I certainly would not want to make any claims for the Mediterranean, but the stocks in general are headed in a positive direction.

Q62 Chair: Do you welcome the Commissioner’s desire that member states and the Commission should work more closely with those actually fishing?

Barrie Deas : I do. The Green Paper was a very positive document in that sense. It recognised that the top–down command and control approach that has applied to date is not working and that so many initiatives have failed because they are not responsive enough and were tied into many measures; for example, the technical conservation regulation and the cod management plan clearly need to be changed, but are tied into an unresponsive system. There is a movement to a decentralised system, which is initially to regionalised management, but I would go much further towards a type of delegated responsibilities, for which the industry takes on responsibility for various areas of policy. This would certainly be a much more effective approach to conservation and resource policy.

Q63 Chair: Under the Commission proposals, allowable catches have to reduce to allow stocks to recover. Do your members believe that is necessary, at least in the short term?

Barrie Deas: I think that question needs to be answered on a stockbystock basis. I do not think it is the slightest bit helpful to have a blanket statement. Some stocks are at or close to maximum sustainable yield, others have some way to go and others are in mixed fishery configurations. All of that needs to be taken into account. I really think that that is an example of the kind of blanket approach that we really need to get away from.

Q64 Chair: Do believe that it may force some to leave the industry as a consequence of the requirement to reduce the amount of fish?

Barrie Deas: Again, it would all depend on what we were talking about there. If the Commission continues to propose lower and lower cuts on whatever pretext, whether it is data-poor stocks or maximum sustainable yield by 2013-not 2015-and if that was accepted by member states, there would be consequences and fishermen could lose their jobs. I do not think for a second though that member states would accept that type of approach, so I do not think it is a helpful one.

Q65 Chair: Are the proposals likely to have a particular impact on small and family-owned fishing businesses?

Barrie Deas: Again, that is too broad a question. We have the proposals; they are particularly lacking in detail, in terms of the management regime that will apply. I think this is deliberate, in so far as if there is going to be a permissive approach to allow member states to co-operate on a regional basis; they cannot be overly prescriptive at this stage. However, that makes it fairly meaningless to speculate on what the detailed consequences of the proposals would be.

Q66 George Eustice: You have touched on this idea of maximum sustainable yield. I just want to press you a bit more on that because in your evidence you say there are difficulties in achieving that in a mixed fishery for all stocks, but the EU has to set some kind of quantifiable target. You have highlighted the problems; what would be your solution to those difficulties?

Barrie Deas: I think maximum sustainable yield is reasonable for some stocks, but not for others. It is a theoretical concept based on single fisheries and the point is that it cannot be applied in a blunt, blind manner in mixed fisheries. Therefore, the appropriate response is to keep it as a political commitment, but not to make it a legal requirement because otherwise you are tying the whole system into something that may not be achievable, not least of all because of predation patterns. If herring stocks, for example, are very high in the North Sea, there are likely to be consequences for what they eat, and what they eat might be some of the demersal stocks. There are tradeoffs to be made and I just do not think it is in the slightest bit helpful to encumber us by making maximum sustainable yield, which is a theoretical concept, a legal requirement. Let’s keep it as a political commitment and work pragmatically towards it.

Q67 George Eustice: That is the sort of thing that politicians normally say, rather than people in the industry. How do you actually deliver the concept then if it is just there in name but does not actually reflect in any kind of policy? What type of policy would deliver that?

Barrie Deas: It would reflect in policy inasmuch as total allowable catches would be moving stepwise towards achieving maximum sustainable yield. You would look annually at how far we have got, what the best available science was and what the interlinkages are between the stocks. The Commission is coming to recognise that we have to move towards an ecosystem approach; we have to move towards a multispecies approach. There is some tentative work going on in the Baltic which the Commission seem to think points the way forward. I do agree that in terms of long-term management plans it does not really make sense anymore to think in terms of discrete stocks; we have to think more broadly in terms of configurations or groups of stocks that interact with each other. In those situations, you might have to arrive at tradeoffs. For example, does it make sense to allow recovery of cod to its fullest extent if that means that the nephrop stocks, which are economically very valuable, will decline? I am not making a decision one way or the other; I am just saying that there is a question that has to be addressed from an economic point of view because maximum sustainable yield is not really a biological question. It is what is best in economic terms.

Q68 George Eustice: In you first answer you said that it might work for some species but just not all. Are there some where you think this approach would work?

Barrie Deas: There are some stocks that are already at or close to maximum sustainable yield.

Q69 George Eustice: Which ones?

Barrie Deas: Haddock and nephrops are not very far away. Saithe in the North Sea is an interesting one, because for the last four or maybe five years it has been at maximum sustainable yield, but no longer is. It has not been overfished; the fishing mortality is low and the trends are down. It is a recruitment problem or an assessment problem-time will tell. There we have a situation where we have reached maximum sustainable yield, we have done everything required of us, and yet the stock is slipping outside of those boundaries. That just illustrates that this is quite a complex issue and we should not, therefore, tie ourselves into legal requirements that potentially could not be met.

Q70 Neil Parish: Good morning. Your evidence warned that the Commission’s regionalisation proposals lack detail, and are not likely to delivery its ambitions. What specific provision should be written in the CFP regulation to ensure that the fishing industry is involved in the multiannual plans and that they are implemented? How do you see, in these very large Regional Advisory Councils, the member states working together?

Barrie Deas: In our written evidence we were expressing concern that the movement towards regionalisation could be blocked. Given the legal constraints on regionalisation, which mean that it is not possible to have a legislative body at regional level, we have to depend on member states co-operating with each other. Our fear there would be that some member states might not be that interested in co-operating, for a variety of reasons, or that the framework in which that co-operation is supposed to take place is insufficiently flexible. In other words, codecision making will mean that either the Commission will retain micromanagement powers, despite its claim to wish to move rapidly away from that, or that having been just given new powers, the European Parliament might not be very keen in surrendering them and, again, some member states might not be enthusiastic about moving in this direction.

All of those reasons might come into play to prevent the realisation of an effective regional management system, but if it did work, the key players are the fisheries managers, the stakeholders and the fishery scientists. Having them in a room together, making decisions, whether that is at a de facto level or a legal, legislative level, is the core of a regional approach. Certainly, the Regional Advisory Councils have demonstrated that they are capable of putting together pretty sophisticated advice. However, as copartners in a regional management approach of the type I have just described, I think we could see a much more responsive and adaptive system, in the sense that when something is tried you are not tied into it for 10 years. If it is tried and it does not work, then it is reasonably easy to move away from that and try something that does work. That is one of the core problems of our current arrangements, as well as the need to be able to tailor measures to the specific characteristics of fisheries in the regions.

Q71 Neil Parish: Could I press you a bit further regarding your evidence, which described delegating authority for certain measures to producer organisations or RACs. Precisely what measures do you think should be decided in this manner?

Barrie Deas: We are talking about two different things. I see the RACs having a role at the regional level and other groups of fisherman, or rather producer organisations, which are the ones currently best organised-they already take on responsibility for quota management in the UK and other member states-being able to take on, through sustainable fishing plans, responsibility for technical conservation measures, discard reduction and seabed impact mitigation. All of those are entirely consistent with delegated responsibilities and not very far away from the kind of approach that is already in operation in some places in Australia. It is not wild speculation; it is a system that has demonstrated that, with the right kind of incentives, delegations and structures in place, the industry can take on these responsibilities and take them on well.

Q72 Neil Parish: I have just one final question. Some people say that the RACs are-excuse the pun- neither fish nor fowl; they are not really local, they involve too many member states and then in the end, does it actually devolve power down? What is your view of a RAC?

Barrie Deas: We could have a conversation about whether the current RAC areas are appropriate. My view is that there was more consistency between the fisheries in the North Sea and West of Scotland going east to west than there was north to south-the West of Scotland is in with the North Western Waters RAC. The RACs have been exceptionally successful in bringing together groups of fishermen and other stakeholders, and in that way a lot of the blame culture has gone. It was very easy to blame groups of fishermen from other member states for using this or that kind of gear when, at a distance, we did not really know what was being done. That is one of the almost incidental aspects of Regional Advisory Councils; as we produce RACs’ advice we learn more about each other and there is more confidence and trust. From that point of view, I think it has been very successful.

We need to address the gulf between the regional and the local. There is always going to be a tension there because to function efficiently you need to have a limited number of people in the room. On the other hand, you have all these various fisheries and some of them not represented by anybody while others are represented partially. There is certainly a recognised challenge, but I do not have any pat answers for you.

Q73 Amber Rudd: The Commission expects a system of transferable fishing concessions will reduce capacity by enabling inefficient operators to sell their shares and move on and out. Do you think that is a reasonable expectation that will occur in England?

Barrie Deas: I think that is certainly the Commission’s thinking. The Commission is enthusiastic about transferable fishing quotas because it sees them as a means of dealing with overcapacity. In Denmark, when a system of rightsbased management came in, we saw a reduction of about 30% capacity. What I find interesting is that every member state that has a system of transferable fishing concessions of some form or another-so we are talking about Denmark, the Netherlands and the UK-has been associated with fairly large scale publicly funded decommissioning schemes. The question would be: to what extent has publically funded decommissioning set the scene for successful rightsbased management systems? I do not know what the answer is, but I think it is very interesting to consider all of those countries: Denmark was one of the earliest to decommission; the Netherlands had a very large decommissioning scheme that I think took out 50% of the beam trawler capacity; and for the over-10-metres sector in this country we have had five or six rounds of decommissioning and one for the under-10s. That is something that we ought to think very carefully about before rushing into transferable fishing quotas at a European level.

Q74 Chair: Can I just interject? The Germans would say that the Danes have decommissioned, but are now just landing the fish in Germany and that they have used the money to buy German boats and German fishing rights.

Barrie Deas: That is interesting.

Chair: You haven’t heard that?

Barrie Deas: I haven’t heard that, but it doesn’t surprise me because there are Dutch and Spanishowned quotas in the UK. The Factortame case, maybe 15 years ago, made it clear that member states could only reserve their national quota for their national fishermen up to a certain point. The right ended when it conflicted with the rights of movement of capital and establishment, so that does not surprise me.

Of course, we have a system of rightsbased management in the UK. I do not think it is perfect, but I think it has brought certain advantages. There are a number of things that need to be addressed in it, but that is very different from a system applied at European level. First of all, the question would be: is this an area of European competence? TACs are set, but then it is for the member states to manage those quotas at national level, so in a sense that is moving in the opposite direction to regionalisation or decentralisation.

I would be very concerned, having said that we want to move away from topdown, centralised approaches, to have in this respect a European-level transferable fishing quota system, especially as it may be based on a false premise that such a system would solve the problem of overcapacity at a stroke. As I have said, we are not entirely sure whether publicly funded decommissioning is a precondition or a prerequisite for a successful system of rights–based management, because it has been in all the examples so far.

Q75 Amber Rudd: Your evidence suggests that you are concerned that it would cause confusion with the current quota system. How would that manifest itself?

Barrie Deas: I cannot say in detail because we do not know what the detailed rules would be. I just have a concern that what has developed pretty much in an ad hoc, incremental way to suit the conditions in the United Kingdom would not be compatible with a topdown, blanket approach coming from above. My concern is whether the positive aspects of our current system would be undermined

Q76 Amber Rudd: Do you think that the environmental sustainability of the operators’ business, including a contribution to local employment, should be one of the considerations when transferable fishing concessions are considered?

Barrie Deas: I think it is a nice idea that most people intuitively thing positively about, but I also think it is a very, very hard thing to apply in an equitable and fair basis. I think you either have a market system or you have a welfare system and it is very difficult to get the two to match.

Q77 Amber Rudd: There are instances in other markets where markets are regulated so you do not just have a system whereby it moves towards larger suppliers and producers, and the local people, who are perhaps fishermen from the community, are ignored. The current mood, which my colleague is going to ask about in a moment, is very much about trying to support local communities and it would be interesting if your organisation perhaps considered a bit more how we can help local communities maintain their sustainable fishing communities.

Barrie Deas: I see what you are driving at now. No, I think, it is perfectly feasible within a system of rightsbased management to have conditions built into the design of it. One way in which the Danes have done it, for example, is through transferable fishing concessions; a quota can be traded from a small boat to another small boat, or from a big boat to a small boat, but not from a small boat to a big boat. That is a oneway valve, in effect. I think that is perfectly feasible and desirable.

Q78 George Eustice: I wanted to ask you a bit more about fish discards and, in particular, the regulatory discards because you highlighted some of the difficulties in that respect. Are there any additional measures that you think could be included in the CFP regulation to encourage fishermen to fish more selectively and actually reduce the amount of unwanted fish caught?

Barrie Deas: The proposal is to move towards a requirement to land-I say everything, but it is actually named species. It is not too dissimilar from the system that works in Norway. What is important is that such a system has to have flexibility, so what is new in the Commission’s proposal is the mandatory timeframe, not really what is going on already, which is a fisherybyfishery, step-wise, tailored approach. It is very significant that in England discards have been reduced by 50% over the last decade, so this is not something that was recognised as a problem when the TV spotlight went on it; it is something that we have been working at quite consistently.

The point is to maintain that progress, but it has to be done fishery by fishery, and it has to be done by addressing the particular drivers for discards, whether that is unselective gear, whether it is lack of market demand, or whether it is regulatory discards. If we are going to move to a system in which we have to land everything, then it is a logical precondition that we have to remove regulatory discards first. That is just sheer logic, and I see that as a major issue, given we are now discarding very large amounts under the TAC system, under the technical conservation catch composition rules. Those would be the two main culprits, but there are others. This is a sequence and the first part of the sequence has to be to remove the regulatory discards. That does not mean that we should not be progressing. Indeed, we are progressing in addressing the others: the market failures and the selective gear.

Q79 George Eustice: How can you change the system in that way without losing the whole purpose of the quota in the first place? Do you have any ideas of how you would design it so that the quota still has the effect of stopping overfishing?

Barrie Deas: At the moment in the ICES advice, you have two columns. One is "landings" and the other is "discards". Use some of that from the fish that is currently discarded to incentivise the industry. In other words, a portion of that quota should be made available in order to use more selective gear. Aligning the incentives in the industry with the management objectives is an absolutely key part of the reform. If we continue to undermine the management objectives by setting up perverse incentives then we get nowhere and we are just in a cycle of failure. I think there is scope to use the fish that is currently discarded, and accounted for in ICES advice, to create the right kind of incentives to move towards more selective fishing gear. That addresses one particular type of discards.

Q80 Chair: So you must welcome our recommendations in our report on domestic fisheries management in regard to discards?

Barrie Deas: You will have to remind me.

Chair: We came to two broad conclusions. One is to roll out the work that has already been done in Devon.

Barrie Deas: The 50% project.

Chair: And also encouraging celebrity chefs, supermarkets and others to broaden appetites in markets where currently there is no appetite at present. Are you broadly in agreement with those?

Barrie Deas: Absolutely. What was interesting about the 50% project was that the different vessels found different solutions to the same problem, and I think that is what creating the right kind of incentive structures can achieve. There is a lot of ingenuity there; it just needs to be harnessed.

Q81 Chair: Can I just take you back to something you said in answer to an earlier question from Mr Parish? Obviously, this is the first time that fisheries reform will be decided by codecision and I think you said that the European Parliament might not want to give its role up. If it is being decentralised anyway, they would still be involved in the framework decision, but not in the nitty-gritty.

Barrie Deas: That is very true. The question, though, is about what is in that framework. If, at European level, you set not just broad objectives, standards and principles but go on to talk about targets and timetables, then you have something that is not very different from what we currently have with the cod management plan, where we are tied into an arrangement that is not achieving its objectives in terms of reducing fishing mortality in the desired way, is creating perverse incentives, and is creating extreme economic stress within the industry because of automatic preprogrammed reductions in fishing mortality, in effort-in other words, days at sea in particular, but also the TACs. Such an arrangement would still be possible under the codecision framework if that degree of micromanagement was retained.

There is a bit of smoke-and-mirrors here because that particular piece of legislation, the cod management plan, was sold to member states on the basis that it would increase flexibility for member states. They would be given a pot of kilowatt days to manage, rather than having rigid categories. The reality is that if the timetables and targets are set at European level then we still have a very, very topdown, cumbersome, blunt approach that is exactly the kind of thing that we need to move away from. Therefore, getting the balance right between the micro-level and the framework is absolutely critical.

Q82 Chair: Just finally, are there other fishermen in other countries who support the views you have expressed on RACs and the way forward?

Barrie Deas: Yes. Later this week I will be going to Dublin. The North Western Waters RAC have very similar views. Next week here in London there is a meeting of the North Sea RAC Demersal Working Group. Very similar views are expressed at industry level.

Chair: That has been extremely helpful. We are expecting the Commission to publish fact sheets before the end of the year. We might possibly consult you. I get the impression that the Commission is moving away from micromanagement, but we hear very much what you say and we are very grateful to your participation in our inquiry. Thank you very much indeed.

Barrie Deas: Thank you.

Examination of Witness

Witness: Bertie Armstrong, Chief Executive, Scottish Fishermen’s Federation, gave evidence.

Q83 Chair: Mr Armstrong, good morning and welcome. Thank you very much indeed for being with us today and contributing to our inquiry into a reform of the Common Fisheries Policy. Just for the record, could you introduce yourself and who you represent?

Bertie Armstrong: Good morning. I am Bertie Armstrong, and I am the Chief Executive of the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation.

Q84 Chair: Could you just talk us through how you are involved with Defra in the current arrangements for negotiations?

Bertie Armstrong: Certainly. The Scottish Fishermen’s Federation is the trade association that deals with the catching sector north of the border. There are nine constituent associations. Barrie and I work hand-in-hand in most matters; we will both be going to the RAC in Dublin in two days’ time. About 75% of the effort exists north of the border with regard to the heavyweight end of fishing, the vessels that work a little further offshore and produce more volume.

As you are fully aware, the management of fishing is devolved, but it is executive devolution to execute the rules as set by Brussels and agreed by the member state, which is the United Kingdom. We are endeavouring in the Scottish industry to make absolutely sure that Defra and the organisation previously known as the Scottish Executive are hand-in-hand in this matter. Indeed, that is largely the case; there are no areas of dispute where there would be advantage or disadvantage gained if a direction were taken that would split the two Administrations. There perhaps is a nuance in how the Administrations regard transferable fishing concessions, but it is not something that either Barrie or I would regard as seriously detrimental. That is the position of the Scottish industry.

We are vitally interested in this and vitally interested that the UK as a member state acts as just that: as a joinedup member state, and that we do not have any diversions of the argument that would serve one purpose or another other than the furtherance of sustainable fishing in the UK.

Q85 Chair: Thank you. In your evidence you say that the overly detailed, onesize-fits-all management from the centre is a systematic fault with the current fisheries policy. Recognising the limits imposed by the EU treaties, how should the Common Fisheries Policy regulation be amended to establish the practical means of collaboration that you are seeking?

Bertie Armstrong: The proposals recognise that almost a central comment, from almost everybody, including the Commission itself, was the one on the wrong nature of topdown micromanagement. When we got to the proposals themselves, after a hopeful Green Paper, lip service is played to them, again, but legal barriers are placed rather than attacked in the proposals. Paragraph three of the preamble of the scene-setting explains in a short sentence that, "Provisions in this proposal relating to the conservation of marine biological resources fall within the exclusive competence of the Union and the subsidiarity principle, therefore, does not apply". The legal barrier is placed, despite the absolutely consistent opinion from everybody that some sort of regionalisation should take place, moving away from the dictionary definition of subsidiarity inside the European Union.

In answer to the question as to what form that collaboration should take, and recognising, as Barrie said, that we are not going to have an extra layer of management or further bodies, some sort of workable college of member states in appropriate regions is the only sensible way to go ahead. The present proposals delegate straight to individual member states, whereas, as probably everybody in this room recognises, the whole point about fisheries management is collaboration because fish do not know the national boundaries, except in a few cases.

Q86 Chair: Obviously, the legal base is the legal base, but if in practice it means, as we explored with Mr Deas, that only the broadest parameters will be set out in the framework and the details were actually worked out in each specific area-the North Sea, the Baltic, the Irish Sea-that presumably would be what you are seeking.

Bertie Armstrong: Yes. We have been characterising it with a slightly flippant, superficial statement that ideally the Union should issue, "There is the amount of fish that you should catch. Go ahead and catch only that, and do not wreck the place while you do it". The details, again, have been picked over: for instance, the setting of longterm management plans, the setting of technical measures and how best to catch the fish with consideration for the environment and discarding is something that should be left to the regional level. It will vary from place to place or even fishery to fishery. For instance, in the west coast of Scotland, you might find a haddock fishery, which is under the spotlight just now, and you might find that the UK and Ireland are the only two states that are really involved in the practical measures, whereas in nephrops, in the North Sea, there are maybe three or four nations, with two extremely dominant ones, which are dealing with that.

Q87 Thomas Docherty: On transferable fishing concessions, I recall you had some fairly strong words back in July when the CFP first published. Should the CFP regulations prohibit or allow the transferring of fishing concessions between member states.

Bertie Armstrong: This is something that I hope the Committee will find of interest. There are two almost conflicting requirements here. In terms of the strong statements in July, we have always said that there needs to be some way of dividing a commonly accessed resource between the member states of Europe and beyond. Whatever way you choose there will be defects, but one that we have adopted is relative stability, for all its faults. The problem is that things change with issues no less than climatic change, for instance, on distribution and abundance of stocks, so there needs to be an ability somewhere to make adjustments.

As a matter of principle, we would like that relative stability and annual share of fishing stock to be regarded almost as a heritage. Look at the geography: the UK should have in perpetuity a share of this resource, but what are we going to do about making nips and tucks in accordance with the flexibility required to have fish? If you are not to discard fish in a regulatory way, then you will need quotas. If a stock has appeared in great abundance in a way that was not the case in the past, and I was thinking of hake in the North Sea as a background to that, then you might find that we need to do something member state to member state.

There are already regulations that allow leasing or swaps between states. Leasing between states would seem to make sense, so you do not lose your heritage, but you are able, for flexibility’s sake, to trade. In one sense that allows, if member states agree, transfer between member states. That is a reflection of reality; that exists currently, so there is nothing different about that, but I know the Scottish Government has made a great song and dance about the possibility of there being large-scale transfers away from the United Kingdom-in this case the northern land-as a result of that. It remains to be seen whether or not that is actually the case.

You could construct in your minds scenarios where you might lose big chunks of what you might regard as your heritage. It will take two seconds to explain. For instance, there is presently an international todo over mackerel. Iceland and the Faroes have decided that in order to achieve a share that they do not have they are going to hold us all to ransom-that is the way I would describe it-by grossly overcatching. Were that to lead to the circumstance where in four or five years’ time-and please help us this is not the case-there is no resolution, then you might find that the once-valuable quota for that stock held by a UK fleet that has consolidated mightily and is now 25 wellcapitalised vessels with sufficient quota to keep going might be at risk from the mackerel industry going to the UK Government and saying, "I’ve just had a wonderful offer from somewhere else; let me do it".

Q88 Thomas Docherty: Can you think of any specific measures that could be introduced to safeguard the Scottish fishing fleet?

Bertie Armstrong: The Scottish fishing fleet? Actually, we are thinking more along the lines of the United Kingdom fishing fleet because the rules ought to apply to us all. We might do something very careful with the wording of the one sentence that allows permanent transfer between member states.

Q89 Chair: It is particularly historic rights that Scotland might have that others within the waters may not have that you might be concerned about.

Bertie Armstrong: No; it is more a reflection of the actuality of commerce now. There is quite a lot of socio-economic dependence in the fishing communities around Scotland. When we talked about fishing communities earlier, the idea I got was that you may be talking about smaller communities served by smaller vessels. Of course, there are other communities like Peterhead, Fraserburgh and Lerwick in the Shetland Islands, which have larger-scale fishing, but are equally and in exactly the same way dependent on fishing. You would wish to protect that in largely the same way as was described for protecting the communities served by the smaller-scale fleet.

Q90 Thomas Docherty: The Scottish Government practises a methodology where those fishermen who practise conservation methods are rewarded with additional days at sea. First of all, do you think that is the right thing and, if so, do you believe that is the type of criteria that should be used for transferable fishing concessions?

Bertie Armstrong: I would give exactly the same answer as Barrie does to tying that to transferable fishing concessions. That would upset the entire quota system and introduce something different into the way quota is allocated and we would not advocate that. In the written evidence that I submitted we mentioned that the system that we have in place now looks not a million miles away from that which is proposed, and that is the case. The problem is that that now exists, and unwinding or changing that in radical ways will have great consequences because people have, in good faith, read the rules, seen what was allocated to them and built their businesses upon that. It would be a bit like curing homelessness by removing everybody’s property from them in the United Kingdom and starting again with a redistribution system. You simply cannot do that and you simply cannot do that with quotas already there, so we have to tread very carefully. That is something that is not brought out in the proposal or much in people’s response because it is what we have and, if that is what they are proposing, there you go.

There are several consequences of that. It introduces an extra layer of cost. It has done already in the United Kingdom and any other member state thinking of doing that will introduce into the operating costs of their fishing fleets an extra layer of cost. I would agree with Barrie’s assessment and state that the much-described experience of Denmark, where transferable quotas are tied to a reduction in capacity happened to coincide with TFCs. In fact, as a matter of coincidence, that fleet needed to be consolidated anyway, and would, one way or another by public decommissioning or by commercial collapse, have consolidated. TFCs have been accredited as an instrument of doing that. That is not, in my view, strictly the case.

The other thing that I need to say is that in the regulation it actually states that this is some kind of pension funding. Our experience in the United Kingdom is that that sort of assumption would move the commodity away from the active fishing fleet into people’s pension funds and they may decide not to sell it all, but to lease it, particularly if it is a year when it is terribly valuable and you find that instead of neatly removing from public finance one area of pension problems, you have in fact introduced a completely undesired reaction in removing the raw material from the operator.

Q91 Amber Rudd: The Commission’s commitment to restore fish stocks to above the level of maximum sustainable yield will require a reduction in fishing levels and even the closure of some fisheries. You referred earlier to these large fisheries that may be in trouble from that sort of approach amongst others. Have you estimated the economic impact that this might have on the Scottish fishing industry?

Bertie Armstrong: We have not because, I think, for reasons largely covered by Barrie, it is complicated and changes stock by stock. If I may say, it is a feature of the questions that you seem to have made an assumption that the trend is downwards.

Amber Rudd: Yes.

Bertie Armstrong: And there must be a presumption, therefore, against fishing. Let me tell you that in terms of the haddock stock in the west coast of Scotland three years ago there was a recommendation for zero fishing. All these commercial stocks do these spike recruitments and MSY would be available in the west of Scotland haddock this year if we had a 410% increase in the quota. It is not all stocks heading downward at all. In fact, in the west coast of Scotland, a simple lack of fishing, a lack of numbers of vessels has caused that stock, with two years of spike recruitment, to get to a level where MSY could be achieved tomorrow if we had a 410% increase. It is nothing to do with this investigation, but our fight this year will be to somehow align the abundance of fish as they present themselves to a net with the quota, in order to stop regulatory discarding. Likewise, North Sea herring could, with a very large increase, be placed at MSY now, but it is inside a management plan that is limited to 15% steps. It has been proceeding towards MSY at 15% steps. The garden is neither completely rosy, but most especially not completely dull and dreary.

Q92 Amber Rudd: The problem with that is we have had evidence that is pretty unequivocal, although as we discussed earlier we cannot properly measure the 61% that is unaccounted for, that the 40% is generally downwards. This is why the CFP is making these assumptions, which is partly what is guiding the new discussions.

Bertie Armstrong: I would repeat the STECF figures that Barrie quoted. It is not correct to say that 40% is downwards. However, you did make some points earlier on about the science that are very interesting and I would agree with those The science is terribly important, and as Barrie pointed out, it is not necessarily just the quality of the science; it is the quality of the management decisions that are made on that. The two fundamental problems we have got at this point in the economic history of Europe, and the world, are that we are not going to spend more money on scientific research, or the expenditure will be limited. Secondly, we have been doing fisheries science for a century and a half and we are now saying, "Look, 60% of it is a bit cloudy", so that means there is a systemic problem with the system and we therefore need to address it as avidly as we address the presumption against fishing. In order to take account of the precautionary principle of this defect, we need to address the defect also. In a nutshell, more data from the fishing fleets and a careful look at the modelling and the system that is producing this advice are required. There are several initiatives underway, generally from the RACs and scientific bodies.

Q93 Amber Rudd: Thank you. I would endorse that; the more information we get, the better the decision making can be. I f there are reductions in the amount of fish allowed to be fished in these communities , what do you think the consequences will be?

Bertie Armstrong: Clearly, there will be more consolidation. I think there is little dispute about that. It is very hard to do straight calculations and say, "This year we will lose 15%". You can have rules of thumb, but if there were to be a general presumption against fishing rather than a careful move towards MSY, then the socio-economic results would be much worse.

Q94 Amber Rudd: If there is a temporary reduction and it is stated as a temporary reduction in order to see certain recoveries, are there any proposals that we should be considering in order to help those communities on a temporary basis?

Bertie Armstrong: We have not formed any proposal along those lines because we think it is more complicated than that. It is not a step process where you get to MSY and everything is fine. Professor Kaiser, of whom most of you will have heard, from Bangor University, recently said that at any time in history there will be four or five of the big commercial fish stocks in the northern continental shelf in need of recovery. This is not necessarily because of overfishing, but because of the normal cycles, and if you left them alone, that is what would happen. We need to recognise that there is no eventual nirvana, when we can all relax and there will be fish everywhere. Continuous effort is required.

Q95 Neil Parish: Good afternoon. It is said that the scientific data required to set sustainable fishing levels are only available for about 40% of EU stocks, whilst for other stocks a precautionary approach is required. "Precautionary" in Europe is a bit like "sustainability": it is the most overused word. What do you consider to be a precautionary approach and how would you assess that?

Bertie Armstrong: The precautionary approach, regrettably, in terms of Commission proposals for catching on an annual basis, tends to be a presumption against fishing: if in doubt, just don’t do it. That quickly runs you into difficulties, particularly in mixed fisheries. Where the precautionary approach arrives at a formulaic stepping down, as in the cod recovery plan, you very quickly run into big problems because if you have a compounded-up reduction of 15% or 25% it takes a very small number of years before you are deeply in trouble with regard to the economic output of that. Demonstrably, in many cases you have not done much to assist the stock either, because quite a lot of discarding in mixed fisheries has occurred. The precautionary approach needs to be very carefully attended to stock by stock.

As for the much quoted figure of there being only 40% of the stocks subject to analytical assessment, it does not mean, as Barrie has said, that there is a complete dearth of information and we are in the dark about all the other stocks. That is not the case. There is landing data, trendbased data and other elements of data that are helpful in seeing where you are with the stock. If you apply the yardstick and you ask a scientist a scientific question, you will get exactly a scientific answer. Perhaps the result will then be an excessive use of the precautionary principle.

Q96 Neil Parish: Carrying on from this line of question, there always is an argument, and there is always likely to be, between what the fishermen believe the stocks to be and what the scientists believe the stocks to be. I don’t know whether you want to answer this question, but is it a good idea to have more scientists on board fishing vessels to be able to actually see what is being caught so that they can analyse it?

Bertie Armstrong: Yes is the short answer to that. There always will be the difference you have described. Curiously enough, there has been some research of late that lined up fishermen’s surveys-there is one done annually in the North Sea-with the actual scientific trends and there was very close correlation, but with a time difference. You would expect that because the fisherman sees what is happening today. The bottom surveys, the landing data and the data crunching take a finite amount of time, and so the approved scientific information is a little time-late. The curves are very much coincident, interestingly, whereas if you stand at the quayside you would always get a different story. But the formally assessed fishermen’s opinion does follow the scientific advice.

Q97 Neil Parish: Further to that, then, there is an argument, and one I quite see the logic in, that the only way you will ever actually know what the fishing stocks are for the various species and what has been caught is if you actually ban all discards and you actually land everything that is caught so that you can analyse it. What is your view on that?

Bertie Armstrong: I understand the thought. It is a very expensive way of going about the business of arriving at data because if you have to retain everything you catch it will grossly change what is inside your fishery. The discarding that happens over the side will become discarding onto the quayside, for which you may have little or no commercial purpose. It would alter the operations of the vessels.

Something that has been happening, of course, is the use of CCTV. It was introduced specifically as an anti-cod-discarding measure or to give assurance that cod was not being discarded from those vessels that had enough cod quota. If you take on the cameras and get some extra cod as a result of that, you are not going to discard it, and I know exactly what you are going to discard because I am going to film every fish. There is a very long way to go with the image processing and the use of the cameras with regard to producing scientific output, but that is an area of potential benefit. Instead of a scientist on every boat, which is impossibly expensive, cameras on more boats may be a way ahead.

Q98 Neil Parish: Don’t you think that if fishermen knew that if they were going to cast their nets and that they were going to catch a lot of fish that they would normally be able to discard, they would be quite a lot more careful in what they actually caught?

Bertie Armstrong: In Scotland, we introduced a thing called catch quotas, which was about cod and it operated as I described. If you volunteered for the scheme, you got your cameras and you got extra cod because it came from the discards column: the scientific assessment has a certain amount that is going to be discarded, so you take it out of there and you give it to the catch column, and when it is done it is done-you have to stop fishing when you have got to the limit of your cod. You cannot fish for anything else because you are going to catch it as a bycatch. That has caused those vessels to modify their behaviour sharply and to do their damnedest to use their fishing knowledge to avoid catching more cod than they had called for. That is a work in progress; it is not possible to say that I am definitely going to catch 200 tonnes of haddock.

Q99 Amber Rudd: The scientific data required to set sustainable fishing levels are only available for about 40%-we have done this-while the other stocks-

Chair: A general response to the ban of discards, if you will.

Amber Rudd: Sorry. Are you concerned that the approach to the ban on discards will end up doing more harm than good?

Bertie Armstrong: I am for the timescale with which it will be applied; I have much the same comments as Barrie. No one disagrees in any shape or form that discarding is ridiculous and should stop as quickly as possible. The underlying problem is often regulatory, so we need a regulatory attack as well. Regrettably, the whole thing has been hijacked.

Amber Rudd: By the public.

Bertie Armstrong: Yes, with oversimplified arguments. In response to media revelations, Mrs Damanaki should have said in the first place, "I know about this; the industry knows about this; it is a work in progress. It is abhorrent, but we are trying to do something about it" instead of saying, "This is preposterous. I thump the table with my fist and ban it". There was confusion between the political objective, which is a valid one, and the practical solution. A ban is not a practical solution.

It is very difficult for us, from the industry, to argue for this because it sounds like we are arguing for discarding. That is not the case. We are arguing for the continued sustainable harvesting of fish while we deal with this problem. It might be argued that the stimulus of a ban has certainly woken everybody up, but there now needs to be some careful work done on the timescale to make sure that we do not actually build in failure. It would be wrong to build in failure or the incentive to try and work your way around this regulation because it simply does not work. That would be a tragedy; that would be worse.

Chair: You have been incredibly generous with your time. We are very grateful to you for participating in our inquiry.

Examination of Witness

Witness: Jerry Percy, Chief Executive, New Under Ten Fishermen’s Association, gave evidence.

Q100 Chair: Mr Percy, welcome. May I thank you for joining us today and contributing to our inquiry into reform of the Common Fisheries Policy? If you would just remind us who you are and who you represent.

Jerry Percy: My name is Jerry Percy and I am the Chief Executive, albeit on a part-time basis, to the New Under Ten Fishermen’s Association.

Q101 Chair: Does it concern you that the Commission appears to have proceeded in the past on the basis of unsatisfactory scientific evidence?

Jerry Percy: I have to admit I am no fishery scientist. One thing that has occurred to me is that I always used to think that if you had two fishermen in a room, you would get three opinions. It would be the same for fishery scientists. That is one of the problems we have in that there does not seem to be sufficient clarity in scientific terms, and you have already heard that there are differences of opinion. There seems to be a plethora of statistics, scientific and other advice circulating around this debate.

We do feel that it is not before time that there is, as has been suggested by some members of the Committee, a closer relationship between fishermen and scientists, for the reasons you have already heard: fishery science is expensive; it’s confusing. We, as well as others here, are members of the Fisheries Science Partnership that advocates a better relationship between the two and I think, to be fair, we are generally and collectively moving more towards a more practical relationship between the two groups because it is the only way from a cost perspective and from a practical perspective that we are going to get anywhere. At the moment, we effectively have two people standing on the same boat, one seeing one fish and one seeing 10 fish. That is no way to be able to manage something for the future; we really need to get to the heart of that and deal with it.

Q102 Chair: Before I return to the fish stocks, the UK, Defra, is proceeding on the basis of an under-10 fleet for some of its proposals; the EU is proceeding on the basis of under-12. Is that discriminating against your fishermen?

Jerry Percy: Whether it is discriminating or not, it is shaping up to be a bit of a mess. We did question Defra when they proceeded with their recent consultation quite specifically on under-10s, given that everyone was aware that Europe were talking about not just under-12s as a dividing line but under-12s not using towed gear. This begs the question: if you are 11 metres and you are using both passive and mobile gear, where do you stand in this whole business? The short answer is I do not know. There seem to be opportunities for significant confusion. I do not know whether it is going to discriminate; it is certainly terribly unhelpful in the current debate. As I say, we have raised it again with Defra; we are awaiting the ministerial response to the consultation and if that says a particular set of ideas that then contradict the proposals from the Commission, then frankly we are all going around in circles yet again.

Q103 Chair: Have you had any response from Defra to those points?

Jerry Percy: We are awaiting the Minister to sign off Defra’s response to the consultation on domestic management, that is the over-10 issues; frankly, until we have that very specific response-we have had discussions, but it is generally just talk-it is difficult to answer the question specifically.

Q104 Chair: Perhaps you might like to revert to us on the basis of your assessment of their response?

Jerry Percy: I would be very pleased to.

Q105 Chair: As part of our inquiry that would be very helpful. The overall objective is to restore stocks above levels that deliver the maximum sustainable yield by 2015; I know we have been signed up to that since 2002, but is it appropriate?

Jerry Percy: As I said at the outset, I am no fishery scientist. It would seem, from my perspective, that MSY, as a target and as a single target, is somewhat lacking in aspiration, though I can see the arguments for it. I doubt, from my knowledge of the direction we are going, that we are not going to achieve maximum sustainable yield across the board by 2015. As you have heard, stocks tend to go up and down for a whole range of reasons, not just the fishing pressure upon them. I am always concerned with these very fixed pledges that state, "This is going to happen by this time in this way" because that it is producing a hostage to fortune. I think it is a good target, but whether we can reach it or not, I am not equipped to answer.

Q106 Chair: What specific impact do you think the Commission proposals, particularly on restoring stocks, will have on the economic sustainability of the under-10-metre fleet, bearing in mind that they are looking at 12 metres and you are looking at 10?

Jerry Percy: We fall into that under-12-metre anyway. There is a whole argument to be had about the transferable fishing concessions in that respect, but if they are talking about cuts, even in the short term, there is a very significant number of under-10s and, I have to say, some over-10s as well, that are on the brink of bankruptcy and we do not have sufficient resources now for many of the vessels to maintain a reasonable living. Any short-term further reductions in access would have a disproportionately large effect on small scale people. Of that there is absolutely no doubt. I have talked to members around the country, and you may know that some of the allocations at the moment are for just a few kilos a month; we are talking about 50 kilos a month for cod earlier in the year. With all due respect, I could probably eat 50 kilos of cod a month, never mind try and build a business on it.

Chair: That is very helpful.

Q107 Neil Parish: Good afternoon. In terms of the European Fisheries Fund, the Commission’s proposals end the decommissioning and other subsidies related to capacity management. Will this affect your members?

Jerry Percy: Not directly. As you have heard, we have had a range of decommissioning elements. The Court of Auditors has greatly criticised them for the decommissioning scheme. Frankly, we have stood on the sidelines, and have watched over many years the over-10 sector getting very significant decommissioning funds. There was a Defra report last year that effectively said-I paraphrase, of course-that £126 million was spent on decommissioning. It largely has not worked and in some areas has increased capacity. In terms of under-10s, we have had one small and very badly targeted decommissioning. I do feel that there is a place for decommissioning, but it needs to be much more effectively planned and managed than it has been previously. It is a way of reducing capacity on a fair and equitable basis. I do not believe that forcing people into bankruptcy is a fair and equitable way of reducing capacity. Defra have suggested that perhaps a jointfunded decommissioning scheme may be appropriate. I am not quite sure where they think we are going to get the money from to jointly fund that sort of thing; I think they did suggest some of the more wealthy NGOs, but I think that was hopefully somewhat tongueincheek.

Q108 Neil Parish: It has been argued with some of the decommissioning in the past that some member states, in particular, might have decommissioned some boats but have then built exceptionally good, powerful boats and actually increased their fishing capacity. Would you recognise that?

Jerry Percy: I recognise that 100% considering the level of corruption in terms of money spent in subsidising decommissioning, modernising in Europe. It’s not a phrase you will hear me say very often, but Greenpeace did a very good job in producing a report last year that highlighted the abuses of European funding by some of our southern neighbours, he said diplomatically.

Neil Parish: I don’t know who you are talking about, but carry on.

Jerry Percy: I hesitate to say. There has been massive abuse of this system. Again, as the UK member state, we are not absolutely squeaky clean. We are not that bad; we tend to follow the rules, God help us, when almost nobody else in Europe does, but from not just a UK perspective but an under-10 perspective, we have sat on the sidelines watching massive amounts. I recently read a statistic-I hate them-that there has been €900 million of fishery subsidy in the last however many years and we sit there thinking, "We haven’t had it. Where the devil’s it gone?" You can see where some practical spending of these monies would actually make massive benefits and yet it seems the whole system is predicated against what would appear, from our perspective, to be a fair and equitable system.

Q109 Neil Parish: Thank you. I think I encouraged you into bad ways there, so I think I had better move on to the next question. Regarding the support to help fishermen diversify into other activities, is that an appropriate way to make up for reduced fishing opportunities? If it were, what effect would that have on coastal communities?

Jerry Percy: I raised this with inshore fishermen around the coast and I cannot repeat precisely what they said because it would inappropriate to do so, but the general view is, "It is not our fault". That is the phrase that comes back to me time and time again when I talk to small scale guys around the coast. They suffer from the situation we have at the moment in terms of stocks, scientific assessments and yearonyear cuts. We are, as this Committee is well aware, not the masters of our own destiny in terms of allocation or managing our own particular destiny. The view around the coast is, "Well, actually, this is not our fault. We have not been the cause". Although I represent the New Under 10 Fishermen’s Association I have to say that what we are talking about, very broadly, is low impact. It is not about size; it was an arbitrary length; it has come from the Commission now, but it was an arbitrary length introduced by Government some years ago to split the fleet up. I have to say that a 9.99 metre scallop dredger in an appropriate place is far less sustainable than a 15 metre longliner using sustainable methods.

Neil Parish: I see.

Jerry Percy: I do not want to get too dogmatic about this. I think there is a real opportunity for the whole approach of European funding to be focussed far more on the outcome or the impact of one’s effort than in terms of 10 metre, 9 metre or 15 metre.

Q110 Amber Rudd: The Commission proposes a mandatory system of transferable fishing concessions for the over-12-metres. Would you support the extension of this into the under-12-metres?

Jerry Percy: Under no circumstances, I have to say. Again, this Committee would be well aware of our views on the current situation, as has already been said. We effectively have an ITQ system in this country anyway that we are outside of and have no influence upon. However, in turn, that has a very significant influence on our ability to access fishing opportunities. The implementation of TFCs, even to the over-12-metre fleet or under using towed gear, will only further seek to cement this iniquitous system. The idea of internationally tradable concessions fills me with fear and trepidation. There are any number of folk out there who would seek to maximise their financial returns through selling off what is undoubtedly a national, public resource to the highest bidder in Europe. Again, we all know where a lot of those come from. It is beyond my comprehension how we can feel that that is appropriate.

In brief, we benefit from swaps; we have the ability to lease some elements of fish from the over-10 metre sector, but you look at the quota sheets on a weekly basis, which is who has caught what, where and when, for the over-10 sector, because they are split up by producer organisation, and then for the under-10s just as an under-10 sector and there is very significant movements of fish out, God knows where. The system is insufficiently transparent to be able to identify it and, as you well know-again, you have asked Defra and they have admitted that they are unaware what goes on on a day-to-day basis. This is UK plc’s-

Amber Rudd: Asset.

Jerry Percy: -Cake. If it is being leased or swapped away now to the detriment of the sector that I represent and we have no control over, I think we can be forgiven for becoming somewhat paranoid about what is happening behind the scenes that may have a very significant impact on our ability to survive.

Q111 Amber Rudd: Given the circumstances, you would like to see them introduced for the under-12-metres because that would be a way of cementing-I hate to use the word "quota"-the amount fishermen can fish for; it would enable them a bit.

Jerry Percy: I do not see that tradable transferable fishing concessions-it is just another lovely three letter acronym; just what we need in fisheries management these days-will do anything other than underpin the situation we are already faced with, which has disadvantaged the under-10-metre fleet since it was introduced. This is not just a dogmatic view that one would expect me to give out. I think most folk would agree, whether they are over-10 or under-10, that with this system: "Them’s the rules, that’s what we’ve got". It does not mean that it is fair or equitable and this is an opportunity for the Commission and the member states especially-so much of this is down to them. The member states can choose to keep the under-12s out of it. It is going to be managed altogether, but the member state can choose to exempt under-12s not using towed gear from it. At the same time, the proposals say that member states can retain up to 5% of fishing opportunities, that is the quota, to reward those who reduce bycatches. In my view, with all due respect, that sets a precedent that if you are going to retain an element of that national quota, which is ostensibly a public resource, although it is arguably property, to reward those who reduce their impact, then, by definition, you could also retain a percentage to reward those who already do so.

Q112 Amber Rudd: If you had the transferable rights only transferable within the same community, and the last witness discussed a oneway valve, would that meet with the approval of your community?

Jerry Percy: Unfortunately not; that was a proposal put forward by Defra in their domestic consultation recently, but it was a temporary one, not a permanent one. They had suggested a temporary one and there is an equal danger, which was actually alluded to, of aggregation within the sector. That represents an equal danger and, unfortunately, I think all these ideas tinker at the edges where the bottom line, love it or hate it, depending on where you are looking from, is that access to fishing opportunities has achieved a monetary value. The moment it achieves a monetary value it will inevitably result in these consequences, both intended and unintended. There are global examples where this has, almost without exception, denuded small scale, generally low impact, generally coastal communities-and I take Bertie’s point that coastal communities are big and small-in terms of access to the fish on their doorsteps. That has to be unacceptable. This is why we have proposed to Defra, in terms of their domestic consultation, for an inshore PO that ringfences the existing quota, but importantly not as individual FQAs, Fixed Quota Allocations, but to ringfence it so it does not achieve a monetary value, because if it does, we will lose it.

Q113 Amber Rudd: One of the ways to mitigate the effects of the consolidation is to have an inshore under-10-metre PO. Do you have any other proposals to work against the sort of aggregation that you discussed?

Jerry Percy: No, that is the idea we have come up with, that we need to ringfence it on a collective basis. None of these things are simple; it is not, "This will solve this problem". There are, as you have already heard, interconnected problems in terms of management, science and so on and so forth. It is very much to balance the books in terms of the under- and over-10-metre sector and redress the balance, not only in terms of allocation-that is a debate that is ongoing-but also in terms of the ability to generate resources. There was a mention previously about the joint–funded decommissioning; because there is no inshore PO-and I stress it is inshore rather than "under-10" because there are under-10 and over-10 interests in this-there is no single body, as there is in the over-10 sector where there is a range of POs, that has over the years generated very significant resources that they can use to buy, sell, lease and so on and so forth. There is no body in the same way with the small-scale sector and we need to have that to be able to build resources to work on an equal footing and, dare I say, a partnership with the rest of the fleet.

Q114 Amber Rudd: Can I just move us onto discards? Do you think that the under-10-metre is more or less effective than the over 10s on the whole issue of discards?

Jerry Percy: I think it is a common problem; I could not say where the balance lies. I can only speak from a small scale perspective. I have to say that, referring back to what I was saying about low impact fisheries, the under-10-metre fleet very largely tends to utilise passive gear: nets, pots, lines.

Amber Rudd: Passive gear?

Jerry Percy: Yes, passive or static gear. These are gill nets, tangle nets, trammel nets, long lines, pots and traps, that sort of thing. We tend to have a significantly lower discard rate anyway, for a range of reasons that are hopefully reasonably obvious. Our concern is that we are not being rewarded for that additional sustainability, especially in terms of the allocation of resources. I think regulatory discards are the main issue, if you looked at a graph of causes; you will know, certainly in the south-east, in the last two years the cod fishery in the eastern channel has been prolific despite scientific advice that there were problems with it. You might expect fishermen to talk to officials and say, "Actually, there are plenty of fish". I speak to hundreds of fishermen all around the coast and, almost without exception, they are saying, "Listen". I know, because I have seen the level of discards, that there is massive amounts of discarding going on, even with the most sustainable fishing methods, whether they be long lines-I don’t know how much the Committee knows-where with hook and line you will bring up fish that very often you can return, certainly in shallow waters or with gill nets, where the mesh sides tend to stay open, so by definition smaller fish will swim through. They do not have to have an escape reaction as they require in a mobile gear trawl. If you have a mesh that allows juvenile fish to swim through, by definition that is very much more sustainable. Even so, even if we up the mesh size from 80mm to 100mm, up to 180mm mesh in the eastern channel, you will just catch bigger cod. We are discarding, but it is regulatory.

Q115 Amber Rudd: Okay, so if there were a ban on discards, in quite heavy-handed way, as might come, would the fleet be badly affected?

Jerry Percy: Of course, yes. I think that is the key message you have had from each of us.

Amber Rudd: It is indeed.

Jerry Percy: As I said in our submission, discards are an abomination. There is no doubt, from every perspective. You can be assured that if you spent considerable time, trouble and effort and risked the life of you and your crew to get out there and catch fish, standing on the deck of your boat at three o’clock in the morning having to throw half of it back is nobody’s idea of fun. The great danger is, yes, we all agree that we should do it. You can use whatever phrase you like-carrots and sticks, aligning incentives with management objectives, whatever you like-but I think the time has come to focus far more clearly on it. The public response has been overwhelming; there have been kneejerk reactions, as you would expect, but nevertheless it should, quite correctly, focus the mind that within a reasonable timescale, bearing in mind the practicalities of it, we can achieve that.

Q116 Chair: Finally, briefly, could I just ask what criteria you believe should be used to determine the membership of the Regional Advisory Councils?

Jerry Percy: They need to be entirely representative of all sectors of the fleet. It has been partly our fault; it has been partly the system; it has been partly the lack of resources that there has not been effective, specific representation of small-scale interests, and I think the Commissioner has recognised very clearly that that needs to change. She has already gone on record to say that we should be allocated more resources to ensure that Regional Advisory Councils and other representative bodies are exactly that.

Chair: Thank you very much indeed for being so very generous with your time in participating in our inquiry.

Jerry Percy: Not at all, thank you.

Chair: We stand adjourned. Thank you.