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

House of COMMONS

Oral EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE the

Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee

Reform of the Common Fisheries Policy

Wednesday 9 November 2011

DR Euan Dunn and DR Mireille Thom

Jim Portus

Evidence heard in Public Questions 275 - 342

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee

on Wednesday 9 November 2011

Members present:

Miss Anne McIntosh (Chair)

George Eustice

Barry Gardiner

Neil Parish

Amber Rudd

________________

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Dr Euan Dunn, Senior Marine Policy Officer, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and Dr Mireille Thom, Senior Marine Policy Officer, Worldwide Fund for Nature-Scotland, gave evidence.

Q275 Chair : Good afternoon and welcome. Thank you both very much indeed for participating in our inquiry into the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy. If I could invite each of you in turn, starting with Dr Thom, to introduce yourselves simply for the record.

Dr Thom: Good afternoon and thank you for inviting us here. My name is Mireille Thom and I represent WWF. It might be relevant just to say that I am based in the WWF Scotland office and that, until I joined WWF recently, I was at the European Commission.

Dr Dunn: Thank you for inviting us to give evidence. I am head of Marine Policy at the RSPB. People sometimes wonder why we have such an interest in fisheries, but it has very strong ecosystem connections all the way through. We are the UK partner of BirdLife International, so we have a strong connection into the Brussels institutional framework.

Q276 Chair : Thank you. We are grateful to both of you for being with us. If I could just ask at the outset, how strong do you think the scientific evidence is on which the reform is based?

Dr Thom: I realise that this is very topical, especially in the arguments that you have heard recently. I think that you hear various arguments depending on what side you are on. What is very important to remember is that this is the best advice that we can have-that is, the most recent and sound advice that is available-and therefore we have to use it, and we have to use it to take a precautionary approach before disputing the value of it. The fishing sector can also make a big contribution by good reporting and by making sure that the areas where they fish are the relevant ones, that the quantities that are recorded as landed are the relevant ones and so on. I am glad to say that I expect that the quality of science is actually improving, because the number of initiatives that are taken jointly now between the fishing sector and the scientists throughout Europe, and certainly in the UK, is growing.

Dr Dunn: I fully endorse what my colleague has said. Maybe if I can answer the question in a slightly different way. What we saw in the Green Paper was a commitment to a sea change, a very radical approach, and that was partly because the 2002 reform has not made the ground that it was expected to, but also because a lot of the metrics have gone backwards. If we look at some of the stats, I know it is tempting to always think about UK waters, but this is an EU plan: 82% of Mediterranean stocks are overfished and 63% of Atlantic stocks. That is by the Commission’s own figures. The UK’s own figures are equally depressing: between 2002 and 2009, 25% to 38% of stocks were unsustainably harvested. It is getting better-it is promising-but this is still a very poor situation compared to the global one. The European Union, which should be a world leader in fisheries with the science and knowhow it has at its disposal, lags far behind other developed regions of the world and that is shocking.

Q277 Chair : In your written evidence, Dr Dunn, you say that over 70% of EU fish stocks are overexploited. Would you say that the health of European fish stocks is on an upwards or a downwards trend?

Dr Dunn: There are signs of improvement. It is a very slowly improving situation, but the estimation of the European Commission is that the improvement is not rapid enough. Of course this speaks very strongly to the proposal on Maximum Sustainable Yield. They simply have to force the pace now. It is partly because the Ministers have not taken the brave decisions that they need to do to accelerate the process of stock recovery.

Q278 Chair : Do you agree with the Chief Executive of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations, who told us that the number of British fish stocks being exploited sustainably had increased? Do you agree with that and does that mean that stricter conservation measures at this time are not necessary?

Dr Dunn: I agree with the Chief Executive to the extent that the situation is an improving one. The figures in the 1990s were around about 0% to 20%, and we are now up to about 25% to 38% of sustainable harvesting but, if you look at Defra’s own website, their own estimation is that most stocks would benefit from reduced fishing rates.

Q279 Chair : We have also heard, Dr Thom, that the conservation status of northern European stocks is generally better than that of Mediterranean stocks. You refer to the precautionary policy. Would you agree that imposing a very precautionary policy in order to protect some threatened stocks in the South could inflict unnecessary economic difficulties in the fishing industry in the North?

Dr Thom: Are you speaking specifically of the South?

Q280 Chair : We have heard evidence and the Commissioner indicated that it might be easier to get the northern countries to agree to a fisheries reform than the southern. It is whether the situation is the same for southern fisheries as for northern fisheries.

Dr Thom: The difference between northern fisheries and the southern ones is that there are no quotas used in the Mediterranean except for bluefin tuna. Access to fishing resources is generally regulated through licences and so on. The fisheries are also different, as of course is the geography, the type of fishing, etc. The Commissioner mentioned the large number of very small vessels that were involved, where you have quite a lot of selfemployed people. In a way, the problem is the same in that we have a situation of overexploitation of the stocks, of damage to ecosystems and of too much fishing, and the results are more or less the same again, in that instead of effort decreasing, it increases, because you want to fish harder or you need to bring back fish more to catch less. The consequences are the same: there is a cut in income so we have this vicious circle.

I think what we see as important is first of all to work together with all the fishing sector to find common solutions. This is where decentralisation of the Common Fisheries Policy is absolutely crucial to any improvement in European fisheries. The second thing is the provision of incentives to fishermen to encourage them to make the transition from-I would not like to say ‘destructive’-practices that have not led to good outcomes to more sustainable practices. The incentives may be in terms of additional days at sea or they may be in terms of financial support, as the Commissioner mentioned as well, but there is plenty of scope there to help make the transition to that place we want to be.

Dr Dunn: May I just add one thing to what Mireille said, because she made a very important point? We can talk about fish stocks, numbers of fish, sustainable yields and so on, but one of the most powerful drivers for the change we are seeing now is the profitability to the sector. I might refer you to a very important report by Seafish last year, an economic analysis of the Scottish fleet, in which they looked at the income for the North Sea and west of Scotland demersal fleets. For the vessels over 24 metres, each of those suffered a net annual loss of over £13,000. This is what is worrying the Commission most: that the profitability to individual vessel operators is declining. No one-whether NGOs, the fishing sector or the regulators-wants to see such market decline. We have to get back to a more sustainable situation across the board.

Q281 Chair : Just before I hand on to Amber Rudd, could I just ask: both RSPB and WWF have been critical of the Common Fisheries proposal reform for failing to place environmental sustainability above economic and social sustainability, but would you not say that that was an unrealistic position, particularly given the economic crisis that every member state is facing at the moment?

Dr Thom: In a way, it is even surprising that we have to ask the question because, as we all know, fish have to be there to provide any economic or social benefits. That has been so evident in the past 20 or 30 years that we have come gradually to the economic situation that Euan just mentioned. I think that what is felt by the fishing sector-and the NGOs work very closely with the sector and the sector works with us-is that when we speak of increasing the protection to the fish stocks it is a bit like an attack upon them. Obviously to businessmen it means a cut in income, and you still have to meet the payments to the bank at the end of the month, pay your mortgage, see to your family and so on. Therefore, it is a constant struggle for politicians, and we see it at every level-be it regional, national or European. It is a struggle as if you have to choose between being profishermen or being profish and the environment. I am not sure that we have found a way of reconciling everything.

This is why I come back to what I was saying earlier: somehow there is scope in favouring the environment at a time when it needs increased protection by providing incentives to the fishing sector so that it does not sink. We therefore have a situation where we could be in a better place biologically, but with a very negative social and economic outcome. You may wish to come back or we can speak about incentives, but certainly the transition would have to be imaginative in helping this.

Dr Dunn: To your original question, the RSPB among other NGOs sought at the outset to make environmental sustainability a precondition for achieving social and economic sustainability. It seemed to us to be a fundamental truth but, according to the Treaty, it is not as easy to do this and the Commission was not minded to make a hierarchy of objectives. We let that lie but, among the objectives, we now look for other strong linkages that will give us what we need-a strong linkage to the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, which the Common Fisheries Policy must contribute to in terms of achieving good environmental status by 2020, and a strong linkage to the nature conservation objectives. We are very pleased to see that an ecosystembased approach shall now be implemented, rather than in the last reform, which was an aim to progressively implement, which has been a recipe for procrastination and a piecemeal and incoherent approach. The big prioritisation is probably not going to be winnable in the Realpolitik, but I think there are many other ways in which the objectives can frame that desire.

Q282 Amber Rudd: As you know, it is the Commission’s objective to replace fish stocks to a level of above Maximum Sustainable Yield. Do you feel that that is achievable in mixed fisheries and, if not, what would be your suggested alternative method for trying to achieve that?

Dr Dunn: If you were asking the Commission, they would give you quite a vague answer at the moment, because they are currently seeking advice from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, or ICES and from the Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee to try to nut out this very question. It is particularly difficult for mixed fisheries, but what I see as the likely solution to this is that, in a mixed fishery, because you cannot determine exactly what the MSY will be for any individual stock, they will seek a range of fishing mortality values across those species and, if they see a given stock falling outside that range, they will take some additional measures. That is as far as anyone, including the Commission, has taken the resolution of this particularly difficult problem at the moment, which speaks essentially to the difficulty of maintaining predators and prey in a simultaneously MSY state. I would just have to say that we have now had this target since the Johannesburg agreement, so 10 years, and precious little has been done to really bring it to fruition. The panic around it now makes one think that more thinking might have gone into it earlier.

Q283 Neil Parish: Good afternoon. Talking again about mixed fisheries, we have been told that the Commission’s objective to aim to restore stocks to above Maximum Sustainable Yields is not achievable in mixed fisheries, so I want to question you a bit more about how you think the Maximum Sustainable Yield levels can be maintained in a mixed fishery.

Dr Dunn: I will be frank with you: I do not care to elaborate on the previous answer I gave, which is that you try to work out what the fishing mortality level is for the constituent stocks in the mixed fishery. You set a range of fishing mortalities that you hope will encompass the sustainability band of that mixed fishery. If an individual stock falls outside it, you may take more stringent measures. That is the thinking that ICES is working on at the moment-trying to figure out how that should happen. I would just say that there is a little bit of confusion between mixed fisheries and multispecies fisheries. ICES has worked out an approach to the Baltic situation, where they fish multiple species but they fish in rather separate shoals from the way they do in the North Sea, and that is a slightly easier situation to deal with than the one where you pick up three or four species in the cod end of a trawl net. It is a fundamentally important question you ask, and I can only reflect to you what I have been told by the scientists and the Commission. As far as I know, that is as far as they have got at the moment.

Q284 Neil Parish: The problem we have off the South West coast is that the fish do not necessarily seem to swim separately. They seem to swim together and do actually get caught in a mixed fishery. You might well see one level of stock, a particular species, dropping while another one might actually be increasing. I suppose there would be some argument for particular technical gear, if it can be achieved. I do not suppose there is a magic solution to the mixed fishery. What you would not necessarily want to do is to close down the whole fishery if it is just one of the species. You have no great magic answer to that, have you?

Dr Dunn: No, but I would thoroughly endorse the fact that you would not want to take such a draconian measure. This is not a direct answer to your question, but I think data collection is going to be an important factor in improving this, as will be multiannual plans. The situation we are striving for of fullydocumented fisheries, where all of the fish that are caught are kept on board for landing, will dramatically improve the data sets that we need to begin to get a better handle on the assessment of how to enable these fish to be fished sustainably.

Q285 Chair : Both WWF and RSPB have criticised the proposals for failing to spell out how the expertise of the fisheries industry would be utilised for development management plans. I am particularly concerned about the legal base. Recognising the legal constraints that the Commission refers to, imposed by the present Treaties, is there any way that the Commission could have given the industry more decisionmaking power?

Dr Thom: It is a bit like what Euan was saying, speaking about MSY. The Commission has been speaking about the essential need to decentralise policymaking for a number of years. In a way, it is a little surprising now. Okay, the Lisbon Treaty has just come into force, so again we need to take that into account, but it seems they have discovered there are legal hurdles in the way. That is one explanation that the Commission has given.

Another one that has been given for not including more details as to the mechanics of decentralisation is that they wanted to avoid this topdown approach that has been so criticised. They wanted stakeholders to come forward and say, "This is our vision of how we would see regionalisation operate." As things stand, it is just leaving so much to chance, because normally what the Council and Parliament do is work on the basis of a proposal. This is the Commission’s duty; it is to make a proposal. Therefore this is where our concern lies, in that there is that gap that remains to be filled. We are glad to hear, and the Commissioner mentioned it when she was here in front of you, that in fact there was going to be a nonpaper on possible building blocks, suggestions and so on and that would be circulated soon. Certainly that is most welcome.

Dr Dunn: This is arguably one of the most disappointing areas of underachievement in the Commission’s proposal. The Green Paper was much vaunted in its aspirations for regionalisation, and built up huge expectations. What we got was a lion roared and a mouse was born. I think it is very difficult for the member states and the stakeholders to deal with it in a way. As Mireille has said, they have so little to work on in the proposal. What we want to develop and evolve out of this situation, from our point of view, is a comanagement model, in which the scientists, the NGOs, the sector, the member states and the control agencies all work together.

We have some precedent for some of this in the way that the RACs have worked. I have to say I have worked in the North Sea RAC since the very beginning, since 2004-I chair a working group in the RAC-and I would say it is the single most important thing I have ever been involved in, in terms of improving the dialogue between the sector, the NGOs and the other stakeholders. It is hugely important when you sit down at the table and start to talk to each other in an open way. I was also looking in the proposal for some signal of the enhancement or the strengthening of that stakeholder voice and I do not see it. We have been told that it will come through the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund, so in a sense a strictly resourcing sort of way. Like Mireille, we are looking strongly for a lead from the Commission on how member states should cooperate with each other, as the only legal entities that can take decisions, and how they will bring the stakeholders around them in a constructive way to begin to mirror some of the remarkable ways that this has been done in other countries like Australia and America.

Chair : We have another witness after this. Just keep the answers slightly brief. I know George Eustice would like to come in very briefly on this point. If you could, try to keep the answers more concise, otherwise we simply will not get through two witnesses.

Q286 George Eustice: I just wanted to clarify. I cannot quite work out from what you are saying whether your concern is that the Commission is not giving enough power to member states to actually do the right thing, or whether it is too loose and you do not think anyone will be able to agree.

Dr Dunn: What I was looking for was a greater steer from the Commission on how a regionalisation model might work. They had a lot of frontloading from lots of constituents on how regionalisation might play out, and now we are left at a lottery of how the member states will develop this. As Mireille said, this is an attempt to be very bottomup and not micromanaging the situation, but it has just left a lot of anxiety and frustration, from the fishing sector, through the NGOs to all the other stakeholders.

Q287 Barry Gardiner: I want actually to ask you about TACs and quotas but, before I do, I will just take you back to what you said to the Committee Chair, when she asked you about sustainability-economic and social sustainability as well as environmental. Dr Dunn, you said that the Commission has decided not to have a hierarchy here. I know you are critical of that, but do you think that is actually true? Do you not think that there is a hierarchy that the Commission has established? I do not know whether in that context you would like to say anything about the subsidy levels that are provided, which might indicate quite what comes out on top as far as the Commission is concerned.

Dr Dunn: I am not sure I fully understand. The Commission, you feel, may already have effectively created a hierarchy in the way that they fuel-

Q288 Barry Gardiner: Follow the money is usually the way of determining what is important to people and particularly what is important to politicians. I would suggest to you that, if you follow the subsidy, then very often you will get a clearer understanding of the hierarchy of importance between social and economic sustainability and environmental.

Chair : We must move on, if we can have a very brief answer.

Dr Dunn: I will very briefly answer that question. We are all looking with great interest to the structure of the new Fisheries Fund, which we are told will be very different and will begin to speak to the bigger picture of environmentally sustainable fisheries. That may change the business as usual that you were referring to.

Q289 Barry Gardiner: Under the draft proposals, the Council will continue to set the TACs and quotas, albeit within the limits set by the management plans. Do you think that it is possible to avoid the sort of shortterm political decisionmaking that you were critical of earlier without changing their continuing to do that?

Dr Dunn: Yes, I do. I know my colleague will have an answer to this too, but the embedding of multiannual plans as the core mechanism for delivering sustainable fisheries in the system should change, should weaken the strength of the Ministers and their horsetrading as they get locked into harvesting rules. That is what we are looking for. I do see a gradual transition. In fact, the extent to which the Ministers have exceeded the scientific advice on TACs is actually declining, although it was still 37% in 2010. Personally, if I may briefly be allowed to say this, one of the things that I think would have hugely helped would have been if the Commission had had the courage to go for the Magnuson–Stevens model in the USA, where it is forbidden to set fishing levels higher than scientific advice, but the Commission was worried that that would just politicise the scientific process. I think that was the lesser of two evils.

Q290 Neil Parish: In my question I asked you previously, you started to talk about discards. Do you agree that requiring fishermen to land all their catches provides an incentive for them to adopt more selective gear to avoid space in the hold being taken up by less valuable fish?

Dr Dunn: I think it will make a difference. I have spoken to a number of fishermen, the more progressive fishermen, who say that this full catch documentation will force them to improve their selectivity. They will fish smarter and they will get better returns for their effort. This will result in what you just described. I do believe that will happen.

Q291 Neil Parish: Just to elaborate, in the UK catch quota trials have dramatically reduced discard rates. They reckon fishermen involved in trials are discarding less than 1% of the cod and sole that they catch. You do think that this will give a real incentive to move in that direction.

Dr Dunn: I think it will. There is also a big incentive not to fill your boat up with fish that you are not going to get any market value for, so that is another very strong driver to bring addedvalue fish to the market.

Q292 Neil Parish: Do you think this can be policed?

Dr Dunn: Absolutely, I am sure it can be policed. I do not think that is such a big problem. There is still discarding going on in Norwegian waters; we know about it. They say the nights are long and the waters are deep, but there is absolutely no doubt about it that in Norway it has made a big difference to sustainable fishing levels, with other mechanisms that we will not go into now.

Q293 Amber Rudd: Dr Thom, you referred earlier to how important it was to decentralise the CFP. Do you think there is a conflict in the aim for decentralisation and yet the micromanaging, in a way, of the CFP’s proposal to reduce the bycatch? Should the CFP not perhaps leave that to the member states to try to implement?

Dr Thom: In fact, there is a danger in decentralising if what the Commissioner has in mind is only to decentralise and make the member states responsible for meeting the objectives. This is something that the Commissioner mentioned when she was in Ireland. She said it was fully conceivable that, for example, with a multiannual plan, the UK could do this and Ireland could do that and so on, in the Irish Sea. That would be a step back because, where that has been the case, the member states have not really met their obligations. We have the Mediterranean regulation, for example, which asks the member states to devise local and regional plans, and that has not happened. This is why it is so important to have this obligation or at least a roadmap as to how you involve and get the member states to work together on the basis of fisheries. Sometimes you have two; sometimes you have more, depending on how many states are fishing on the same fishery.

The measures, to really have a realistic chance of being effective, of being implemented, and reviewed if they need to be, should be devised and managed at the regional level, at the level of the fisheries, because that is where the expertise is; that is where they can be really designed for the fisheries. We have the example again with the cod plan. These are catchall general measures, which are not delivering on their objectives. This is why the micromanagement of decisions on specifics must happen at the level of the region, with all the stakeholders involved in the whole process, delivering on the objectives and the targets set at the EU level.

Q294 Amber Rudd: So it is a centralised requirement but a decentralised solution, depending on the region.

Dr Thom: Absolutely. This will be the task of regional committees made up of the interested parties.

Q295 Amber Rudd: Do you think that it is going to be difficult to persuade the public that an outright discard ban is not the answer, but we need different solutions in different fisheries?

Dr Thom: In a way, what happened here is that we looked at the end product. What are discards? Discards are animals and products that you cannot sell and, therefore, you throw them overboard. You must not catch them in the first place, because a selection must operate not on the deck but in the sea. Leave what is not going to be sold, what is not needed; leave as much as you can in the sea, so that it is not damaged, because it is not every fishery that catches unwanted products. Where that is the case, then make a better selection in the sea. Fishermen who used to say that is impossible and so on are themselves devising all sorts of ways of doing that.

Q296 Barry Gardiner: Dr Thom, can you tell us the lessons that you may have learned from the Conservation Credit Scheme, which I know WWF was involved in implementing in Scotland, and how that might be able to be applied to other fisheries?

Dr Thom: Yes, certainly. The Conservation Credit Scheme, we say as WWF, has had and is having positive outcomes in two ways. In terms of governance, it is bringing together all the stakeholders, which are the authorities, the whole sector and the NGOs, sitting together with scientists and looking for solutions. The whole principle is we have a problem; let’s sit down together and try to find a solution. It is also binding people to commitments and also peer pressure. From that point of view, it is a type of core management and I would say that it is working. We feel that it is a positive move. We say this for the second aspect: it is encouraging much more selective fishing, cod avoidance and for the reasons Euan outlined earlier, you do not want to get this fish on board, because you are not going to do anything with it, and therefore there are improvements in the bycatch and reductions in discards.

Q297 Barry Gardiner: Will the CFP proposals actually make it easier to roll out programmes like the Conservation Credit programme?

Dr Thom: Yes. We certainly would like to encourage use of this system, and WWF made a video of it to show how core management, even though it is within the same industry and the same country, can be used to bring in others and could be replicated at the regional level. It has brought together conflicting interests and priorities. We were speaking about what you mentioned first-the ecological, the economic and the social. There you had players who had conflicting, or at least competing, priorities and yet they were able to sit together and find solutions. We would like to say that this is the shape of things to come and bring in, as Euan was saying again, how they have learned to work together.

Q298 Amber Rudd: I am concerned that the CFP proposals are likely to favour large well capitalised fishing operators over the smaller local businesses. Are you concerned by the impact that this may have on coastal communities?

Dr Dunn: Yes, I think it does favour the big operators. The single market mechanism that they have created for transferable fishing concessions is one that puts a ceiling on top of the smaller fleets. I feel they will think it will be a oneway valve and most of the opportunities will go to the bigger fleet. That is a legitimate concern. It has always been the way in the CFP. The big offshore operators have always, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, been the greatest beneficiaries of the CFP and its resourcing. It is interesting, for example, that in our own RAC we do not have smallscale fishermen, because they are seen as a national responsibility; they are not a transnational transboundary entity, so they do lose out in a lot of the major discussions and also in their penetrability into those discussions.

Q299 Amber Rudd: There is disappointment that coastal communities are going to be further afflicted by this. Is there anything else that you think should be done to try to support them?

Dr Dunn: In our response to the proposal, we did not support a twotier system. I do not actually see much likelihood of this in the CFP reform at this stage but, rather than a singlemarketbased system, I would have preferred to see a system based on criteria for access to fishing opportunities, based on selectivity, environmental footprint, carbon footprint and the rest. That would have created a more level playing field for vessels of different lengths.

Q300 Barry Gardiner: I would like to turn now to transferable fishing concessions. These are a rightsbased management way of tackling the problem of overcapacity, but it is rather stark, is it not, that there has not been in the draft regulations hardly any change from the current fleet capacity from what they were before. Yes, this is one way of addressing the problem, but if one is not going to say that actually this has got to come down substantially and put that in the new regulations, is it not a bit like willing the means but not specifying the ends almost?

Dr Dunn: You have put your finger on the key issue. The Commission does see this as the silver bullet for capacity reduction. Their previous efforts have failed badly. They look to other parts of the world, and there are examples in other parts of the world, where this kind of rightsbased management has indeed driven down capacity. Of course, it gets the Commission off the decommissioning hook, the huge cost of trying to fuel this overcapacity. The trouble is I think that most of the other systems you look at in the world are politically much less complex than the European Union. It is one thing to do it in Australia; it is a different thing doing it in 27 member states. Admittedly not all of them are coastal. In Australia, they found they had to actually buy out a lot of the fleet before they could get the rightsbased management to work, because these guys just could not sell their vessels when they introduced it with such overcapacity at the outset. I have my doubts about whether it is going to be as effective as they hope, and I would rather member states were left the discretion to arrive at their own solutions, based on their own national conditions.

Q301 Barry Gardiner: Indeed some would say that that is actually what European law would prescribe, given that they are rights and, as such, they should not be set out because they affect property rights and that is a contradiction to the Treaty.

You talked about them being voluntary. Is there a danger that, if they are voluntary, then they will not be properly implemented by member states and, therefore, the problem of capacity might not be addressed? You have alluded to the Australian example and the difficulties that there may be in replicating that within the European Union. Could you perhaps also in your response say something about the experience in the United States on the eastern seaboard where they have tried a similar rightsbased management process as a means of reducing overcapacity, or indeed Iceland?

Dr Dunn: May I refer this to my colleague, please?

Barry Gardiner: Indeed; I am addressing both of you.

Dr Thom: Of course TFCs, these transferable fishing concessions, are but one tool to regulate access to the fishing resources. It may have a role to play. As we know, some member states have been using them for a long time-the UK, Denmark and the Netherlands for example. Just to impose the system at the EU level for one specific reason seems to be a very blunt way of trying to do something, as Euan was saying. We would certainly like to see, for example, these TACs as part of a toolbox along with licences, along with fishing gear and all sorts of things. Even better would be to use them at the regional level, where people can judge whether there is actual overcapacity of those fisheries. The member states concerned can look at that and try to adapt the fishing capacity to what the specific fisheries can deliver over the life of the multiannual plan, and see whether they have a role to play there, but at that level, not almost left to nature, to the single market, to WTO rules, etc.

Q302 Barry Gardiner: Just picking up on what you have said about the single market and WTO rules, I just want to cash out the reasons why it has worked as a tool for sustainability where that has been the case. Dr Dunn, you alluded to the Australian example-the New Zealand example might be another one-where there is a discrete set of fishers. In talking about the open market and WTO rules, there is also a danger, is there not, from TACs that big conglomerates that are not local fishers seeking to protect their community into the future, will come and regard it as a mining resource that they will clear out, and then move on and make their profits elsewhere?

Dr Thom: If I can use something that was said the other day in the debate at the Scottish Parliament, in the Committee, because we have this in the UK and a number of countries. Someone said that a number of English companies held quite a bit of quotas. They have been bought over by a Dutch/Icelandic company. We were also told that the mackerel, whitefish fisheries in Germany were owned by Dutch interests. I am just repeating what was said, but obviously it is difficult to follow up and to know who holds how much. To come back to your point, which is very pertinent, if I may be allowed, the nature of the ownership of the fleet is very important because, some people would say that, despite the de facto ITQs that we have, 20 years later we still have overcapacity.

Dr Dunn: May I just add one brief point?

Chair : Very briefly.

Dr Dunn: In the Danish situation-I used this phrase a moment ago-they have a oneway valve, where the small vessels can get quota from the large vessels, but it cannot go the other way. That is a way of protecting the smaller fleet.

Chair : Although they are passing it to Germany anyway.

Q303 Neil Parish: Could I ask you both: what is your impression of the response to the CFP proposals in other member states, among both politicians and the public?

Dr Dunn: This is a very difficult question to answer, and I am not dodging the bullet here, but the working groups have been going through the Common Fisheries Policy, Article by Article, as you probably know, and what we find is that different member states are supporting or rejecting different Articles, so it is very difficult to get the big picture. There is no doubt that the three big stumbling blocks are MSY, the discard ban and the TFCs. For example on the TFCs, I have heard that Denmark, the Netherlands and Spain are supportive of these, and Germany and Sweden are more circumspect. You can take many of the other elements of the CFP and find an equal diversity of view, with perhaps the southern states being more supportive of TFCs. I just find it a very difficult question to answer, but it is a very important one because, unless we have that information, we do not know how to advocate to get political support for change.

Dr Thom: It is the question that everybody wants to have answered, because you also want to be able tell our elected representatives and the Minister where to push and so on. It seems to be moving actually. At first, the member states were keeping their cards quite close to their chest and it was difficult. Now, as Euan says, these three topics are quite controversial, but we will not really know until they have gone through what they are calling the "bible", going through the whole proposal.

Q304 Neil Parish: What is interesting with the surveys they have done is the Spanish population, for instance, is very keen to have fish that have been from a sustainable source, in fact greater than the British public, yet it is the Spanish Government and Spanish fisheries that are probably the most aggressive in actually fishing up resources throughout Europe, off the coast of Africa and goodness knows where. It is interesting to see how much the Commissioner is going to have to compromise with people like the Spanish or whether the public in Spain will actually win through.

Dr Dunn: It is an interesting dynamic. Actually the Spanish public is becoming more sensitive to where their fish comes from than you might expect.

Q305 Neil Parish: Are their politicians becoming more sensitive?

Dr Dunn: If the public can influence their politicians, it can only be a helpful thing, but the Marine Stewardship Council is beginning to gain some ground in Spain, and indeed in Japan, which is not in our frame today, but these are not countries that you would naturally have expected to get the discrimination of fish source to be an issue of public issue.

Q306 Neil Parish: How much of a compromise is the Commissioner going to have to come up with, in the end, to get an agreement through Council?

Dr Thom: That would be difficult to say. Perhaps one way of explaining this interest is that our southern neighbours are closer to fish than we are, because they buy them fresh, as you know, and they eat them fresh, whereas we tend to find them in the shop already fried. That could be an explanation, because I think that was replicated in Italy, for example, so that could be an explanation for that response.

Q307 George Eustice: You talked about the data and science earlier and I just wanted to come back on that point, because one of the problems is that there are a lot of fish species for which you do not have sufficient data to be able to assess them. I know you mentioned earlier this precautionary principle that the Commission have adopted, but the fishing industry has suggested that, rather than adopting the precautionary principle, we should use the available data to assess trends and base judgments on that. What would be your view on that kind of approach?

Dr Thom: I suppose your question refers to the fact that this year, for datadeficient stocks, the Commission proposed a decrease of 25%. Obviously where all the signs are that there is a problem, despite the deficient data, then of course the precautionary approach must be applied. However, there are many situations where data are available. If I can mention for example monkfish in the west of Scotland, I can cite that because I know that Scotland has been collecting data and so on. In a case like that, where the data are valid and up-to-date, but do not meet the criteria in terms of time series and other criteria that ICES uses, there is certainly a strong case for using that type of data. Also, there is such a drive at the moment with the industry to collect data with scientists. That must be encouraged. Where reliable data are available, then there is a case for using them.

Q308 George Eustice: Perhaps just one final point to address to both of you: coming back to this idea of the general principle of the Commission’s proposals, do you accept that where member states have been able to act, particularly on inshore fisheries, to pursue different policies and to experiment with different policies, we have had more policy innovation and some good ideas have come out from that?

Dr Thom: Where there is some flexibility, yes, it is. It is again at that level that it is best, because you can make mistakes and you can correct them quickly. What happens at the EU level with the cod plan is that it is not delivering on the objectives but, we are told by the Commission, even if there is a case for changing and adapting some measures, it cannot be done for the next two or three years and it’s a codecision. Regionalisation would allow for review and adaptation of the measures more quickly.

Dr Dunn: I cannot add to my colleague’s perfect answer.

Q309 Chair : Mindful of the fact that the Commission is probably going to have to compromise, if there was one element of the proposals that you would most like to retain, which would it be? If there is one element you would like to keep in the proposals, which would it be?

Dr Dunn: I would desperately like them to have the courage to maintain an objective to achieve Maximum Sustainable Yield by 2015. I think it is the single strongest driver of change. If they weaken that, all sorts of things begin to decay behind it.

Q310 Chair : Dr Thom, would you agree?

Dr Thom: That is your favourite so I will choose another favourite then: regionalisation. We must change the governance of this policy, otherwise in 10 years’ time we will be having the same arguments; we will be saying the same things, because we can read them from 10 years back and 20 years back.

Chair : You have both been incredibly generous and we are very grateful to you for sharing your views with us. Thank you very much indeed.

Examination of Witness

Witness: Jim Portus, Chief Executive, South Western Fish Producer Organisation, gave evidence.

Q311 Chair : Mr Portus, good afternoon. You are most welcome. Thank you very much for being with us this afternoon and for contributing to our inquiry. For the record, could you just give your title and what you do?

Jim Portus: Jim Portus; I am the Chief Executive of the South Western Fish Producer Organisation. Currently, I am the Chairman of the UK Association of Fish Producer Organisations.

Q312 Chair : I know you heard the previous session. Do you have a view on the legal basis and how it will work in practice for what is being proposed for the reforms?

Jim Portus: Essentially the CFP reform is a necessary evil that we are now going through for the third time in my history in the fishing industry. It is a 10year groundhog day that we seem to suffer on that regular basis. This time of course there seem to be some fundamental changes that the Commission is seeking to impose, if they possibly can, with the difficulty that the decisionmaking processes have changed quite substantially in the intervening period.

Q313 Chair : The Commission tends to use boat lengths to distinguish between smallscale and artisanal fishing versus large industrial operations. Do you think that the boat criterion is appropriate and, if not, what other criteria would you prefer to be used? When you answer, do you think there is a discrimination against the UK in the fact that we are using the 10metre limit and the EU is using the 12metre limit?

Jim Portus: Essentially the fishing industry around the European Union is based on inshore fisheries, by the very nature of our continental shelf seas, so there is not a great deal of emphasis, in any particular member state, for the deep sea, as it were, although it is quite significant to some fleets in some ports, but essentially our coastal communities, wherever they may be around Europe, are inshore in nature. They do not tend to venture terribly far from the coast or from a safe haven. The size of the vessel that we are talking about is somewhat irrelevant. I know that, for management purposes, the Ministry of Fisheries has endeavoured over the years to impose restrictions on the length of the vessel, and we have progressively come down from 40 feet to the level of 10 metres that it is today. The Commission for some reason looks at an arbitrary criterion of 12 metres, without any sense of reason behind that. There are difficulties in defining what an inshore sector is. We do have to bear in mind that the vast majority of fish are actually found fairly close to the shores and are harvested by smallscale vessels, even if they are capable of catching a great deal of fish on an annual basis.

Q314 Amber Rudd: You have said, however, that separate management systems would be recommended for large and smallscale boats in order to nurture artisanal fishing, so what would be your recommendation? What sort of separate management system should we have to try to nurture smallscale fishing, do you think?

Jim Portus: Essentially fishing is an economic activity and I think the focus should have been on the viability of individuals and the fishing communities, rather than the size of the particular vessels. This is where one talks about the regional management of fisheries and coming down to the regional seas basis. My expertise is in the English Channel, where we have a host of very small fishing ports along the entire south coast, some of which are beachlaunched vessels and some of which are larger and spend four or five days at sea. Their economic activity is almost entirely in the English Channel, and so we need to focus on the mix of fish that is in the English Channel and how best to derive economic benefit from that. That is lacking from the proposals of the CFP regulation.

Q315 Amber Rudd: You have nevertheless said, previously I think, that we need a separate type of management system for large and smallscale fishing operations, whatever the size of the boat-whether it is 10 metres or 12 metres. Presumably one of the reasons for this is to try to preserve the fishing communities that have been suffering. Do you have any views on how that could specifically be implemented?

Jim Portus: The TACs and quotas could be exclusively available for the larger scale, as it were. I am not going to fall into the trap of defining a length criterion, and the inshore should be given free access to the resources based on their capability. They are restricted very severely by weather conditions, tide conditions and proximity to a safe haven. Their resources should be economically and profitability based, rather than a tonnage of the TAC and quota species, because they are fishing generally for species that are not available on quota. They have been unregulated in the past and I think they should continue to be relatively unregulated.

Q316 Chair : May I just specify? Do you mean lobster and crab, because that would affect my-

Jim Portus: And a lot more shellfish species. Cuttlefish is a shellfish that is not on quota and is highly prized. It is not just the hard shellfish but also the scallop sector. They could be better managed and could yield much higher profitability for these inshore fishing communities.

Q317 Amber Rudd: Do you think the inshore fishing communities would benefit if they formed themselves into their own PO and, therefore perhaps, have some of the benefit of the changes that might be coming through?

Jim Portus: Yes, I do. I am broadly supportive of that. I have been talking to colleagues in the inshore sectors about that. Of course, they have had the opportunities to join existing producer organisations in the past, but there seems to be a fear or reluctance on their part to do so. In my organisation, we do have a number of under10metre vessels and a significant number of inshore vessels, ones that are only daytripping, so producer organisations are used to managing fishermen who are in these inshore sectors.

Q318 Amber Rudd: Your evidence states that the proposal to restore stocks to above Maximum Sustainable Yield by 2015 will disrupt business. Do you not think that-although it seems a bit brutal to say this in this economic climate-that might be something that we have to endure in order to get to the level where stocks are restored to their Maximum Sustainable Yield?

Jim Portus: I do not think that there is anything wrong with having an aspiration of MSY and, let us face it, politicians sat down in Johannesburg and agreed that that was where they would like to get. Of course, they were having their discussions quite some time ago and it is now down to us to try to implement these targets. It is a legal obligation now but, in Johannesburg, they did have the sense to say, "Where possible". Those two words are sadly lacking from the draft regulation. I think our Commissioners have let us down by omitting those two key words, and I would like to see an amendment to the regulation to bring that back in, so that the target is achieved where it is possible and, where it is not possible, we strive to get close to it.

Q319 Amber Rudd: Why would it not be possible? It must be the most desirable outcome to return to MSY. Why would it not be possible?

Jim Portus: It is all to do with the mix of the fish. Those who gave evidence earlier did refer to mixed fisheries and the fact that the TAC and quota species are but a small number of species compared to the overall continental shelf seas of the European Union. It would not be possible; the data are not available and there have not been the assessments done for at least 60% of the species that are caught regularly by fishermen in the EU. It is not possible, by that target date of 2015, to achieve MSY with any certainty.

Q320 Neil Parish: Afternoon, Jim. How easy would it be for a fishing industry to recover from temporary reductions in income from fishing that is likely to result from these reforms? They would be reducing the amount of catch.

Jim Portus: Economic analysis has shown that individual fishing businesses are not terribly profitable at the best of times, so to bring about some seismic changes to their available opportunities would put them closer to the brink and perhaps even over it. I would not like to contemplate that fishermen are going to have to be forced into that situation. I sincerely hope that the social and economic objectives of the CFP are brought to the fore when the discussions take place at Council and European Parliament next year, when they are deliberating over these new regulations.

Q321 Neil Parish: The Commissioner has talked about maybe funds coming towards helping families with tourism, cooking lessons, fisheries and all sorts of things. Is it likely that our fishermen are able to access such funds?

Jim Portus: The bottom line to that always is that there has to be some sort of Government support for these European fishing funds. With the current fiscal constraints, it is terribly unlikely that our Department of Fisheries is going to be very keen for that money to be drawn down. That would be the difficulty. We have heard this so many times before, going back to the PESCA fund, the FIFG and the EFF, they all seem to have some emphasis on diverting fishing communities away from fishing. I think that that is a terrible indictment of the failure of the CFP, whereas I would prefer to see investment in betterregulated fishing, so that it burgeons and improves the wellbeing of our coastal communities.

Q322 Neil Parish: Talking about that, the SWFPO is on record as saying that "the UK Government needs to decide whether or not it wants a fishing industry." Then you go on to say about "including beam trawling and scallop dredging to be acceptable activities at present levels [and] it should fight tooth and nail against the proposed ban on discards, against the proposed transferable fishing concessions". That is your position, is it?

Jim Portus: Absolutely, yes it is. If you look at the list, for example, in the proposed regulation of species for which a ban would be imposed for discards, it includes a lot of flatfish species that actually have quite a high survival rate when they are discarded. The risk is that, if you impose a ban on those species, you actually increase the mortality of those species and you get further away from a situation of sustainability, albeit temporarily but, nevertheless, I think that is a risk that is not worth taking.

Q323 Neil Parish: Therefore your argument is that the ban on discards should be done fishery by fishery, rather than a blanket ban.

Jim Portus: Absolutely, and there should be every encouragement for fishermen to adopt their gear, modify their gear, to encourage them such that the fish is selected on the seabed and has the very highest survival chance. That which does come on to the deck of the boat, if it is unwanted, over quota or undersized, should be returned to the sea as quickly as possible, so that it has the highest survival chance.

Q324 Neil Parish: My next question is very similar in a way to the first one and that is that the Commission proposes that funds will be available to help fishers diversify into new employment. How easy is it for fishermen in your area to diversify and what sort of jobs would they do?

Jim Portus: We have quite a high level of unemployment as it is, without adding to that with fishermen who perhaps have left school early, many years ago, and have known nothing else. There are few alternatives in the way of employment. Marine tourism has been cited as an opportunity-environmental tourism and taking people out to look at marine birdlife and wildlife-but I think it has limited opportunity, particularly in some areas. We have to talk about not just the English Channel but the rest of the UK and the rest of Europe, which would have these same problems, and there are areas that would not lend themselves to marine tourism. We are very lucky in the West Country that we are developing it probably as well as we can.

Q325 Neil Parish: One of the Commission’s proposals is that fishermen might want to pick up litter in the sea. How will they take to this idea, do you think?

Jim Portus: Fishermen are picking up litter in the sea. They almost invariably trawl up litter from the seabed and then they have the choice-they either throw it back to catch it next time, or they are provided with bags by the Fishing for Litter scheme, which is a most useful initiative. They are enabled to land such litter without the landfill charges that would obviously apply otherwise. That is a scheme that is supported by our organisation and we look forward to it rolling out around the country.

Q326 Barry Gardiner: Mr Portus, I think you and I are going to be firm friends on TFCs but, before we get there, can I just pick up on something you have said about those species that have proven longevity out of the water? Would you agree-I take this from what you have said-that those species that do have proven longevity should of course be returned to the sea as quickly as possible, but in order to meet what you said yourself about the lack of scientific data in order to be able to achieve MSY by the target date of 2015, we actually need to land everything that does not have proven longevity because, unless you land it, you cannot calculate the biomass, you cannot do the science and you cannot see what level the stocks are at?

Jim Portus: I disagree fundamentally with that. The technology is there now so that you can record that information at sea, and you should record it at sea and then you should return that to the sea as quickly as is possible. With some of the species there is a very low survival rate, we know that, particularly if it has come up from deepwater. Nevertheless, that fish would continue to contribute to the food chain and to the ecosystem whereas, if you brought it in and had to deal with the counting process, you would need additional Defra staff or MMO staff to do that counting and recording, and then you would have the need to landfill that product. You are probably thinking about fishmealing. That might be another alternative, but the nearest fishmeal plant to south Devon is in Grimsby-enormous expense travelling it up through the motorway network. Who would pay the costs?

Q327 Barry Gardiner: There may be some new jobs for the area in having a more local plant. How else are you going to actually then deal with overcoming the problem that you yourself identified about the size? You have said we could perhaps do this on board. Of course it is going to take time to do that properly on board, the same sort of time presumably as you said the extra Defra officials would need if you were doing it on land. On the one hand you offer me an alternative but, on the other hand, it does not seem to be a real alternative. How are you actually going to cope with the problem of establishing proper science, unless you go thoroughly through the catch on board, as you have suggested you could, or actually land it?

Jim Portus: The thing again about the fish themselves is that the quicker they are returned to the sea, the better it is.

Q328 Barry Gardiner: We are not talking about the ones with proven longevity. We are talking about the ones that we know are not going to survive if they get thrown back and then measuring and seeing what is the catch here.

Jim Portus: We have vessels currently that are involved in the camera trials, so their entire catch is being recorded by a system of cameras. There is absolutely no prospect, no possibility, of hiding anything, so the fishermen are incentivised to minimise any bycatch. They have improved their gear.

Q329 Barry Gardiner: That is not what we are talking about here. What we are talking here is how you are going to overcome the scientific problem of assessing the stock that otherwise, under your scenario, would get returned at sea.

Jim Portus: You turn our fishermen into recorders of scientific data. They are perfectly capable of being trained for that purpose. I think that would be a good use of resources. Unfortunately, our Department has reduced the funding to our fisheries laboratories, which is a great pity. I think that we need to put more resources into scientific endeavour rather than remove them.

Q330 Barry Gardiner: Turning to TFCs, do you not think that by reducing capacity TFCs could deliver a more profitable and sustainable industry for your members?

Jim Portus: The proposed regulation talks about TFCs in the TAC and quota species, which is roughly 40% of the catch in the South West of England or through the English Channel, for that matter. There are still a large number of vessels and species that would not come under such TFCs. We have a system in the UK of fixed quota allocations; we have the sectoral quota system. It has been developed by the industry for the industry. It works perfectly well, but there is no guarantee that it would comply with the Commissioner’s visions of TFCs, so that would be a hurdle that needs to be overcome. I would not necessarily want to impose our system on another member state, nor would I want the Danish system to be imposed on the United Kingdom or any other member state. Essentially what we are saying about TFCs is that management of the quotas is a member state competence. It is for the member state to decide how best to regulate and manage its fishing opportunities, within the constraints that are currently offered by the Common Fisheries Policy. On TFCs, I would delete that entirely from the proposed regulation.

Q331 Barry Gardiner: Do you not think that TFCs might, with their 15year longevity, give your members a better chance of obtaining bank loans for upgrading their vessels or gear?

Jim Portus: I have not heard from my members that they have had any difficulty obtaining bank loans under the present system, which offers them no strict legal title, as our Minister has quite often pointed out to us. I think with putting a 15year time limit on it-apart from the legitimacy of, in a 10year regulation, imposing a 15year timetable on something, which I suspect might not be legal-where would we be when we get to years 13 and 14? With the banks as they currently are, if they are not better founded in a dozen years’ time, you might have all sorts of difficulties.

Q332 Amber Rudd: Do you feel then that the proposal for transferable fishing concessions-which for some member states will strengthen the rights of fishermen to the amount of fish they can fish, in terms of the 15year longevity-in this country reduces it because of this business of it expiring after 13 or 14 years?

Jim Portus: There is an embodied expiry date in the proposed regulation. As I say, given that a number of member states have developed a system of transferable fishing concessions or whatever acronym is going to be applied to them, it should be voluntary to each member state. If another member state decides that it is a good idea, let them go ahead under the existing rules and regulations.

Q333 Amber Rudd: Do you have concerns about ownership transferring not just out of the country but to nonfishermen on this basis as well?

Jim Portus: There are difficulties. My history goes back to when we were dealing with Factortame and all the problems of quota-hopping and flags of convenience, and our national quota being taken by Spanish and Dutch fishermen. Those things are in the past now and the highest courts in Europe have decreed about the ownership and the right to fish, and I do not think TFCs would amend that legitimacy in any way. We are not going to put the genie back in the bottle of having British fish quotas only being caught by British fishermen. What we do have at least is that those quotas must be caught by Britishregistered fishing vessels or they get transferred to another member state for the benefit of the UK.

Q334 Chair : Just on that point, I understood that Germany is pretty cross at the moment because Denmark is transferring its fishing concessions to Germany, but actually landing them in Danish boats. Is that correct?

Jim Portus: That is the point; they are Danishflagged vessels, even though the money backing the fishing ventures might well be another member state’s. In the UK, it would have to be a brassplate UK company, but the fishermen on the boat might well not be speaking English or Scottish.

Q335 Neil Parish: Or Cornish perhaps. The politicians and the public are very keen now on some form of discard ban. You have talked a bit about this, but do your members understand the need to reduce discard rates?

Jim Portus: Absolutely, but there are three different kinds of discards. There are overquota or regulatory discards, which are the worst kind. They perhaps are the ones that are in the gift of the legislators to do something about within CFP. Then there are the undersize fish. We have technical regulations that endeavour to do things about those undersize fish, and then there are the waste fish that were spoken about earlier on-the species for which there is no economic sale. Obviously it is in the interests of the industry to do their best to minimise these things, but I do not think actually banning them would work. Of course the regulation has a list of different species. People who follow our celebrity chefs and their campaigns might well be disappointed that gurnards and the like are not on the list of species that would be regulated, but the draft is all about the quota species. As I said earlier on, some of them have high survival rates and they should be allowed to be discarded.

Q336 Neil Parish: The next question is really: Project 50% in Devon was very successful in reducing discard rates. What is preventing these new designs being adopted more widely across the fleet?

Jim Portus: Project 50% was specific to a particular class of vessel, the beam trawler. It was specific to the western English Channel and it was aimed at improvements in management of Dover sole. We would not want to impose those lessons on other areas, other fisheries and other fishing methods. We feel that we are willing to talk to fishermen in other areas, even in other member states, about the project, if there are lessons to be learned, but I do not think one should actually impose those lessons and say, "Look what we have done. Isn’t it brilliant? You should do it." Encouragement is what we had in Project 50%; the Government paid for the nets and the fishermen have adopted that gear since the project and are working well with it. The overall improvements in the western English Channel are notable and we are going to have further increases in the quota, God willing, in the December Council.

Q337 Neil Parish: You have answered my next question that the fishermen involved in Project 50% are continuing to use those nets. The other question is you say the Government paid for the selective gear. How much more expensive was that than the standard gear the fishermen were using?

Jim Portus: The actual physical cost was not any more expensive per net, but it was all about risk; it was about trialling something that might have been economically suicidal. The fishermen were not going to go out and do it without that support. Having had that support, proven the case and seen for themselves the benefits that could derive from that gear, the fleet, certainly based in Brixham and Plymouth, have adopted that gear and use it regularly in that fishery, in the western English Channel. They do not use that gear in other fisheries where it would be inappropriate.

Q338 George Eustice: You have come out quite strongly against the idea of a discard ban, but would you be open to the idea of a different quota system, the catch quotas, where it is regulated in terms of the number of fish you catch rather than the number of fish you land? Would that be a compromise?

Jim Portus: We are looking at that. We already have a number of vessels that are doing the catch quota trials in the sole fishery in the western English Channel-a fully documented fishery, with the cameras on board looking at that. The report came out last week and it does show that, as far as interim results are concerned, the discard rates have been significantly reduced for that species, but sole is one species in 40 that are caught by beam trawlers regularly in the English Channel. It would be all very well to increase the quota to allow for a zero discard of Dover sole, but to have zero discards of everything else we would have to have increased quotas for the plaice, for the megrim, for the anglerfish and all the other species that are caught in the mix that are already on quota. The Commission is not yet willing to contemplate that. It is something that is in the regulation, as far as fully documented fisheries are concerned, and it may be something that is expanded, but there would have to be sufficient incentive with those other species.

George Eustice: Just briefly on that, when we took evidence from the Commissioner, she was saying that things like sharks survive when they are put back. You mentioned flatfish earlier as having survival. It should not be beyond the wit of man to have an agreement somewhere where there are certain flatfish species-

Q339 Chair : Could I ask one last question, because we are going to be interrupted by the vote, and we would not need to come back, if you are agreeable, Mr Portus? When you referred to politicians being able to do something about regulatory discards, what specifically do you think the Commission could do to reduce regulatory discards, bearing in mind that some quotas have to be set to stop overfishing?

Jim Portus: What we need is really good science to base the quotas on and the quota decisions. Unfortunately, if you look at the list of species at the back of the CFP proposals, there are an awful lot of species that are not properly assessed. That is what politicians could help us with: to vote for more money to go to our fisheries scientists, so that they can do their job properly.

Q340 Chair : Should all fish caught be landed?

Jim Portus: No, I do not think so.

Q341 Chair : And just in response to George’s question?

Jim Portus: Essentially, we need to do survival trials. In actual fact, we have some work going on, on one of our vessels, just this week and next week, testing the survival rates of all sorts of different species. That information needs to be grown and it needs to be fed into the regulatory process.

Q342 Chair : At the risk of being interrupted, you will have heard that the previous witnesses, particularly the representative of the RSPB, refer to comanagement committees. Are you tempted down that path? Do you think they would work in practice and how would decisions be made?

Jim Portus: Are we talking about the Advisory Councils or the scientific committees, I am sorry?

Chair : It was the advisory committees feeding into the institutions.

Jim Portus: The CFP proposals do not actually seem to enable the Advisory Councils to have any decisionmaking powers. They are purely there to be advisory, as they have been under their present incarnation as Regional Advisory Councils. The sad thing is that the Commission, in its draft CFP regulation, seems to be giving itself more regulatory powers. More than 20% of the draft articles actually talk about delegating power to the Commission under certain circumstances. Nowhere does it say that the Advisory Councils will have any decisionmaking powers. I think that is quite sad.

Chair : That is very helpful to know that. Thank you very much indeed. We have been able to get through without an interruption, as we are expecting a vote. Thank you very much indeed for being so generous with your time and contributing to our inquiry. It has been most helpful.