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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 552-iii HOUSE OF LORDS House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE JOINT COMMITTEE ON THE DRAFT MARINE BILL
Wednesday 11 June 2008 MR and MR BERTIE ARMSTRONG
MR RICHARD FERRE, MR and MR PETER MACCONNELL
MR IVOR LLEWELLYN and MR MICHAEL HEYLIN Evidence heard in Public Questions 194 - 254
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Joint Committee on the Draft Marine Bill on Members present:
Witnesses: Mr Barrie Deas, National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations, Ms Sarah Horsfall and Mr Phil MacMullen, Head of Environment, Seafish Industry Authority, and Mr Bertie Armstrong, Scottish Fisherman's Federation, examined.
Chairman: My Lords, ladies and gentlemen, could we make a start, please. Welcome to those who are giving evidence to the Committee this morning. Can I ask any Member of the Committee if they have any interests to declare? Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: I should declare my husband is a member of the Devon Sea Fisheries' Committee. Q194 Chairman: Thank you very much. We are all at sea this morning; it is all fishing, so doubly welcome to you all. It is a very nice day for fishing and I am sure you would much rather be out at sea than answering questions from us. Can I start the ball rolling by asking a very general question: fishing is the area most likely to be adversely affected by this Bill, especially the inshore waters fishing. Are you happy that the new Marine Management Organisation will have enough evidence at its disposal and, also, be properly funded in order to be able to carry out its main task of achieving sustainability in the marine sphere? Who is going to start on that? Mr Armstrong: If I may, thank you very much from the Scottish Fisherman's Federation. In a word, no. I think there is a capacity issue there. In more general terms, the national responsibility for the harvesting of this natural resources is, in my view, and the view of our Federation, underplayed in the Marine Bill. There is lots about the administration of inshore fisheries in England but there is little stated, other than perhaps one sentence in the foreword (which in terms of the Bill is therefore irrelevant), to support the national responsibility for sustainable fishing. We regard the very specific elements of the Bill which deal with marine nature conservation as excessively detailed, and a little wrong-headed in being excessively detailed, and not taking proper account of the national responsibility to sustainably harvest fish. It is a very complicated thing. Most of it comes from Europe and there is a capacity problem, I think, with the way the MMO is laid out in the Bill in dealing with the evidence that will be necessary to be considered and the framework that is created by the Bill which does not take proper account of the national requirement to harvest fish, I believe. Q195 Chairman: Does anyone else on the evidence panel want to come in on that first, before Martin Salter? Mr Deas: I would only add that I think there is a very serious jurisdiction issue here, given that anything outside the six-mile limit that affects fishing will have to be done through the Common Fisheries Policy mechanisms. To a large degree the draft Marine Bill is silent on that and the consequences of that, particularly in relation to the aspirations of the Bill for Marine Conservation Zones. So, as it stands, the main weight of Marine Conservation Zones will be within the inshore area. The difficulty of a large network of Marine Conservation Zones within the inshore zone is where are fishermen going to fish? By their nature, inshore vessels have limited range and therefore it is not so difficult to move. I think we also have to see this within the context of the increased use of the seabed for various purposes, and it is one of the reasons why we are quite supportive of the concept of marine spatial planning, because there is serious congestion. If you overlay a chart of where wind farms are, aggregate dredging and marine protected areas, the space left for fishing is actually quite small. I would commend you to do that - have a look at a chart of where the existing use areas are. So I think that is the principal challenge for the Marine Bill and for the Marine Management Organisation - this question of the jurisdiction and all that flows from it. Q196 Martin Salter: It was interesting hearing Mr Armstrong and Mr Deas speak. You talk in terms of the national responsibility for sustainably harvesting fish. My first question is: are we currently? Is the commercial fleet, at the moment, currently sustainably harvesting fish stocks? I would add on to that that the point Mr Deas made is, I think, the nub of the debate here. Obviously, from your point of view, Mr Deas, you quite rightly on behalf of your members are wanting to say where are fishermen going to fish if there are restrictions. However, is not the broader issue, in terms of the sustainable harvesting of fish stocks, where are fish going to breed and recruit to ensure that our fish stocks are sustainable in the long run, to ensure that there are fish stocks there for future generations to enjoy, for whatever reason? Mr Armstrong: The short answer to the
question is yes, they are being sustainably harvested in that (I can use the
Scottish example) five from seven of the major quota stocks are in a
sustainable state or are subject to a recovery plan. The marine environment does not quite work
like that; it is cyclical and everything eats everything else, so there will
never be a time in history when everything is at a state of maximum sustainable
yield together. There will be changes
and variations but we are moving towards sustainability as quick as we possibly
can. There has been a revolution over
the past five years in the creation of the Scottish fleet; the white fish fleet
has reduced by 65 per cent - it is 35 per cent of the size it was seven or
eight years ago - in direct response to the move towards sustainability. So, yes, it will be sustainable in the
future; it is sustainable now in the size of the fleet that we have. It is an interesting question you ask: will
there be places left for fish to breed and for juveniles to feed? That makes the assumption that you must leave
them alone to do that. Scientifically,
that is not correct. I am not suggesting
that there is not a place in fisheries' management for closed areas. For instance, in the Mr MacMullen: Returning to your original question, I am concerned about the evidence base and the need for more and more compelling data for the establishment of Marine Conservation Zones. We are seeing, at the moment, I think, a rather over-zealous application of the precautionary principle in the absence of good data and a lack of effective consultation with the fishing side. That leads on to this whole area of status monitoring, of the enforcement of management provisions, compliance and the activities, as Mr Deas mentioned, of non-UK nationals. There is, at the moment, a tendency towards (if I can put it this way) a presumption against fishing. There does need to be a greater acknowledgement of the changes that Mr Armstrong has alluded to; the fact that we are going through a revolution in the demonstration of the responsible attitude by the fishing side, and that that should be reflected in the sorts of assumptions that are made in the management processes. Q197 Martin Salter: Can I be clear, Mr Armstrong, for the record? You are saying there is no scientific base for establishing zones to enable fish stocks to recruit, and you are expecting Members to believe that we are sustainably harvesting fish stocks, when we have cod stocks at perilously dangerous levels (although there has been some evidence of some increased recruitment), and the latest data from the South West is showing the collapse of bass recruitment in many of the estuaries. Are you seriously expecting us to believe that we are sustainably harvesting and we have not got a problem? Mr Armstrong: No, I made a fairly direct
response to a fairly direct question and the inference of your question was
that we are not harvesting sustainably.
You can go round the coast and look for contra-indications in all sorts
of areas but, if you look at the overall picture, the harvesting of the main,
food-producing stocks for this nation, for the United Kingdom - is that being
done sustainably or are we moving towards sustainability - the answer is
undeniably yes. Yes, you can say that
the word "collapse" can be used to describe bass stocks in some areas, but it
is a non-quota species and is not a major food producer. It is very important to anglers and it has
its market, but if you look at the bigger stocks, cod is recovering. Perhaps, the most spectacular focus has been
on cod, but haddock, of which the Q198 Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: With reference particularly to the inshore fleet, could you tell us, particularly Barrie Deas and Phil MacMullen, a little bit about what lessons have come out of the Finding Sanctuary project, as far as you are concerned, and how far fishermen had to adapt to the demands that were put on them by that project? Mr Deas: In the era of marine spatial planning it is going to be very important for fishermen to define the grounds that are important to them and that are vital to them. That is one of the principal objectives and the successes of the Finding Sanctuary project. We recognise we have to co-exist with other marine users. The issue is on what basis we do that. I think the Finding Sanctuary project is a very good start in that direction. Again, I would underline that the key point for inshore vessels is the limited range of these vessels. Q199 Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: What I want to get to, if I may, is what did fishermen actually have to recognise that they had to give up when they were taking part in that project? Mr Deas: Information is the primary point; information of where they fish, what species, and how important are those grounds. That was the principal contribution. That will be the basis, presumably, for Marine Spatial Planning. Q200 Anne Main: Can I draw Mr Deas and Mr Armstrong back to two phrases they used about serious jurisdiction issues and, indeed, a national view? Do you have any concerns that the Bill as a whole may not be effective because of the devolved power situation? Mr Deas: I think there are two aspects to jurisdiction: one is the Common Fisheries Policy dimension, which I mentioned, and when we are talking in broad issues about the sustainability of fish stocks, first of all, I would echo what Bertie Armstrong has said. The best advice there is to go to ICs (?) - go to the scientists - and look at the sustainability of stocks. The mechanism for dealing with that is the Common Fisheries Policy, and as far as the Marine Bill is concerned it has very little to say on that front. The other issue of jurisdiction is the devolution, and from our perspective the danger is that we have a patchwork here that confuses the issues and makes policy very difficult to apply. We have serious concerns about the move in this direction in fisheries. We have a fleet that has the right to fish right round the UK, and when you have a patchwork approach it just makes it all the more difficult. Q201 Anne Main: Can I pick you up on that patchwork approach? Can I ask if you have made any arguments or representations in terms that there should not be a patchwork approach or that, indeed, this may not be workable unless there is a completely unified approach in this? Mr Deas: Right from the outset of the enthusiasm for devolution, without compromising the broader, political debate but just looking narrowly at fisheries, we can see that what is required when fishermen have the right to fish in all of these areas is a common approach that deals with the already highly complex set of rules that fishermen have to operate under, and the patchwork approach can only add to that difficulty. One of the problems with sustainability is having a set of clear rules that are understood, and the patchwork approach seems to militate against that. Q202 Chairman: Does anyone from the Seafish Industry Authority have a view on that? Mr MacMullen: Yes, my Lord Chairman. There is a real concern, I think. We have gone through a process of enacting European legislation on conservation, declaring special areas of conservation and special protection areas for birds and others. As we are starting now down the road of designating areas of national rather than European importance we are approaching the major problem area of legislating in a way that will control the activities of UK nationals but not necessarily non-UK nationals, and that is a thorny area where I understand that there is an expectation that there will be some co-operation, but I do not think we can make that assumption lightly where there is a strong economic interest from French, Belgian and Spanish fishermen. I think it is unlikely that they will necessarily co-operate to respect the management provisions in an area where they have no requirement to comply. I notice in the new version of the Bill that the Scottish Government is no longer working on the Marine Policy Statements, and this divergence of having devolved powers of fisheries management in Scottish waters but not having devolved powers of conservation management is a potential area of some, I would say, friction, if not conflict. Q203 Linda
Gilroy: Sustainability is a lot about sustainability
of livelihoods. I represent Mr Deas: I think the Invest in Fish
project was very successful, in that it brought a very wide range of
stakeholders together and engaged world-class expertise to establish where we
were in terms of sustainability, what the options were in terms of moving
forward, and I think that although the project has now come to an end it was a
very good investment. Within the context
of the Q204 Linda Gilroy: Do you know about whether the lessons are being taken forward and learned from that? Mr Deas: I think the lessons will now be taken forward within the context of regional advisory councils because the baton has really been handed to those. If I can say, the one weakness in the Invest in Fish report was that it was entirely UK-focused and UK-based, and as the UK only has something like 12 per cent of the quotas in that particular area, that was a weakness which, to be fair, we did recognise from the start. Now that we need to move to the international stage the regional advisory councils are the obvious place to do that. The economic and biological information and approach that was defined and developed within the Invest in Fish project, I think, will be very useful as we develop long-term management plans for the fisheries in that area. Q205 Chairman: Any other views from the panel on that? Mr Armstrong: May I just mention a response
from the Scottish Fisherman's Federation on the question that was asked about
the difficulties or otherwise of devolution?
It is instinctively logical, by way of capacity and focus, for the
Scottish fishing zone to be administered from Holyrood because the Scottish
fishing industry is quite different from the fishing industry that exists south
of the border. It is not a north/south
arm-wrestle, it is just a reflection of the geography and the evolution of the
industry in various parts of the country that we have ended up in the way we
are, with, if you like, a lot of the heavyweight end of the industry existing
in Q206 Linda
Gilroy: The fisheries are very different in the
English Channel and the North Sea in Mr Armstrong: Other than to restate the
point that yes, the regional differences are best addressed by the stakeholders
and the administrations closest to them - not by way of walling off (?) but
because that is the most logical way of approaching that. There are mixed fisheries in the Q207 Nia
Griffith: If I could return to the question of
devolution and talk about the Welsh context, there may be the opportunity
through this Bill to provide some enabling clauses which the Welsh Assembly
Government would then use to develop their MMO equivalent and reform of the Sea
Fisheries Committee. The Minister has
recently put out a consultation about the future of the Sea Fisheries Committee
in Mr Deas: I have seen that consultation and found it quite difficult to answer because of the absence of detail. The very short consultation seemed to be saying that things would stay pretty much as at present but it would be a good idea to have a Welsh zone. As a result, we have reserved our position until we know a bit more about the detail. Of course, in many respects that is a general remark about the Marine Bill because it is broad, enabling legislation, and the detail will be later and the impact on fishing vessels, on fishing communities will be seen at the secondary legislation stage. So we have registered our interest, we have registered our concern about the lack of detail and, really, the opaqueness of its purpose. Q208 Anne Main: Just on that very phrase you have used about the secondary legislation picking up on the detail of the broad brush approach of the Bill, do you believe that that is the right approach? Do you think it may well end up there is not enough scrutiny of the secondary legislation that may well have a major impact on the fishing industry? Mr Deas: That is the question. This is a very, very broad Bill. We may very well look back in time and say: "We should have spotted that one coming", because it is so far-reaching and nebulous at this stage, and it will become more concrete in the secondary legislation. I am not entirely sure what we can do about that, other than emphasise that consultation should be of the meaningful variety not the cosmetic variety, and ensure that organisations such as ours are engaged at central stages in the process. There are major weaknesses with the existing arrangements - for example, with wind farms. We know the political priority that is given to developing sustainable energy sources, but compared with, for example, offshore oil and gas or even the cable industry that has laid many thousands of miles of cable in our waters, the consultation on wind farms is (I think the word has been) "pathetic". It is seriously of the cosmetic variety. On where these wind farm areas are sited there is zero consultation with the fishing industry. Had there been a process of meaningful consultation and negotiation, it is not beyond the wit of the fishing industry and government and the energy industry to define areas that are less harmful to the fishing industry that meet the objectives of energy generation. I think that is the process that is missing. The process that was there with oil and gas where we managed to develop arrangements that mean we co-exist quite well as industries has been wholly absent with wind energy. You were talking about different industries, of course; oil and gas and cable, before the dotcom crash, were very profitable industries and wind energy is subsidised by government, so it is not the money that is available, but I do not think that is an excuse for abandoning meaningful consultation, particularly on the siting of wind farms. Mr MacMullen: I have to commend Defra and the Marine Bill team for their work so far in the process of producing the draft that we have but, as we have recognised, it is very much broad brush, overarching policy, statements of intent. As we move through to the second stage of secondary legislation I do not think the current model of consultation will serve any stakeholders particularly well. I say that because the normal model from any administration is that you send out letters, emails, or whatever, and you expect a fairly static response from a large number of individual stakeholders. What we, Seafish, have tended to do in our work in our legislation working groups (whether it is to do with food or marine environmental legislation) is to bring together administrators, regulators, stakeholders and others, to get a face-to-face meeting, a dynamic, that does start to explain the difficulties that people have with the provisions that are made as drafted and propose alternative methods of approaching a problem - changes in text, or whatever. So there is a dynamic process going on, and I think that must be the way in which the secondary legislation is approached, because there is going to be a lot of detail and a relatively short time for consultation. Q209 Mr
Williams: To follow on from Nia Griffith's question, I
think it is an aspiration of the Welsh Assembly Government to extend its powers
to the mid-line between Mr Deas: I think I can just reiterate that we are not entirely sure what purpose would be served. I think it is of the utmost importance to recognise that outside the six-mile limit any measures that are applied that affect non-UK vessels have to go through the Common Fisheries Policy and that is the framework that applies. At present the Sea Fisheries Committees have control of the inshore waters out to six miles, and presumably that would continue. So there is a question mark there as to what purpose would be served other than meeting a kind of general aspiration. It would be nice to have a Welsh fisheries zone, but that is as far as it goes, really, and we would very much like to have details of what really underlies this suggestion. There may be cost-saving implications for Defra or themes along that line, but it is difficult to go much further with the information we have got so far. Q210 Paddy Tipping: I take it, from the comments you made, Mr Deas, about wind farms that generally the notion of Marine Spatial Planning is a concept that you would welcome because it provides certainty for the fishing industry. Mr Deas: Yes. We cautiously welcome the principle of Marine
Spatial Planning because, to be frank, it is fairly chaotic out there. We have aggregate dredging, I mentioned the
wind farms, there are military ranges and now we have marine protected
zones. All of that constrains where
fishermen can fish and the conditions in which they fish, the costs involved in
fishing and, indeed, safety implications.
One of the principal advantages of Marine Spatial Planning, we would
hope, would be an obligation for the different stakeholders and the different
developers to talk, to engage with the fishing industry. I think there is a great deal that can be
achieved by two industries talking together, and I think the development of
offshore oil and gas is a good example to follow. In the absence of that, we have a problem out
there. So I think there is a need for
Marine Spatial Planning. On the detail
of how that is done, of course, there is a continuum from the urban planning
model to something much more flexible, and I think we have a much greater
understanding and a much greater input about what would be appropriate for the
marine environment. Again, to stress,
one in which the Chairman: Mr MacMullen wanted to come in. Q211 Paddy Tipping: Can I ask a second question, and perhaps you can jump in on that as well, Mr MacMullen. It was something about the detail. Marine Spatial Planning is an important concept but oil and gas licensing remain outside the system, and of course big wind farms and big port development will be decided by an Infrastructure Planning Commission. That is not going to make life easier for you. What are your views on that? Mr MacMullen: They will make life difficult but I think we have to look at one really fundamental difference between fishing and every other activity that is going to be planned for in the marine environment, and that is that everything else that you put there is static and does not move around very much: wind farms do not move much and neither do Marine Conservation Zones. Fishing relies upon mobility and fishermen are constantly responding to the movement of fish stocks, whether it is seasonal or in response to climate change, or whatever, or changes in opportunity resulting from the Common Fisheries Policy - a whole range of drivers that move fishermen around different places. So the innate mobility of fishing as an operation puts it in conflict with static activities, and that is I think a fundamental problem that needs to be addressed in the way that the planning regime is set up and administered. Q212 Paddy Tipping: And the relationship between the MPC and Marine Spatial Planning? What are your views on that? Mr MacMullen: It is unclear, as yet, to me how it will operate in the same way as the role of the Crown Estate. It is put there in the note as "being a planning authority", but it is one that tends to maximise returns to the Treasury rather than looking at stakeholder interests. There seem to be quite a lot of loose cannons around, and the relationship between the planning authority, Crown Estates, the planning regime more broadly, and stakeholders has yet to be determined, but it is something we need to look out for carefully. Mr Armstrong: To take what my colleague Barry said one stage further, the mobility of fish stocks and the requirement to fish are where the fish are. There is a defect, in my view, in the Bill in the prescription of a terrestrial planning qualification, as embedded in the process of Marine Spatial Planning, because that depends on a set of conditions that simply do not match the maritime environment. I would suggest for fishing that (and I would say this, wouldn't I but I genuinely believe that it is the correct approach) there should be a presumption of access for fishing everywhere (which does not fit at all with town and country planning) unless it is proven that that access is detrimental in one way or another, and that the good nature of the hallmark on the relationship between the oil and gas industries and the fishing industry should be cultivated with the rest of the Marine Bill. The very important fundamental point is a presumption of access for fishing; it cannot be boxed off; you cannot say: "You can fish there and everything will be all right" because that just is not the way it works. Q213 Baroness Jones of Whitchurch: I wanted to push you. I think we are getting there, but what would you like to see in the Bill that will give you the involvement in Marine Spatial Planning that you do not see there at the moment? What exactly is it? You might have half-answered that but I wonder if that was the collective view, that there has to be a presumption of access. In terms of your involvement in consultation, what are you expecting the Bill to say now that it does not say already? Mr Armstrong: I would like the presumption of access to be explicit with sensible controls upon that. That is not a bald statement in the Bill that fishing will carry on regardless forever, but a presumption of access as the starting point would be ideal. With regard to marine nature conservation, there are very prescriptive statements made on marine nature conservation, and we would like to see those caveated more completely. There are some caveats in the wording of the Bill itself but we would like to see a caveat more completely, in that if there is to be a protected zone set up then why are we doing that, what is there to begin with, is there a monitoring process that will see how we are doing in protecting that, is there an exit strategy if it is not working, and, finally, may we have a presumption of mitigation before termination by way of management measures - mitigation of ill-effects before termination of the whole activity; a little framework that will allow the fishing industry to continue to meet its responsibility for national harvesting of this resource. Q214 Martin Salter: The establishment of Marine Conservation Zones is one of the major thrusts, almost at the heart, of the Marine Bill. Yet, on the other hand, you are arguing for a presumption of access. Can I just be clear: do you support the establishment of Marine Conservation Zones? Mr Armstrong: Yes. Q215 Martin Salter: Specifically, if the areas currently designated as special conservation areas were all to be designated Marine Conservation Zones what effect would that actually have on the inshore fishing fleet? I ask that to get a kind of sense of scale. Mr Armstrong: To be honest, I was referring mostly to the Scottish fleet because that is the offshore fleet that fishes beyond 12 nautical miles mostly. It was the wider context that I was referring to. Q216 Martin Salter: It might be more appropriate then if Mr Deas answered the question. Mr Armstrong: If I may, my Lord Chairman, what I am not saying (I would hate to leave the wrong impression here and end up looking like a reactionary, Luddite, resistor of all change - I do not want to do that) is that zonal management does not have its place. What I am saying is it is wrong to make sweeping presumptions like those made under marine nature conservation. The truth of the matter lies between the two. Mr Deas: I think the fishing industry is naturally very nervous about Marine Conservation Zones because they imply, at some sort of level, denial of access that is currently there. On the other hand, we have practical experience of successful no-take zones, and protected areas that are well-designed, have a purpose, are monitored and have an exit strategy if the original purpose is not there any more. If all of those criteria are met then Marine Conservation Zones could be a good thing. Our particular concerns relate to that process. What are they for? Biodiversity is a good thing and we can ensure biodiversity is protected by closing down all areas. Obviously, this is an issue of striking the right balance. Our experience with the 2000 special areas of conservation has not been a good thing. For example, socio-economic considerations are not taken into consideration when they are sited, and that is a fundamental point because I think I have mentioned before that with a little process of negotiation and looking at what is to be protected and how the fishing industry can be accommodated, in most cases an accommodation can be reached. I think that is a very important point, and one which ties into the issue about stakeholder involvement at a very early stage. Q217 Chairman: Can I cut you off there because time is getting brief and there are at least a couple more questions. Did somebody very quickly want to make a comment? Mr MacMullen? Mr MacMullen: Very briefly. There must be individual management plans, as Mr Deas is alluding to, for individual Marine Conservation Zones. There must be a recognition that not all fishing is the same; that you can fish in different ways with different impacts depending upon the sensitivity and the reason for which the zone was designated. So there are plenty of ways in which we can tune fishing to accommodate the sensitivities of Marine Conservation Zones. Q218 Baroness Byford: May I first start with Sarah, who has sat patiently with this. The question applies to all our witnesses here today. Referring to the Environment Agency powers, do you think they are relevant, proportionate and are there any gaps in them? Ms Horsfall: Environment Agency powers? Q219 Baroness Byford: Yes. If it is not something within your remit I am quite happy to toss it to the other witnesses. Mr MacMullen: They are quite clearly restricted to certain, well-circumscribed areas but there is some juggling about of responsibility now between the MMO and the Environment Agency. As far as I am aware, at present we are working very closely with the Environment Agency in helping them to understand the complexity of the fishing industry far more than they do currently. Q220 Earl of Selborne: I would like to ask very briefly whether you are content with, first of all, the representations of the fishing industry on the IFCAs and, secondly, whether you think the IFCAs are likely to be resourced adequately to enable them to deliver their functions. Mr Deas: I think we have seen the progressive reduction of the representation of the fishing industry on inshore bodies at the moment, the Sea Fishery Committees, and the new inshore bodies will be even less. I think that does raise issues of legitimacy when it comes to applying rules in the inshore waters, and it is a matter of concern to us. On the question of resourcing, there is now to be an obligation on local authorities to pay their contribution, which should bring some kind of stability into the picture. I know that for some Sea Fishery Committees this has been an issue in the past. As to whether the amount is proportionate, I have no way of saying. Time will tell. That question is probably best directed to the current fisheries managers - the Sea Fishery Committees. Chairman: Our time is up for this particular session, so the Committee's thanks to the members of the evidence panel. Memoranda submitted by National Federation of Sea Anglers, Sea Anglers' Conservation Network and Moran Committee
Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Mr Richard Ferre, Chairman and Mr Alan Brothers, National Federation of Sea Anglers; Mr Leon Roskilly and Mr Peter MacConnell, Sea Anglers' Conservation Network, examined. Q221 Chairman: Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for coming along this morning. I notice you have been sitting at the back listening to the first session of evidence. Would you broadly agree with what you have heard so far from the first panel, or do you have any particular disagreements with what you have heard? That is a bit of a barbed point to start with. Who would like to take that? Mr Ferre: Interestingly enough, their response to the need for Marine Conservation Areas is almost identical to ours, so that may well come out in our presentation, and we do not very often agree on anything. So that is certainly noteworthy. I have a little bit of a disagreement with the result of the Invest in Fish South West discussions, where it worked fine until it came to deciding to do anything, and at that point it just stopped dead because nobody could agree, as the team, something that was acceptable. Factions disagreed with elements of it and, in the end, I suspect not much has come out of it, except a lot of information and some good ideas. Q222 Martin Salter: Can I question Richard and Alan. The thing that left me gob-smacked was this notion that we are currently sustainably harvesting, particularly when we see the collapse in sand eel stocks, where most other fish stocks are predicated on that part of the food chain. Can we have your point of view in terms of how sustainably we are currently harvesting the marine environment, because it is not what I am hearing. Mr Ferre: There certainly appears to be
a real unwillingness to admit that fish stocks have declined significantly by
the commercial fishing sector. In fact,
I have seen great attempts to have every word that might infer that delineated
from reports that they have been involved in.
From an angling perspective, it is very difficult for us to get the hard
data, but if you accept anecdotal data (and lots of others do) the angling
experience has declined enormously over the last 15 years. I have been out fishing twice in the last
week and if you talk to any angling club that maintains statistics - a lot of
them do - over 20, 30 or 40 years, small angling clubs around the country, the
numbers of fish, and particularly the size of the fish, have declined
dramatically. One of my colleagues runs
an angling club on the Q223 Chairman: Does anyone else on the panel want to come in? Mr Roskilly: Sustainable is a very comforting word, but few people have a common idea exactly what that means. It means something very different to recreational sea anglers as it does to commercial fishermen. From our point of view it does not mean that there will be enough fish to catch and land next year no matter what size and what species. To us it means the maintenance of a fully functioning ecosystem able to produce fish of all sizes throughout the age range, and a robust fish stock that is not subject to wild swings as conditions change. To attain those sustainable conditions you need to have a fish stock structure that is represented through the full age range of those fish in the natural proportions. If we take bass at the moment, they are harvested at 36 cm. Certainly close inshore you will find very few fish that are much larger than that. You will see the odd one or two caught but you do not have to go back too many years to find many more big fish being caught close inshore by recreational sea anglers. It is those big fish that sustain the population, not the small fish that provide the harvest next year. Mr MacConnell: I just wanted to add a little
bit to what Q224 Mr Walker: You mentioned that new species are being targeted. Can you just give some examples of what species are now coming under pressure? Mr Ferre: Flounder is a relatively insignificant fish commercially, normally - virtually no market income if you look at the statistics. It is the third most popular fish for beach anglers and half of all sea angling is done from the beach, so there is not a lot of commercial value under normal circumstances, but because there is a lot of focus now on shellfish, particularly potting, they are a good pot bait, so they put a net across the rivermouth, take pretty much every flounder that comes through, cut them in half and put them in the pot bait so they can catch lobster, which are of high value. Now they have never seen the market in that situation, and the same might be true of anything - dogfish, wrass - all fish which, if you decide to, on a commercial method, are relatively easy to catch in some numbers. However, in fact, from a commercial value point of view all they are doing is cutting them in half and putting them in a pot so they can catch lobsters and crabs and sell them overseas. So you are destroying a high-value angling activity for something that could be filled another way, in our opinion, and there are virtually no controls to stop that. There are no closures on any of these fish; for most of them there are not even any size limits, and they are very localised, so you can decimate the whole population to fill a need for pot bait without anybody noticing except the angler. Q225 Mr Walker: My colleague Mr Salter talked about the pressure on the sand eel population and the sand eel fishery. Can you give some examples as to the scale of that fishery? I remember a few years back Danish power stations were burning sand eels for fuel, which did seem completely environmentally mad, but are there examples of bad practice nearer our shores that are causing you concern? Mr Ferre: The biggest issue for us is the fact that there is no control over effort. You hear of a lot of control about days at sea. Offshore there is but inshore there is not. The only control is the number of boats. So a boat could run as many pots as it likes, and if its catch drops it puts more pots out. A ten-metre boat can run 30 kilometres of nets; nobody knows how many miles of filament nets there are strung around our shore today; nobody can tell you. If their catch rate drops off and they are not earning any income they will double the amount of nets. It is cheap, it is light, you can get loads of it on the back of the boat, and the only thing you see is the catch levels. Therefore, the catch drops off because the fish are not there so they double the catching effort, so they keep their catch up, but the catch drops off even more and then it stops, and then they will go and do something else. The inshore fishing fleet around our way switches continuously inshore, depending on the time of year. I have a lot of sympathy, they have to do it to survive, but, unfortunately, they tend to switch, when there is nothing else left to catch, to something else. As far as we can see, there is now nothing in the food chain they do not target, from cockles, which is pretty much the basic, lowest form of life in our part of the world, which drives hermit crabs, which drives the fish that feed on them, all the way up. They just take everything and there is no control over it. I am a Sea Fishery Committee member, which controls shellfishing, and they have no idea what the stocks are; they just do not know. People continue to apply for the licences and they think it is okay, they renew the licence. There is no scientific evidence as to what the stock levels are. Q226 Mr Walker: So the bottom of the food chain is being undermined? Mr Ferre: Yes. In my opinion the focus has gone down and down and down, and they have now pretty much got to the bottom of the food chain. Mr Roskilly: Another example is, say, juvenile bass. These are a fish which, as juveniles, tend to stay in shallow, warmer water, so lots of juveniles can be found together and quite easy to catch. The current minimum landing size is 36cm, which is a juvenile fish, but those 36cm fish will be mixing with a lot of fish smaller even than that, and by allowing the targeting of those 36cm fish in shallower areas, where there are big congregations of very small fish, you get a huge discard problem. The solution would have been, as had previously been proposed and almost enacted, to move the minimum landing size up to a size where you are only targeting the mature fish and allowing all the fish to breed once and avoiding trawling amongst those very small fish for the ones that are sizeable. Q227 Martin Salter: Can you explain for the benefit of Committee members, unlike Charlie and me, who do not fish for bass, the difference between a 36cm and larger fish. The important point we need to get across is to be sustainable a fish species has to have at least one chance to breed. Why is this not happening? Mr MacConnell: As well as here with the Sea Anglers' Conservation Network, I happen to be the Chairman of the Bass Anglers' Sportfishing Society. The issue as far as we are concerned in terms of bass is that all the science tells us that bass will spawn and breed for the first time somewhere when the female fish is about 42cm in length. That fish is about seven years old. If we are consistently taking bass at 36cm and having a bi-catch below 36cm, which in some cases is as high as 60 per cent of what comes on board - not in all cases but in some - then a very, very large proportion of the fish that are being caught and killed, either deliberately or as bi-catch, are below the age and size at which they will have been able to reproduce themselves once. Our view is that a sustainable way would be at least to try not to catch any fish until they have been able to reproduce themselves once. Mr Roskilly: Just a quick point of information. Bass is a fish that can grow to 20lb and lives some 25 years and spawns 15 times during its lifetime. We are taking them as very small fish, just as baby fish. Very few people will have seen a full-sized bass. Q228 Baroness Jones of Whitchurch: I wanted to push you a little bit on what you are saying. Obviously you will be aware that the stories you are now telling us are very different from what we were being told before that the stock was sustainable. What science do you rely on? You are telling us some great stories here, but are you relying on the same science as the fishermen or do you have independent access to some other statistics? Do you collate how many fish your colleagues catch a year? Is there anything independent that we could see that justifies what you are telling us about the stock declining? Mr MacConnell: From the Bass Anglers' Sportfishing Society point of view there are two things. For nearly 30 years we have asked our members to report fish that they catch, their sizes and weight, and to send in scale samples. We have experts who read the scale samples and we have those records. In addition to that, together with sea bass in the years 2000-02, our members and some others were involved in a very, very major sampling of bass stocks by catch and release and tagging fish to see what happened to them, where they went, when they were exploited, when they came back into shore and so on. That information is information that we have which is independent information and which we use to some extent in support of our arguments. What I want to say about the sea bass information, or the ICES information, is I do not think we would always dispute the factual content of it. What we would dispute is what people mean when they use the word "sustainable". In some cases what we are disputing is the interpretation that is placed on that information and not necessarily the factual content. One area where we are in dispute at the moment and where we have different factual content is to do with the long-term. One of the things we are involved in is the sampling of what are called all-group bass. One of the things that are quite important to understand about bass is good fishing for bass, whether it is recreational fishing or commercial fishing, depends on there being a number of good year classes. For example, there is a reasonable abundance of small and medium-sized bass around at the moment and that is because 2002 was a very good year class. The fish that spawned in that year, the small fish that survived, have, for various reasons, partly because there were a lot of them and partly it was particularly mild winters, that cohort of fish which is now five, six or seven years old is actually quite large. Chairman: Mr MacConnell, could I just stop you there because we are in danger of straying off the Bill. I think we have dealt enough with bass for the time being. Q229 Mr Williams: In the evidence that was presented by the Sea Anglers' Conservation Network you pointed out the importance of the coastal interface and how important it was to have good co-operation between terrestrial and marine planning bodies. Do you think the Bill is strong enough in this area? If not, what proposals would you have to make it stronger, to make that interface better? Mr Roskilly: We, along with a number of organisations, are concerned that very little attention has been paid to planning, particularly within that very important zone, that onshore development and onshore activities are being allowed with very little consideration for their impact on that very close inshore area, which is of very special importance to much of our marine life. It is a whole area of the Bill that could be improved where we are bringing together different planning regimes, looking at different things happening in the marine environment and trying to bring those together in a co-ordinated planning system. We also need to involve very much the onshore planning system and integrate the two together. Q230 Mr Williams: A number of the devolved nations are going their own way in this matter, some working together more closely. It seems to me it would be important that the different nations also co-ordinate over these matters. Have you got any view on that as to whether the Bill could be strengthened in those areas as well? Mr Roskilly: Yes. Fundamental to the Marine Bill is co-ordination of planning of the activities that are affecting the marine environment both between the devolved administrations and the land and sea-based management. I feel that whole area has been neglected in comparison to looking in detail at the planning in the marine environment and we need to consider that much more closely. Q231 Mr Walker: You guys are having a pretty easy ride at the moment, so I am going to ratchet up the pressure a little bit. It is all very well for you lot to come here and talk to us, you enjoy your day out fishing and have a nice time on the beach, but how do you answer the accusation that you are trying to put the needs of recreational anglers ahead of commercial fishermen who have to derive a living and generate wealth and income off commercial fishing? How do you answer that accusation? Mr Roskilly: Recreational sea angling,
according to a study carried out by Defra, is an activity that involves some
1.1 million households that have at least one member, a total spend of £538
million, which equates very well with the first-hand value of the inshore
catch, and supports 19,000 livelihoods.
That is what we regard as a reduced amount of activity now due to
unavailability of the kind of fish that we want, both in species and size. In the Mr MacConnell: I just thought there was a slight incorrect assumption in your question, which was what we want is to take fish from someone else. In fact, our position is that if the kinds of plans that we have in mind came to fruition it would involve more fish for us but it would also involve more fish for sustainable commercial fishing as well. It is not an "us instead of them" argument that we are trying to make. Q232 Martin
Salter: That very nicely leads me into my next
question which is about Marine Conservation Areas. There is evidence from other parts of the
world, Mr Ferre: The answer is yes, anything that has a propensity to improve fish stocks has to be something that anglers would support. Similarly, with the commercial fishing operations we would like to make sure they have clear objectives because, apart from anything else, how will you know if they are succeeding if they do not. We recognise that particularly close to the coast these areas could easily be accessed by a lot of users and we would want to see anything that could continue without damaging the objectives of the Conservation Areas allowed to continue. As long as those two premises are borne in mind and we are involved in the consultation we would certainly be behind them. Q233 Martin Salter: The management of the resource, of course, is crucial. You have lobbied me hard about the lack of recreational sea angling representation on the existing Sea Fisheries Committees and time and time again you have argued that they have been far too over-reliant on the commercial sector, far too dominated by the commercial sector. Do you see the new IFCAs, which are replacing them, as a step in the right direction, or do you have concerns about the make-up of those IFCAs? Is there anything you want to put on the record for us? Mr Brothers: If I may remind your
Committee, the SFCs were originally set up in about the 1880s and are a little
bit out of date at the moment, and I am sure you all know that anyway. Can the new IFCAs work? Yes, in my opinion they can work but the
question is will they work. The
composition of the committees will need to be carefully looked at. They need to be quite clearly differentiated
from the old SFCs. We feel that we do
not need so many local authority representatives on these committees and that
sometimes some of the local councillors do have pecuniary interests, either
directly or indirectly, in the business of the committees. We need to make sure we have the right
quality of people on these committees.
Obviously we would like to see more angling representation there in one
way or another. Credit where it is due,
over the last three or four years we have had more representation on the SFCs
than we ever had before. Do not run away
with the idea that we have got a lot, we have only got a maximum of two on any
of the committees. On the Sussex Sea
Fisheries Committee that I sit on we have two anglers and six commercials and
the rest are mainly made up of local councillors representing four districts:
East and Mr Roskilly: I think an opportunity is being lost here. The reason that we are transforming the SFCs and giving them a new name and revising them in different ways is because quite clearly the old Sea Fisheries Committees, although very good in some aspects of fisheries management, particularly shellfish et cetera, have not proved to be the right body for doing the right job in the 21st Century when we have got many more problems. We really do need a radical overhaul of the whole system of inshore management. What we are in danger of ending up with is SFCs by another name that have been slightly tinkered with. I do have problems with representation by councillors. I too sit on a Sea Fisheries Committee and one councillor is a trawler owner and others, as in the Josh Eagle report, which I hope you will acquaint yourselves with, believe their job on the SFC is to support the local fishing industry over and above all other interests. Representation by recreational sea anglers is very much in the minority and it is very hard to propose anything which may affect commercial fishing in the short-term which will be readily accepted because we are often outvoted. We originally started off with a proposal for 50 members of the IFCAs and we are now proposing 21 because of the increased number of councillors. Rather than increasing the number of councillors, I would like to see a much wider selection of stakeholders, particularly those with an interest in restoring the marine environment close inshore. Q234 Earl of Selborne: Specifically on whether the new committees are going to do better than the Sea Fisheries Committees, you have given us quite a long description as to what is going wrong at the moment: too much effort, lack of data, lack of adequate regulation. What on earth is the use of removing councillors from the committees, is that going to resolve the issue? Is not what you need to furnish through the IFCAs the ability to collect the scientific data you require and then have appropriate regulation? What sort of IFCA committee is going to do the job more adequately than the Sea Fisheries Committee? What do you need other than getting rid of councillors? Mr Brothers: I do not think we are
suggesting for one moment that all local authority representatives should be
withdrawn from the new IFCAs. After all,
they are financing it, they have an audit responsibility, but, as my colleague
said, we need to see a wider representation of those who are concerned with the
environment. The SFCs have been tending,
which is a very light word to use, to work for the benefit of the fishing
industry instead of protecting the fisheries.
The difference is not very subtle, it is pretty obvious. We welcome the IFCAs so long as they do take
account of the value of the fishery.
Local authority representatives are concerned with tourism, and angling
is a part of tourism. Indeed, you can
say that the commercial fishing industry is a part of tourism because it does
attract people to places like Brixham who want to see the fishermen bringing in
their nets. I remember years ago on the
beaches of Mr Ferre: The thing starts with the remit and one thing that is in the draft Marine Bill is very clearly what the remit will be, and it is moving away from just looking at the environment to trying to get - it does not say "maximum" but I think it should say "maximum" - the most out of the environment for all stakeholders whilst having a priority to things in the marine environment. I also sit on a Sea Fisheries Committee that nearly ground to a halt with a contentious subject over the size of a charter boat. I do not think it could easily handle a complex socioeconomic decision today, and that is part data, part thinking, partly the time it devotes to it. These meetings start, last about an hour and a half and go out again and there is not a lot of honest debate about the subject. One of the reasons in our original submissions about the future of these was we wanted to change the ownership of Sea Fisheries Committees because we felt they needed such a shake-up that just giving them a gentle tweak would never achieve it. We now know they are going to stay within the Agency but, in my opinion, they need a better skill set, a better set of data and some help to know how to make what will be difficult decisions and be prepared to face up to them. Q235 Lord Hunt of Chesterton: Clearly there are problems with these existing committees and these IFCAs may have similar problems unless there is some ongoing review of what they are doing. To what extent do you have confidence in the MMOs? Presumably it is going to be the executive body which should see and monitor what is happening. If there are people on a committee who feel that issues of the environment are not being adequately looked after, to what extent could they appeal to the MMO? Perhaps you would explain this. If, as a member of a committee, you feel seriously wrong decisions are being taken, what powers or authority do you have to do that? Can you write to Defra? What happens? Mr Ferre: Your only true appeal is to the minister. In my opinion, there is a big yawning gap in decision-making between Sea Fisheries Committees and where else. If it is a local issue the Sea Fisheries Committee can address it, if it is so minded. If it is more than local, if it involves two Sea Fisheries Committees, short of having a conversation at the Association of Sea Fisheries Committees, which is purely voluntary, the next real decision-making person is the minister. We wanted to increase the MLS of one fish by three or four centimetres and we had to go right up to the minister to do that. Who, in-between that, is going to make a decision on anything? There should be an oversight body for these. Q236 Lord Hunt of Chesterton: It is not the MMOs? Mr Ferre: I do not see any evidence specifically within the MMO that there is going to be a function that (a) will cope with a middle-range decision that might affect three or four Sea Fisheries Committees or (b) handle anything. Today's Sea Fisheries Committees are inconsistent, some we work well with, others do not want to know; some we can get things done with and some we cannot. It is totally arbitrary. We need somebody overseeing these to ensure consistency of operation. Q237 Martin Salter: Has not Lord Hunt given you potentially the answer to the question. It might not be envisaged in the Marine Bill at the moment, but is there not a case for the MMO being that interface between the minister and the Sea Fisheries Committee? It is frankly ludicrous that you go from a Sea Fisheries Committee to trying to get the attention of the secretary of state. Would you not argue the case that the MMO should have that responsibility and the Marine Bill should be amended accordingly? Mr Ferre: Yes. Q238 Martin Salter: Then give us a memorandum, Richard, make the case. Mr Ferre: It needs to be a group of people with the powers to tell the Sea Fisheries Committee in certain circumstances that they must follow something. At the moment, unless the minister creates a byelaw for the whole of the country, there is nobody able to do that and a lot of times a Sea Fisheries Committees will not implement an action to improve the situation because if the two Sea Fisheries Committee either side do not do the same thing they are frightened that other fishermen are going to come in and steal their fish. You hear that all the time. There is nobody who can handle a mid-range decision and put it out to all of them, except the minister, in a way that would be good for the marine environment. Q239 Baroness Miller of Chiltorne Domer: When all this works perfectly and the Sea Fisheries Committees are set up, or the new ones, in the way that we all want, I am sure, at the end of that there is going to be the issue of enforcement because they can plan and we can have Marine Conservation Zones, but if the enforcement does not work it will have all been for nothing. I wonder if you could just comment briefly on the new enforcement regime that is envisaged in the Bill because the MMO is responsible now all the way up, even though their boats cannot navigate right up the rivers. Are you happy with the enforcement regime? Do you think the inspection will work? Do you think the Environment Agency should continue to have a role or not? I would like an idea of how practical you think the enforcement regime as envisaged in the Bill is. Mr Ferre: That is a fairly complex
question and it splits into two parts.
There is quite a big blurred area when you start going up a river from
an estuary and there has to be a clear drawn out line, and I suspect when you
hear from my freshwater colleagues they will have more to say on that, where
the Environment Agency takes over and Sea Fisheries Committee. From an angling perspective I would rather
only deal with one, but we are not going up the river. There has to be a commonsense discussion, and
it has to be clearly defined, about where the two handover to each other. As an outsider, for the last three years I
have watched a bun fight where they have both been trying to grab hold of
control. This is an outsider looking in
and it has been quite interesting but totally unproductive. As long as they draw the line somewhere and
everybody understands where it is, and it is appropriate in terms of policing
power and resources, it is okay. At the
moment, certainly in estuaries, there are quite big grey zones. Once you get offshore, Sea Fisheries
Committees are happy to handle it up to six miles. In theory they have the capability but they
do not do a lot of enforcing and I would like to see more of that. If they are reporting up through the MMO then
in theory they will be within one agency anyway, just using a different body of
people to do it. Mr Roskilly: I have two points. One is on the enforcement in general and the other one is what we do about the estuaries and the rivers. Again, it comes down to resources, how much can be spent on not only patrolling but also bringing prosecutions, et cetera. The SFCs have traditionally been very under-funded for the amount of work that they do so have been more liable to take a softly, softly approach, issuing warnings and having quiet chats, whereas the Environment Agency has not been scared to bring prosecutions. If you look at the numbers of prosecutions for fishery offences, netting offences, et cetera, particularly in the areas of patrol, you will find that the Environment Agency are a lot more robust on enforcement. Enforcement has two aspects. What we want to aim for is willing compliance and what I would term participatory enforcement. If you look at freshwater, the anglers are the eyes and the ears of the rivers, and that is a phrase that is well-known and used by lots of people. I would like to see a situation where the anglers become the eyes and ears of the marine environment as well, which they are doing much more now, reporting lots more offences. There is an encouragement there. I do not think there is a willingness to draw anglers into that, the phone calls are seen as something of a nuisance. What we should be doing is setting up helplines 24/7 and investigating reports and preparing reports back, encouraging people to make those reports, which will reduce the cost of enforcement and increase the amount of willing compliance. With regard to the estuaries, these are not just another piece of water, they are very complex systems and the activities that occur in them can have all kinds of consequences. It is very difficult for Sea Fisheries Committees that enforce in the marine environment out some way where things are much, much simpler and far easier to understand the consequences of and to gain the skills necessary for proper management of fisheries and the environment within estuaries, whereas for the Environment Agency, which currently has responsibility for the whole of the river basin system, the migratory fish that go up there and through the Water Framework Directive has got ecological status both within the estuaries themselves and out to one mile, it would be much more sensible to allow them to be the authority for the estuaries. What we are likely to end up with, it appears to me, is a mishmash of responsibilities of enforcement agencies all doing different tasks within the same estuary. Again, the Marine Bill is meant to sort out that kind of complexity, not to introduce further complexity. A clear line drawn at every estuary where the commercial fishery ceases and above that line it is all for the Environment Agency would be a much better and much clearer outcome and we could manage our important waters much more effectively. Q240 Baroness Byford: If I might follow on from that. Clearly you are suggesting to the Committee that there is currently an overlap of responsibility on enforcement now. Can I ask you two things. One, you mentioned resources and I would like you to go a bit further on that. Secondly, do you keep a base of evidence of abuse or reports that are made? What proportion of the evidence you have collected in the past has actually resulted in a prosecution and then in the successful commitment of a prosecution? Is that data available? Indeed, if I could add, how do you see the IFCA 's role in the future and should that be part of it? Mr Ferre: I think it was the Bradley Review that consulted on enforcement and that came out about 18 months ago. All Sea Fisheries Committees reported on how many incidents of law breaking they found and how many they prosecuted. From memory, and this is going back 18 months and it was looking at the previous year, they were prosecuting about two per cent of all the infringements they found. It has gone up slightly since then but, to be blunt, they do not prosecute because they do not have the money to do it and are frightened of losing. If they prosecute one or two a year it is a risk for them financially and if they lose they struggle to know where they are going to get the money from, so they do not prosecute. We all know that if you do not enforce a law you may as well not have the law. Baroness Byford: Absolutely. Chairman: Our time is up. Gentlemen, thank you very much indeed for answering our questions this morning. Thank you. Memorandum submitted by the Moran Committee Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Mr Ivor Llewellyn and Mr Michael Heylin, Fisheries and Angling Conservation Trust, examined. Q241 Chairman: Good morning, gentlemen. You too have been listening to our deliberations and we have talked a lot about sustainability. Would you very briefly like to encapsulate your feelings with regard to that subject? Mr Llewellyn: As far as the fisheries we are dealing with, it is absolutely essential. What we are concerned about is the conservation of fish in a sustainable natural environment. Certainly so far as the wild fish are concerned, I think conservation has to come first. You cannot fish for any species unless you know that fishing is going to be sustainable and you are not going to endanger it. So far as stocked fisheries are concerned, and perhaps my colleague will want to say something about those, conservation is the key, but there perhaps it is a slightly different emphasis because catching the fish does not cause a problem although there are cases when putting the fish there in the first place could cause a problem. Mr Heylin: In still water fisheries there are concerns about the transfer in of stocks to sustain the fisheries. Particularly with climate change it is likely that recruitment of fish in still water fisheries is going to improve fairly dramatically in the next few years and necessarily, for the good management of those fisheries, stocks will need to be removed rather than introduced. In the Bill there are some instances where the removal of fish and transfer to other waters perhaps is being made easier, but it will be vary depending on the secondary legislation or the byelaws introduced by the Agency as to how easily applied that will be by the largely volunteer services of club committees and club fishery managers who are presently responsible for running most of the fisheries in the UK. Coarse angling is very dependent on a massive volunteer force and there are indications, certainly in the policy paper, of some fairly drastic criminal possibilities for people held responsible for the fishery in terms of having knowledge. There are concerns we have there regarding the responsibility of individuals rather than the body corporate being held responsible for events which may or may not be criminal in their outcomes. Q242 Martin Salter: Can we just finish off from your perspective on the debate we have all been listening to on where the line is drawn between where the Environment Agency's jurisdiction should end and the new IFCAs should take over. We have now had a number of contentions that the Environment Agency's responsibilities should extend down into estuaries and I would be very interested in your views, particularly you, Ivor, as a salmon fisherman. Mr Llewellyn: The first point to make is that any line you draw is an administrative line. There is no biological line where you can say, "This is seawater on one side and freshwater on the other", in estuaries it will vary according to the state of the tide. Biologically you are going to get a mixture. We support the Environment Agency's responsibility for diadromous fish, particularly salmon, sea trout and eels, and we support them retaining that responsibility out to six miles. Currently, as we have heard, they act as a Sea Fisheries Committee in a number of estuaries, particularly estuaries of major salmon and sea trout reasons. The main reason for that is they are in a very good position then to stop people basically poaching salmon while pretending to fish for sea fish. We are perfectly happy with that situation. The problem the Environment Agency has is that it is not funded in any way to do that. If it was going to continue it would need to be properly funded. Currently the proposal is that the new IFCAs will take over. We are not objecting to that in principle, but if they do they will need to exercise their responsibilities in estuaries seriously. At the moment the evidence you have heard is that they are very reluctant to prosecute. That is dangerous anywhere, but it is particularly dangerous if you have got the estuary of a major salmon river and people setting nets in that estuary. You do need to take a very robust line on enforcement, which is what the Environment Agency does. In an ideal world I think the Environment Agency probably would retain responsibility in estuaries and would be financed to do it. We are talking about the regulation of sea fisheries in estuaries. As far as the actual deliberate poaching of salmon, the Environment Agency will retain responsibility. If IFCAs are going to be given that responsibility, it is essential that they take those responsibilities very seriously, not just in estuaries but in the whole Coastal Zone because migratory diadromous fish are vulnerable throughout the Coastal Zone and they do need protection. At the moment I do not think SFCs really do take their responsibilities seriously and that is an aspect of the Bill which needs strengthening, as we have mentioned in our memorandum. Q243 Linda Gilroy: I was just going to ask you about IFCA's powers. Do you have specific proposals which you would like to tell the Committee about today? I know you have set that out in the memorandum. Mr Llewellyn: We have one specific proposal, which is that IFCA officers should have enforcement responsibility for salmon and freshwater fisheries legislation. At the moment they are specifically excluded from enforcing that legislation although, oddly enough, MMO officers are able to enforce it. It would simplify life if when an IFCA officer finds an offence against salmon and freshwater fisheries legislation at sea he can just take enforcement action as if he was an Environment Agency officer. That is one specific proposal. More generally, we would like the responsibility of IFCAs for conservation of the marine environment to be strengthened. At the moment it is a balancing act between the exploitation of fisheries and preserving the environment, and we mention management of fisheries first, which may or may not be relevant but should be a clear priority. The conservation comes first and it must take account of the need to manage fisheries in a sustainable way and the needs of the fishing communities, et cetera. The priority should go to the environment and, within that, it needs to be clearly stated that they do have a responsibility for ensuring the conservation of diadromous fish. I think they do have a responsibility but it is extremely obscure and you need to follow various threads through the draft Bill to find it. It needs to be much more clearly stated. Q244 Linda Gilroy: I think you were present during the first session in which we were taking evidence from the fisheries organisations in which they were expressing almost the opposite view, that they feel their concerns are not likely to be well taken into account in the new arrangements. Resources are obviously important for that. What is your sense about the resources that will be available to tackle these issues and stakeholder consultation particularly? Mr Llewellyn: To the extent that there is a funding mechanism built in and that local authorities will have to contribute, they are better off than SFCs, and in many ways they may be better off than the Environment Agency which depends on grants made from the Government, which is not always 100 per cent reliable. They get it, but they do not always get as much as they want or need. Q245 Martin Salter: Moving on from that, the Marine Bill, as you will be aware, has had a number of things tacked on to it: coastal access, which we need not worry about too much at this stage, and obviously the implementation of the recommendations of the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Review. For the benefit of the committee, could you just give us your attitude to the use of the Marine Bill as a vehicle for delivering on the 2001 SAFFR review. What are the key points that freshwater anglers in particular are looking for out of this process? Mr Llewellyn: I think the discussion we have just had illustrates why it is sensible to cover this particular legislation in the Marine Bill because as far as salmon, sea trout and eels are concerned that legislation goes out to six miles and most of the exploitation of salmon and sea trout actually takes place in the sea. As we have talked about, you also have very fluid boundaries, the Water Framework Directive which extends out into the sea beyond rivers and, indeed, estuaries. Conceptually it is very sensible to deal with all sorts of fisheries together regardless of where they take place. There is, of course, the Government commitment, which is now eight years old, to produce legislation as a result of the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Review. Since it is relevant, and here is a Bill which is ready, it seems to me entirely appropriate that it should be used. What freshwater anglers are looking for is for that commitment to be met and the key recommendations of the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Review, which the Government accept, to be implemented. Mr Heylin: In terms of the Bill, it is absolutely vital that we get new freshwater legislation fairly soon. Freshwater is increasingly under pressure from population growth and water resources are a big issue, certainly in the south east. Our fisheries will come under increased pressure because of that and because of development and climate change. The Environment Agency needs modern tools to deal with fisheries in the 21st Century and this Bill goes a long way to providing a lot of that opportunity for us. It is proposing better controls on the taking of fish, which is a key issue. It proposes better mechanisms for introducing byelaws, and particularly emergency byelaws, to deal with short-term issues in particular catchments. It gives the Agency more freedom in terms of determining the need for and application of close seasons on various fisheries in various locations and it gives better enforcement on fish transfers in and out of waters. At the end of the day, all that legislation is really useful but if the Agency is not adequately funded to provide the enforcement no legislation can provide the protection of our fisheries and the biodiversity they provide. We do need to ensure that there is adequate provision and funding for the protection of the biodiversity. People tend to look at water and all they see is a mirrored surface and they think, "Oh, that's fine, it's water", but if you do not have a good invertebrate structure and good fish structure, the bird populations suffer, mammal populations suffer, the riparian margins suffer and we lose a major part of the beauty of this countryside. The quality of our fisheries is absolutely vital to the future. This Bill provides some management techniques for the agencies concerned to ensure that we can maintain that and help meet our commitments under the Water Framework Directive. If I may go back to the question about the boundary between the Environment Agency and IFCAs, in one of the original submissions we made, Specialist Anglers, it was that the Agency should have responsibility out to six miles. This is over-complex, we have got two agencies for this mix in water. Water does not recognise these boundaries, lots of fish do not recognise these boundaries, why are we creating them? If there is going to be the MMO and the Agency there needs to be a very distinctive line drawn as to who is responsible at what point. The Agency has been very successful in terms of managing our estuarine waters over the last few years. It has got a good record of taking people to court and prosecuting people who are in breach of the regulations and the byelaws. The Sea Fisheries Committees do not have that good record. I share Ivor's concern that particularly for sea trout and salmon it is a major concern that we may be putting into place here an organisational structure that will not enforce regulation as well as these fish need, and the whole river system up to the headwaters in the hills is dependent on those fish. The rivers themselves upstream will suffer very badly if our estuarine waters are not managed. For anglers and conservationists there are no boundaries in this, it is about a holistic approach to the water, and that goes from the top of the mountain right through to the sea basin. Q246 Lord Hunt of Chesterton: In regards to this and your other evidence, and we have heard this this morning, it seems curious that there does not seem to be unanimity in understanding the scientific basis of what is happening to fish stocks. Do you think that the new arrangement of IFCAs will be more effective at ensuring that the debates and decisions are based upon relevant scientific data? Could the interface between the practical gatherers of data, that you are, and the scientific establishments be improved and become more effective through this new planning agency? Mr Heylin: It could certainly become more effective. One of the weaknesses historically in managing particularly our marine fisheries has been the conflict between ICES and their collection of data and the attitude of commercial fishermen to the ways and methods by which that data is collected. Every time ICES come up with a report, you only have to read Fishing News to see that ICES is slagged off by the commercial fleets because it has been collected in the wrong place, collected by the wrong people and they do not know what they are doing anyway. The reality is it comes back to the argument about what the word "sustainability" means. For us, sustainability is about the rain falling from the heavens on the hillsides, making a river that goes into the sea and providing habitat for all sorts of species. Q247 Lord Hunt of Chesterton: Are there scientific people at the current Sea Fisheries Committees or are they called in? Will they be present more effectively in the future? Mr Heylin: No, I do not think there are scientific people. They rely on reports provided for them. Bear in mind neither of us sit on Sea Fisheries Committees, so what I am saying is hearsay. They are dependent on reports from both the commercial exploiters and the recreational sea angling exploiters of the resource. They will hear a different view of what is happening in the sea. I used to be a sea angler and 18 years ago I could go down to any coastal port and there would be 20 boats full of anglers going out seven days of the week. I have not fished in the sea now for nearly 20 years because the catch rate has dropped so dramatically and there are other things to do in life than go out and spend your time on a boat pointlessly. Now, if I go to a port and see two boats going out with recreational sea anglers twice a week, that is about as much as they get. When you get reported now that there are 1.1 million sea anglers and they spend £546 million, the reality is if you go back to the 1960s and 1970s there were probably five million sea anglers in those days and they probably spent proportionately two or three billion pounds on their sport in those days, but the sustainable fishing has led to such a situation that those fish are no longer available. People vote with their feet. Anglers generally, not just sea anglers, stay at home rather than go sea angling because the cost of sea angling has gone up, the fishing experience has dropped off and the enjoyment levels have dropped off because they do not get the occasional fish to take home for the table. Sustainability is a word that anglers do understand because we have seen the decline in sea stocks. The days when I could go out and catch 14lb bass every couple of weeks are long gone. I have got people now who regularly fish and this year have not taken a bass off the shore in prime locations, people who have fished for 30 or 40 years, really know their waters, good anglers, who do not any longer catch fish in our seas. I do not need a scientist to tell me we are not sustaining the stocks, I know we are not sustaining the stocks. I cannot give you absolute data but I am 62 now, I have fished since I was four and I know the quality of our fishing in the seas is absolute junk compared to what it should be. We are killing the seas on the basis of providing for 16,000 jobs that are subsidised at a huge rate by various organisations. It is madness. This goes some way to providing it. Q248 Martin Salter: Say what you think! Mr Llewellyn: Just to get back to the research aspect, as far as I can see IFCAs do not have any research function and they do not have any research ability, so they are going to be dependent on the advice they get, presumably largely from CEFAS, the Defra research agency. What was said at the last session was that the research effort is not focused enough on a lot of species which are critical in the inshore zone, but are not of highly commercial value. They tend not to get looked at in anything like the same depth. There are endless studies of cod and very little about a number of other important species. I suspect that scientists themselves would say that their understanding of the marine environment is pretty imperfect because it is very biased in certain directions. Q249 Baroness Miller of Chiltorne Domer: Could I take you back to the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Review and, on the basis that legislation such as this does not very often come along, is there any major recommendation or important recommendation that was made in that review that is not in here and that you feel should be? Mr Llewellyn: It is pretty comprehensive. There are a couple of things we identify which we would like to see done. There is the Environment Agency's duty, and the review came up with a suggestion as to how that duty should be interpreted and the Government accepted that would be put into legislation at an early opportunity. This is a missed opportunity, they have not actually done it in the draft and it would be sensible to do it. There is another provision, which is section 2.1.2 of the Water Resources Act, which is of concern to us. This provides for compensation to be paid to fisheries owners if their interests are affected by certain byelaw changes. It tends to inhibit the Environment Agency from proposing conservation measures which might trigger compensation. We are concerned that this will mean the new provisions they have on historic installations will not really operate effectively because the Environment Agency will be scared to use them. There was a recommendation from the review that should be scrapped and it was accepted at the time by the Government but is not being pursued now. We do cover this in more detail in the memorandum. It is also rather inconsistent with another provision in the Bill which provides for the Environment Agency to compensate on a discretionary basis netsmen who lose their licence. It seems to us that the two ought to be put on the same footing, so if it is discretionary as far as netsmen are concerned it should also be discretionary so far as fisheries owners are concerned and we do not think anybody should be compensated if a measure is taken for conservation reasons. It does not happen over the sea and it should not happen on rivers either. Q250 Dr Whitehead: Could I ask a question about invasive species. You have mentioned the issue of the introduction of live fish to freshwater and the increased powers that the Bill will potentially give to deal with that. First, to what extent do you think this remains a serious problem in terms of freshwater? We have heard the example of the crayfish problem. To what extent do you think the powers are likely to be proportionate? Mr Heylin: If I can refer specifically
to crayfish, and that is mostly the red signal crayfish from Q251 Baroness Byford: My question really follows on from that. One of the difficulties facing the industry is the question of disease, and with climate change obviously that is likely to be more affected in the future. We have not heard any thoughts from anybody about fish farming per se and whether that has implications as far as you are concerned and whether, as a Committee, we ought to be more concerned about it in the overall sustainability of fish stocks anyway. Mr Llewellyn: Fish health is obviously crucial but it is dealt with differently, it is covered by EU Directives. There is currently an Aquatic Animal Health Directive which is being implemented. It is absolutely critical that the new provisions on fish health are married with the provisions in this Bill on introductions so you get a comprehensive system and one which does not have various conflicting requirements. It would be nice to cover fish health as well, but that is not possible. Certainly fish health is a major issue and a major danger. There is a very specific salmon issue to do with Gyrodactylus salaris and that is an area where we do need additional powers and, as we say in our memorandum, given the current discussions with Government on exactly what is going to go into the implementation regulations of the Directive we are not quite sure, but we think that additional powers are needed in primary legislation and, if so, this Bill is the obvious place. Q252 Mr
Walker: We know there are salmon diseases in Mr Heylin: The biggest danger of fish
escaping into our waters is probably carp because at the moment in most of Q253 Chairman:
Gentlemen, I am afraid we will have to wind up
the proceedings because our Commons members have got to go elsewhere. May I thank you very much for coming this
morning. Mr Heylin was reminiscing about
the earlier days, and he obviously had much better luck than I did because I
tried to catch bass with a rod in Mr Heylin: You should have come out with
me from Q254 Chairman:
But I
do remember moving more to that area.
When I moved to Mr Heylin: They should have been fishing halfway up the stem at Deal Pier where to the Walmer side there is a wreck and if you cast about 60 yards you are sitting right on top of the wreck and it always holds really good Pollack. If you are ever in Deal again, that is where you should go. I think it is the second bus stop up the pier. Chairman: Thank you, gentlemen, very much. |