Supplementary Memorandum by the Joint
Fisheries Policy and Legislation Working Group (Moran Committee)
(EA 15(a))
ENVIRONMENT AGENCY'S FISHERIES AND RECREATION
DUTIES
When the Moran Committee gave evidence to the
Environment Sub-committee on 7 December, Mr John Cummings asked
me about the relative strengths of the Environment Agency's fishery
and recreation duties (Question 389 p45), and I told him that
the fishery duty took precedence under current legislation. It
may be helpful for the Sub-committee to have chapter and verse
on this.
Under the Water Resources Act 1991 (S114) and
now under the Environment Act 1995 S 6(6) "It shall be the
duty of the Agency to maintain, improve and develop salmon fisheries,
trout fisheries, freshwater fisheries and eel fisheries."
This duty is absolute and unqualified.
The recreation duty (Water Resources Act 1991
S 2(2) and Environment Act S 6(1)) says
"It shall be the duty of the Agency, to
such extent as it considers desirable, generally to promote—
. . . (c) the use of such waters and land for recreational purposes."
This qualified "duty" with respect
to recreation is really a power rather than a duty, and cannot
take precedence over the Agency's unqualified duty to maintain,
improve and develop fisheries. It is also expressly stated to
be without prejudice to the Agency's general responsibilities
with respect to conservation (Environment Act 1995 S 6(1)).
In at least one case with which I am familiar
(the proposed Wye navigation order, which was the subject of a
Public Inquiry and is still under consideration by Ministers)
the Environment Agency has appeared to want to stand this statutory
framework on its head. In place of a clear duty to maintain fisheries
and a power to do what it properly can about navigation, the Agency
proposed that it should be charged with a new duty to "manage
the rivers for the purposes of protecting the interests of navigation
and for promoting, to such extent as it considers desirable, their
use for the purposes of navigation".
This seemed to me, as I argued at the Public
Inquiry, to be a fundamental change in the balance of the Agency's
responsibilities as determined by Parliament in favour of navigation
interests and to the detriment of fisheries and conservation interests.
I maintained that it was clearly incumbent on the Agency to take
careful account of the relative strengths of its various duties
as laid down in legislation, and that it must be wrong to seek
to determine priorities without taking account of what is said
in the Acts.
Lord Moran
December 1999
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