Examination of Witness (Questions 260-263)
10 DECEMBER 2003
MR JOHN
REES
Q260 Chairman: I would like to pursue
that line of questioning, because paragraph 27 of your evidence
whetted my appetite as well. You said at the beginning of your
evidence that you were part of the DTI. Given that in geological
terms we know there are only certain undersea areas which are
likely to be exploitable for further oil and gas discoveries,
I was a bit surprised that you had not been set off earlier to
do some of your work. Yet you comment that you are pressurised
because suddenly somebody decides that they are going to have
another exploration round. I was talking to a representative of
a gas company at the weekend, and he was able to tell me whereabouts
things were happening. He seemed to have quite a lot of foresight,
particularly on the western environs of the United Kingdom, where
or where not things were going to occur. If these people know,
why the rush?
Mr Rees: We know fairly quickly
but, yes, some of the people in industry know more quickly than
we do. There is no doubt about that. We are quick to find out,
but one of the problems is that the environmental information
we are looking for, supplied by the industry, is often slow to
arrive. It means that we cannot get down to the assessment we
would like to do as quickly as possible.
Q261 Chairman: You have mentioned briefly
the Irish Sea pilot, but I have to say that I struggle to understand
the content of paragraph 24 of your evidence. I wonder if, in
conclusion, you might be able to interpret paragraph 24 for me?
Mr Rees: To summarise paragraph
24, again it is coming down to the resolution of detail. It is
about whether we are in a position to be able to make value judgments
based on the datasets we have at present. This paragraph is basically
saying that some parts of government—organisations such
as the JNCC—are perhaps making value judgments that they
are not in a position to make, because we do not have the data
to allow them to do that.
Q262 Chairman: What we have had by way
of evidence so far are perspectives from a number of key players
in the marine environment world, all with their own focus and
expertise. The one clear message that is coming across is that
the law and the organisation which is involved in the marine world
is fragmented, and there may be a need for coherence to be achieved
in some way. Let us imagine that we could wave our magic wand
and you could bring together all of these players into, shall
we say, a Marine Conservation Agency. Would very big, as opposed
to small and fragmented, necessarily be better, or would it be
better to find some way of wiring people together but maintaining
their particular area of expertise? Which model might deliver
the better solution, in your judgment?
Mr Rees: I think that the wiring
together could work very well. In recent years we have certainly
made big advances in working together. That model could work a
lot better in the future, with some hard wiring. One of the issues
we have to be aware of is that we cannot just look at things—at,
say, conservation. We also have to look at the economic needs.
We have various interests, just as we have on land, in using the
seabed and using marine resources. While we could bring it all
into one body, I think that will probably not satisfy all of the
stakeholders around that body. They cannot perhaps trust one organisation
to do everything as well as against their having individual departments
or individual representatives working for them. For instance,
the environmental lobby could make sure that the unit or the body
by which they are represented will not be devalued by perhaps
being in the same department as a body which is looking at economic
resources—say, seabed aggregates.
Q263 Chairman: Finally, a postscript
question. On page 1 of your evidence you say, "One of the
main threats to the marine environment is the fishing industry".
As a Committee, we have looked at that on many occasions. You
have whetted our appetite that, with more information on the marine
environment, you could assist in the management of fisheries better.
In a sentence or two, could you say why you think the fishing
industry is such a threat to the marine environment? If you had
listened to the fishing debate yesterday, you would think that
it had turned round; there were lots of fish; lots of conservation
going on; lots of responsibility; and there really was not a problem
out there for the industry.
Mr Rees: I think that you only
have to look at the scientists' evidence on fish stocks to realise
that what may be apparent often is not the case. We can see that
demersal fisheries, finned fisheries, capture fisheries, are in
decline and generally, as you know, there are at present very
poor stocks of cod, plaice, whiting and hake, et cetera. We also
know that the methods of fishing—beam trawling and so on—in
the past have certainly caused a lot of disruption of the seabed.
I have mentioned before some of the almost photographic images
we have of the seabed. If you look at these, you will see trawl
marks everywhere. It just shows the extent of trawling and the
extent of disruption of the seabed in the past. Clearly, other
industries have also affected the seabed, such as the aggregates
industry. However, I think it is fair to say that the fishing
industry is much more widespread and probably has caused more
problems.
Chairman: Mr Rees, thank you very much
for answering our questions so comprehensively. Please tell your
colleague that we are sorry that he was not able to come and join
us, but you have done a jolly good job and we are very grateful
to you. Certainly, on those couple of aspects on which you said
you were going to write to the Committee, we look forward to hearing
from you. Thank you very much.
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