Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240-259)
3 DECEMBER 2003
MR BEN
BRADSHAW, MR
MARTIN CAPSTICK
AND MR
COLIN PENNY
Q240 Mr Mitchell: That is very disappointing.
On pingers, it is a very expensive business because you have got
to have it every so many yards, you have got to change the batteries
and there are days of labour involved in doing that, there is
failure and these are big nets. Is Defra going to finance the
pingers?
Mr Bradshaw: Not fully, no, but
there are grants available through FIFG and other sources that
could help the industry fund these pingers. One of the reasons
that we are not suggesting we do this everywhere immediately is
because it is going to involve some pretty considerable costs
for the industry and, as my colleagues have already said, the
smaller vessels working within the six mile limit might find this
more burdensome than the larger vessels who we believe are more
responsible for the problem fishing outside. In terms of starting
somewhere and not overburdening the industry immediately, that
is another of the reasons why we have decided to exclude the six
mile limit for the timebeing. You are right, the pingers cost
about £60 each and that will be an added expense. In the
discussions I have had with those in the industry who share our
concern about this, they are certainly prepared to contemplate
this and they do not want the fishing industry to be given a bad
name. We will give whatever help we can, but there will be a balance
of responsibility between the taxpayer and industry.
Q241 Mr Mitchell: Going by past history,
Defra is not the most generous of departments when it comes to
matters like this. Mr Nick Tregenza told us that the pingers cost
£60 each, you have to have them every 100 metres, that is
£9,600 to set up the nets and about £500 for batteries
every year, and you have to do the battery change intermittently,
that is about four man-days of work. So it is an expensive business
imposed on an industry which is hovering around bankruptcy. Is
it not really the responsibility of Defra to finance these pingers?
When you will the ends you have to provide the means.
Mr Bradshaw: It is not Defra,
it is you, it is the taxpayer. It is very convenient to pretend
that we have our own money; we do not. There is no such thing
as Defra money, it is public money.
Q242 Mr Mitchell: As the agency which
is imposing it you should have a responsibility to pay for it.
Mr Bradshaw: Yes, and we estimate
that in some cases public funding will amount to 75% of the cost
of these pingers. We cannot guarantee that we will fund the whole
cost or even most of the cost in all circumstances and that is
one of the reasons why it is always a balance in these areas.
As an MP representing a fishing constituency you know that in
all areas of public life it is up to Government to make balances
between how far the taxpayer should be responsible for doing something
and how far the industry itself should be responsible. A classic
example is satellite monitoring where we are about to announce
the full funding of the satellite monitoring programme. Many people
in your own constituency know they are going to fund 40% of it.
You can always make arguments that the taxpayer can fund more,
but at the same time you have to go back and explain to your voters
why you are putting their taxes up. Mr Mitchell: Can I
suggest you might consider a loan scheme? They would not pay for
the pingers at the time of installation, they would pay for them
later on, maybe 15 years after the fish have been culled, depending
on the scale of their catches and on their income from the use
of the pingers.
Q243 Chairman: Perhaps Mr Penny could
tell us the state of the bass fishery. Obviously some fisheries
are in more difficulty than others.
Mr Bradshaw: The boats that catch
bass, contrary to the image that is sometimes portrayed in Britain
about the state of our fishing industry, is quite a big part of
our fishing industry that is doing extremely well and where stocks
are plentiful. Pelagic stocks, not just bass but herring, mackerel,
and shellfish, crabs, lobsters, prawns, are all doing extremely
well in the UK, so the incomes are there and I do not think it
would be unreasonable to expect that those people who are making
a profit in the industry and who care, rightly, about their reputation
when it comes to cetacean by-catch should be expected to shoulder
some of the cost of avoiding that cetacean by-catch.
Q244 Mr Lazarowicz: Your strategy recommends
that observers be carried on boats that use pingers, but you suggest
this should be done on a voluntary basis. Do you not foresee difficulties
with that? Are you confident you will get a positive response
from the industry to accept observers on a voluntary basis?
Mr Bradshaw: So far I am. The
small number of bass trawlers that are involved in this fishery
have responded to our requests and that response has been incredibly
encouraging. The fishermen themselves realise it is in their own
interest to try to tackle this problem. They realise that people
feel very strongly about cetacean by-catch and they want everything
possible and reasonable to be done to avoid it happening. At least
the vast majority of responsible and sensible fishermen will co-operate
and will help us find the solutions that we all want to find.
Q245 Mr Lazarowicz: I am sure the vast
majority of responsible fishermen will do that, but in every industry
there are people who will not be so responsible and one issue
here is how responsible are people and how many are not so responsibly
inclined. Is it not the same ones who are most likely to be irresponsible
who will most resist doing this on a voluntary basis?
Mr Bradshaw: I do not think so.
No one is trying to apportion blame here. This is a problem that
afflicts the whole industry and some bits of it more seriously
than others and we are trying to find solutions to that problem
and we are looking for ways of avoiding it. We are not seeking
to catch people out or blame them for a by-catch, we are asking
for them to co-operate in a strategy which will avoid it happening
and they will benefit from as well.
Q246 Mr Lazarowicz: At what point would
you come to the view that the voluntary scheme was not sufficiently
comprehensive to allow you to have real information on the effectiveness
of using something else?
Mr Bradshaw: If we found that
people in the industry were resisting having observers at all
or if they were refusing to fit pingers or if they were refusing
to do other things which were being asked of them by our strategy,
then we would have to re-visit the issue of compulsory rather
than voluntary observers. I do not think it is sensible politically
at the outset to go in all guns blazing if only for the fact that
it would be considerably more expensive to the taxpayer or the
industry, whoever we were going to make pay for it, and when we
do not yet know whether or not a voluntary system is going to
work.
Q247 Mr Lazarowicz: What kind of people
do you envisage acting as these observers, would they be scientists,
lay staff, volunteers?
Mr Penny: At the moment they are
people employed by and trained by SMRU.
Mr Bradshaw: That is the Sea Mammal
Research Unit.
Mr Penny: They are fairly expensive
beasties. The Community draft regulation envisages that observers
will be independent of the industry and it defines what we require
from observers. I heard Barrie's point earlier about using the
industry and obviously, as he said, the Minister has been working
to involve the industry more in developing fisheries policy. It
is an issue we could look at when we are negotiating the regulation
in Brussels because the cost of observers and the amount of observation
required is an issue which has been raised by a number of Member
States and the possibility of training and involving vessel owners
as part of this process is obviously something we could look at
if it would reduce the cost.
Q248 Mr Lazarowicz: You said people would
be recruited in some way by Defra, but what kind of expertise
or skills or background are these people coming from? Will they
be people from the industry primarily?
Mr Penny: I think in the main
they are ex-fishermen. They have to have expertise in maritime
matters, I think it says, and they have scientific expertise as
well so they can identify species and they can, if necessary,
take scientific samples as required. They do have to have a certain
degree of scientific expertise.
Q249 Mr Lazarowicz: All of this works
well if it is indeed the case that the vast majority of the people
involved in the industry are responsible and want to co-operate
with the surveys and experiments, and I have no reason to suggest
that they will not, but nevertheless we have heard evidence that
suggests that some fishermen will not co-operate and there will
be ones who will not want to have the full facts come out in the
survey. How can you be sure that you are not going to be putting
in place observers who, to put it bluntly, will be too close to
the industry to come out with a fair assessment?
Mr Bradshaw: These would be paid
for and employed by Defra, they would not be in the pockets of
anybody. The fact is that a lot of our best fisheries inspectors
are former fishermen because they understand the industry and
they know some of the ways of the industry, let me put it as mildly
as that. On top of their already fairly difficult and onerous
jobs they would be doing some of this as well. Enforcement, as
you may be aware, is going to be a major issue in the next two
years, not just because of the legal proceedings that the Commission
has announced it intends to take against the United Kingdom for
our, as it sees it, lax enforcement but also because when the
Prime Minister's Strategy Unit reports, as we are expecting it
to do in January of next year, we expect it to say some fairly
dramatic things about enforcement as well. I think we, as a department,
will be wanting to have a look at our enforcement procedures but
across the board not just in enforcing or observing on the cetacean
by-catch issue. At the moment I think the point is the people
who have been doing this so far are highly paid, highly professional
marine biologists and I do not think anyone is suggesting that
we need to have people quite of that expertise and pay scale to
do this. It will be a fairly simple thing to observe as to whether
people are complying and what the by-catch problem is. They would
not need to do it all the time. There is no reason why you cannot
do spot-checks to give you a good impression as to what compliance
is like. If we had fishermen who were recalcitrant then we would
deal with them in the way that we deal with them on other issues
of enforcement where the rules are not being complied with.
Q250 Mr Lazarowicz: The Commission's
draft regulation, as I understand it, requires or proposes the
use of observer schemes on other fisheries, not just those in
which pingers are being deployed. Do you intend to amend your
strategy in line with that draft regulation?
Mr Bradshaw: I do not know whether
we have any concrete proposals on where we intend to use observers.
It is unrealistic to assume that there is suddenly going to be
an army of observers all over the place, we are going to have
to think very carefully about how we use the observers we do employ
and where they are best deployed and what the best use of the
time and resources that are available to us as a government are.
It is in our interests that this works and is effective and if
it can work on a voluntary basis, I hope it does because that
is better for the fishing industry and it is certainly better
for the taxpayer as well.
Q251 Mr Lazarowicz: How many observers
are you envisaging?
Mr Penny: At the moment the Commission
proposal is between 5 and 10% of effort. The Sea Mammal Research
Unit is about to undertake a research programme which is looking
at the requirements for observation within different fisheries
to give us a more exact figure of what would be statistically
significant. The Commission are aware of the research we are doing
and they are awaiting our observations on this. It would depend
to some extent on which fisheries we are talking about. We could
be looking at fairly small percentages up to the 5% the Commission
is looking at.
Mr Bradshaw: Martin has some statistics
on this that you may be interested in.
Mr Capstick: This is paragraph
111 of the strategy itself on page 29 where we were referring
to the issue of monitoring and assessment of the cost. As Colin
says, if we were looking at 5 to 10% levels of observer coverage
at a cost of between £300 and £500 a day that would
imply a cost of somewhere between £1 million and just under
£3 million per year. But there is obviously a question about
what we need to do to ensure that we get statistically significant
and useful results, and ensure that we get results which are useful
to us but in a way that does not involve disproportionate cost,
which is going to have to be one of the things that we will look
at.
Mr Lazarowicz: It sounds like
highly paid marine biologists at that daily rate.
Q252 Mr Drew: We have talked quite a
lot about the trials with the various types of nets and so on.
I think it would be useful to know what continuing work is being
undergone and how much further the experimentation will be required
to get us to a stage where we at least know what we are dealing
with. You have said on a number of occasions "We are still
finding things out". Can you map out for me what the timescale
now is and what are the likely outcomes in terms of future research?
Mr Bradshaw: We, as the Government,
have invested £1 million on this research with the Sea Mammal
Research Unit and, following the successful trials this year,
I held a meeting with the fishermen who were based in Scotland
who do this bass fishery off the South West, with officials, with
scientists from the research unit who had undertaken the research,
and the fishermen themselves agreed on a voluntary basis to repeat
the trials this year and to attach the grids to all of our boats.
The Sea Mammal Research Unit again will monitor those trials,
they will film it, they will see whether the modifications that
they have made to both the grid itself and to the flap make any
difference. We hope that they will be as successful as last year,
if not more successful, and if they are then I think I have already
said on the record that we will make them mandatory in our fishery.
The fact is they are in practice being used in the only pair trawl
fishery from the UK this year anyway. As I said earlier, this
is evidence that we will use in the arguments that we make with
other EU member countries and with the Commission about how the
by-catch can be avoided in this particular fishery.
Alan Simpson: You have delicately referred
to observers who understand the ways of the industry. Perhaps
you missed an earlier exchange between Linda Hingley and Austin
where she referred to them as "crooks".
Mr Mitchell: Not the observers, the fishermen.
Alan Simpson: The fishermen, yes. And
Austin corrected her saying that they must be foreigners.
Mr Drew: I think he said French.
Chairman: Specifically, yes.
Q253 Alan Simpson: The thing that worries
me is that in the representations that the Committee has had there
are lots of references to the monitoring that Defra is committed
to but the criticisms are about how little Defra is committed
to doing. When we were talking about looking at the effectiveness
of pingers, whether it should be inside the six mile limit which
we can control or outside which we cannot, the criticisms boil
down to this question about what is it that we are prepared to
do. I think Linda Hingley put us on the spot in her evidence when
she said, "Look, let us be realistic about this. We know
that there are high levels of by-catch problems in relation to
sea bass trawling. In particular we need to focus on the part
that we know is responsible for the greatest problem, which is
the bass pair trawlers. Even if we cannot go the same way as the
United States with a complete ban that they imposed six years
ago, we should ban for one season. If you are talking about observations,
the cheapest thing to do is to ban for one season and see what
the outcome would be, what level of by-catch problems turn up
in the form of dead dolphins on our beaches". Where are we
in the doing part of Defra's strategy?
Mr Bradshaw: As I have tried to
indicate to the Committee, I think we are doing quite a lot and
we are certainly doing more than any other European Union country.
I would follow the logic of your argument, Alan, in favour of
a ban if there was nothing else that we could do but it seems
slightly counterintuitive to me to propose to ban a fishery, put
people out of business, prevent them catching fish that people
want to eat and is very good to eat, if we can avoid catching
the dolphins at the same time. The research that we did this year
showed that it is possible to avoid catching dolphins using these
mechanisms. If we can achieve that then I would hope that is a
solution that most sensible people would support. I do not know,
I am not an expert on this, but I understand that the reason the
trawl was banned in America was for rather different reasons and
that was about sea angling and bass rather than to avoid cetacean
by-catch. If we can avoid cetacean by-catch in this fishery there
is no point in closing the fishery. There is no problem with the
stocks. We close fisheries in this country if there is a problem
with stocks and there is no problem with stocks of bass. If we
discover in the trials this year that last year was some kind
of fluke and by some sort of miracle we managed to avoid catching
dolphins, if these separator grids and the flap do not work this
year then we will have to revisit this issue and, as I have said
on a number of occasions, I do not rule out closing this fishery.
If we can find a way to allow fishermen to continue to make a
living and me to buy and eat bass while avoiding catching dolphins,
surely that is the most sensible course to take.
Q254 Alan Simpson: I think to be fair
to her she was quite specific in declaring her interests in eating
bass as her favourite fish and making the point that it was not
the banning of the whole fishery that she was looking for.
Mr Bradshaw: My remarks just now
should have been about the pair trawl fishery which is where these
trials are taking place and took place this year.
Q255 Alan Simpson: If there was evidence
that the strategy was not working and that the pair trawling was
continuing to be a significant part of the problem, you are not
averse to coming back to that prospect?
Mr Bradshaw: Absolutely not. I
would simply point out that it would be much more effective if
we could persuade others to do the same. As I said earlier in
this evidence session, we have two, or at most four, pair trawlers
on this fishery at any one time and the French have 30. I would
be reluctant to take unilateral action in the direction of a ban.
I would not completely rule it out but I think it would be much
more sensible in terms of trying to save dolphins if we came to
that situation where we worked in concert with other European
Union countries with the Commission taking the lead.
Q256 Alan Simpson: You quite legitimately
raised questions about whether there are other parts of pelagic
fisheries that we ought to be looking at, not just bass but also
issues about mackerel, hake, tuna and horse mackerel. Could you
just tell us whether the logic of what you have described is something
that Defra is applying to those other aspects of pelagic fishing?
What are you doing and where is the strategy taking it?
Mr Bradshaw: You are right to
remind everybody that this is not a problem restricted to the
bass pair trawling off the South West of England, it is not. I
think because of the high public profile and the fact that this
is the biggest concentration and this is where most of the dolphins
have been washed up, this is where public attention has been focused
in recent years but it is not the only problem of cetacean by-catch
in the UK. As I said, the international agreements that we have
entered into, and the European Commission, are not restricted
to what we do in the bass trawl fishery off the South West, it
is in the UK's fishery as a whole. I do not know whether you have
anything more to add about what we are doing in the rest of the
pelagic fishery or what we are looking at. It is not such a big
problem but it is still a problem.
Mr Penny: We are continuing
to look at it because we recognise that there is a possibility
and, as Linda said earlier, the strandings have started but the
mackerel fishery and the bass fishery have both started as well,
so it could be one or the other.
Mr Bradshaw: Also it is not
just pelagics, cetaceans are caught in fisheries for demersal
stocks as well in the North Sea. It is not an issue that is just
about mid-sea fish.
Q257 Mr Lazarowicz: I am glad you made
that point because I think there can be an emphasis on just one
particular fish and one particular part of the seas around the
UK. What is the Department's assessment of the other nations that
are responsible for cetacean by-catch in the North Sea, which
is obviously the other major area of concern?
Mr Bradshaw: Perhaps if I could,
for the first time in this session, read directly from my brief
because it answers that question. On our observations the by-catch
of harbour porpoises, for example, has been noted in: UK gillnet
fisheries in the Celtic Sea for hake and other species, (these
fisheries are also pursued by France, Ireland and Spain); gillnet
fisheries in the North Sea for cod and flatfish species, these
are fisheries also pursued by Germany, Denmark, Netherlands and
Belgium; and the by-catch of common dolphin has been observed
mainly in the offshore bass fishery off the South West coast.
I think one of the helpful things that your Committee's investigation
into this can highlight is that this is a rather deeper and broader
problem than is the common public perception which has tended
to concentrate purely on the bass fishery off the South West of
England; it is much wider than that.
Q258 Mr Lazarowicz: That being so, what
discussions have you had with these governments? What pressure
have you put on them to adopt an approach which is at least as
rigorous as that of the UK?
Mr Bradshaw: Some of the countries
are also doing quite a lot. Denmark, for example, I think I am
right in saying, has already fitted pingers, so in that respect
it is ahead of us. Those of you who know about fisheries will
know that the European Union countries tend to split into the
more conservation minded, in which I include the United Kingdom,
the Scandinavian countries and Germany, and those which have a
slightly different attitude to the environment, which are the
ones I have not named.
Q259 Mr Lazarowicz: What kind of sharing
of information is there between the UK Government and the devolved
administrations, on the one hand, and these other nations to ensure
that these measures are actually making a difference?
Mr Bradshaw: We have already shared
all of our information with the Commission and in discussions
with them that led to the Commission announcing its own proposals.
As we gather evidence in this season, which will begin this week,
we will share that with the Commission again and we will go back
to the French, from whom we are still awaiting a formal response
to a letter my predecessor Elliot Morley sent on this, and impress
on them the importance of taking this issue seriously.
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