Examination of Witness (Questions 20-27)
MR BARRIE
DEAS
16 NOVEMBER 2004
Q20 Mr Lazarowicz: One of the recommendations
from the Strategy Unit report is that fishing should be treated
on the same basis as any other major user of marine environment
and out of that they then raise the possibility of the application
of the Strategic Environmental Assessment and the Environmental
Impact Assessment tools as a way of achieving that. What is your
reaction to that proposal?
Mr Deas: Indeed, it would be difficult
to argue the case that fishing should be treated in any special
way different from any other industry. So I do not think our problem
is with the level of principle, I think it is with the issue of
practicality. One of the Strategy Unit recommendations is that
new fisheries should be subject to environmental assessments,
and in one of the recent working group meetings looking at this
question we were deliberating on what a new fishery would look
like, because I can think of one or two over the last 20 years
but it is not exactly an every day occurrence—change within
the fishing industry tends to be incremental. So I think that
we have to look at this in more detail through the working group
structures to see what the practical implications are. I do not
have any particular problem.
Q21 Mr Lazarowicz: In principle you have
no objection to the conception, it is the very important question
of the detail which you are concerned about?
Mr Deas: That is right.
Q22 Mr Lazarowicz: One of the other suggestions
is the development on an experimental basis initially of Marine
Protected Areas and that is something which I think the environmental
organisations have been particularly keen to promote. Again, what
is your reaction in the industry to that proposal?
Mr Deas: It is already EU and
UK law, so again we are not talking about principle here, we are
talking about practicality, and the issue is what sort of scale
Marine Protected Areas would take, what sort of conditions would
apply and, above all, what are they for? Because the environmental
lobby to date has been fairly vague about the function they would
serve. They are seen to be a good thing in themselves to close
off large areas—or indeed small areas—under the rubric
of Marine Protected Areas. I think we have to have a much clearer
idea before we could go down that line. It is very important that
they have a defined purpose, that there is an objective there,
that there are measurable results. So that we move away from the
kind of woolly idea that Marine Protected Areas have a function
in themselves towards having defined purposes. In the fishing
industry in the Celtic Sea, the UK, Irish and French have nominated
an area for closure during the spawning period, and that has scientific
backing as something that would benefit the stocks in the area.
So we are not opposed to closed areas in principle—indeed,
in some areas we would advocate them very strongly—but I
think we must be very clear about the purpose that they are going
to serve, and we must move away from vague, ill-defined but warm,
sanguine ideas about closing large areas.
Q23 Mr Lazarowicz: But is it not the
case that no matter what the purpose of the areas, that one of
the effects could indeed be a beneficial effect on stock regeneration—perhaps
more beneficial in some respects as compared to some of the other
measures which all have their problems as well?
Mr Deas: I think closed areas
have proven benefits, particularly in tropical reef fisheries.
But in the more diffuse fisheries that we have in our waters they
are unproved, which is why I think we have to move forward with
a case-by-case approach and look at each particular proposal in
terms of what would be the benefit. I think it is not true to
say that if we close down large areas there would be a benefit;
indeed, the evidence from, for example, the Plaice Box off the
Dutch coast is that there are dis-benefits because of transference
of fishing effort on to juvenile areas, for example. So my central
point is that I think we need to know what we are doing and to
have objectives and to be able to measure up progress towards
those objectives. What I am very strongly against is an ill-defined
approach that simply has Marine Protected Areas or closed areas
for the sake of them.
Q24 Ms Atherton: To follow on from that,
the Lundy Island experience is certainly something that this Committee
should look at, and looking on a case-by-case basis is a very
positive impact both on the closed area and on the surrounding
areas, and if we are going to look at it in an even-handed way
you were quite negative there, I thought, and that the Lundy Island
experience is very positive.
Mr Deas: I thought I was quite
even in my approach, which said that if you are going to have
a closed area it must be for a purpose and we must be able to
measure our moving towards that objective. In the Lundy Island
I think you are right that there have been benefits, but we must
be very clear-headed about we are doing, I think would be our
central point.
Q25 Ms Atherton: It is coming up to Christmas
and I am writing my Christmas cards and that can only mean one
thing, the Fisheries Council meeting! And what a wonderful Christmas
present I always think it is for all fishing communities and the
way in which we all revel in this experience each year and the
week running up to Christmas! What do you want the UK Government
to be arguing this year? What Christmas message do you want the
Minister to take with him?
Mr Deas: I think the Minister
should argue in relation to the Cod Recovery Programmes, that
they should be based on as close to real time management as possible.
In other words, it is not acceptable to base new measures on data
that ends at the end of 2003 when there has been a significant
de-commissioning round that has taken its main impact in 2004
and there has been the impact of technical measures and there
has been effort control. None of these are taken into account
in the assessment. If the Council is going to consider amending
changing the Cod Recovery Measures it must take into account the
impact of measures, particularly in 2004. We think that the Commission
believes that there has been a reduction in fishing mortality
for cod in the region of 20 to 30%—the target is something
like 60, 65%. Our view is that the main impact of the de-commissioning
scheme in the UK will have moved us much closer to that objective.
The difficulty that the industry has is that we are in a cycle
of permanent revolution. Every December Council comes round and
everything is thrown up in the air, new measures are applied.
It is the middle of November but, we do not know what our quotas
are going to be, we do not know how many days we are going to
be able to go to sea, we do not know where we are going to be
able to fish because closed areas are under consideration. So
a period of stability to allow the industry to survive, but also
the existing recovery measures to work through and to demonstrate
their effectiveness would be very welcome. The second thing is
in relation to Western Channel sole, which is a very important
stock for the southwest, where the Commission is proposing a recovery
plan. The French and UK, both industry and government, have put
forward a counter proposal based on technical measures—an
increase in mesh size—that would achieve the recovery necessary
but over a longer timeframe and would escape the very economically
damaging effort-based proposals that the Commission is putting
forward. So the two wishes would be for the cod recovery and the
sole recovery, along those lines. If the Minister were to pick
up those and run with them we would be very pleased.
Q26 Chairman: We will be writing to the
Minister to give some indication of what we think about the prospects
and what he needs to do at the Council, so we will be able to
incorporate those views. I just have one question, which is more
geographical and personal to Grimsby. There was talk of community
quotas in the Strategy Unit's report, and when it comes to communities,
in other words communities dependent on fishing, English fishing
ports have always suffered because they are towns, communities,
industrial bases, like Grimsby, Hull or Lowestoft or Fleetwood,
whereas clearly Scotland has communities directly dependent and
almost totally dependent on fishing. If there were community quotas
how would you define community?
Mr Deas: I think you are right
that there has been an anti-urban bias in fisheries' policy.
Q27 Chairman: Would Grimsby be an eligible
place?
Mr Deas: I think the answer is
probably to operate through producer organisations, which do have
a regional base because the vessels operate out of particular
ports, and a community based quota system linked to the existing
producer organisations would probably be the most effective way
forward.
Chairman: Thank you very much, Barrie.
Let us replace you now with the Scottish Fishermen's Federation,
on the grounds that the Scots shall inherit not the earth but
the seas!
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