Examination of Witnesses (Questions 73-79)
MR JIM
PORTUS
7 DECEMBER 2004
Q73 Chairman: Welcome, Jim Portus. Thank
you very much for the interesting evidence because it is good
to know how a Producer Organisation like yours works—what
the number of vessels are and how it enforces discipline and allocates
quota and generally organises fishing for the area. I do not want,
as we start, to get involved in an argument about in or out of
the Common Fisheries Policy, so I have asked the Committee to
steer clear of that. But we do want to take up some of the points
that are in the Strategy Unit Report and get the views of the
fishing producers. So I would like to start with the vexed issue
of Individual Transferable Quotas. You do not appear to be all
that happy with Individual Transferable Quotas; would you care
to give us your views, the views of the PO?
Mr Portus: Yes. The view of the
organisation in terms of Individual Transferable Quotas is that
whilst they may have a use in the management of fisheries' quotas
nevertheless we have some very deep concerns about the impact
of Individual Transferable Quotas on fishing communities. We have,
within our management system, a large number of different ways
of managing the quotas. We have a pool of quotas derived from
the track record of the fishing vessel owners; we have Individual
Transferable Quotas amongst our members; we have quotas that are
traded into and out of the organisation by rental, which are utilised
by members who wish to go over the monthly pool limit. So it would
be wrong of me to say that we are opposed fundamentally to Individual
Transferable Quotas because clearly we are not, otherwise we would
simply oppose them totally. But we are aware of what can happen
with an ITQ system if it is adopted nationally, and it has been
observed in other countries around the world where ITQs polarise
fishing communities and the quota opportunities gravitate into
the hands of a few corporate owners that this has had a severe
knock-on effect on fishing communities where you have a significantly
reduced number of fishermen going after the opportunities and
the wealth of those opportunities goes into the pockets of just
a few, rather than being of use to the wider community. So those
are our concerns.
Q74 Chairman: I will ask David Burnside
to follow that up in a minute. The other issue that is made much
of by the Strategy Unit is Regional Advisory Units, which I think
were really an attempt to say that we want regional management
as a substitute to management from Brussels. What is the position
of your PO on that?
Mr Portus: We want to be involved
in the management of fisheries and the only way that we are going
to be involved in the management of fisheries is if that management
is devolved down to the regions and to the local communities,
and we have to have fishermen and their representatives sitting
on the groups that consider how best to manage the fisheries and
the marine resources generally. So we wish to be involved at the
ground floor in the establishment of these Regional Advisory Councils;
they are the name of the game in terms of fisheries management
in the near term. As you said, you wish to steer clear of the
broader issue of the ins and outs of the Common Fisheries Policy
so we recognise that as well; we know what the rules are at the
moment in fisheries' management, in fisheries terms, and we have
to go along with that. So I have been involved in attending meetings
of the embryonic Southwest Regional Advisory Council—the
Northwest Waters RAC actually is its correct terminology—and
it is our hope that Northwest RAC will be established in the early
part of 2005 and I sincerely hope that the organisation I represent
will be at the table of the executive structure for that organisation,
and indeed represented on any of the working groups that have
to be established because we recognise that the Northwest RAC
area is enormous in terms of the Commission proposals. So we believe
that it has to be broken down into lower denominators such as
the English Channel, the Celtic Sea, the Irish Sea and other regions,
where the fisheries are readily identifiable as having unique
characteristics, and the people to look after those fisheries
can be selected from within those regions. So for the English
Channel, for instance, we would hope that it would be an English,
French and Belgian sub-committee to look after the interests of
the fish stocks in that area.
Q75 Chairman: And you do not see any
conflict between the POs and the RACs as long as the POs are involved
in the running of the RACs?
Mr Portus: That is right. One
has to remember that the POs are organisations of fishing vessel
owners for the benefit of those owners. There are Producer Organisations
in every Member State; they have different functions within those
Member States. The UK is, I believe, unique in devolving the management
of the quotas to the Producer Organisations in the UK. It is a
function that is increasing in use in other Member States, but
it is by far from being an absolutely established fact in those
other Member States. So it is the mechanism used in the United
Kingdom for managing fisheries and therefore the POs should be
the bodies that sit on RACs.
Q76 David Burnside: Just staying on the
subject of quotas, is the Fixed Quota Allocation the favoured,
the best and sensible method?
Mr Portus: I certainly believe
it is. I have good reasons for saying so because I believe that
it was a paper that I put together ten years ago that actually
resulted in the FQA system being adopted nationally, using the
reference period that was used to fix the quotas in time; and
industry personnel that I have spoken to within my organisation
and within the UK association of POs have all said that FQA system
is pretty much a fully functioning system of transferable quotas,
whilst not being ITQs as such.
Q77 David Burnside: So it does not need
any change in the flexibility?
Mr Portus: No. The only change
that I would bring about, if I could, would be to establish once
and for all property rights, rights of tenure, if you like, so
that the quotas would become a properly tax deductible and tax
benefiting asset of an organisation or corporation.
Q78 David Burnside: What are your views
on the ring-fenced community quota scheme that has been discussed?
Mr Portus: This is one of the
areas where the organisation has concerns about ITQs, the need
to protect communities and particularly the inshore sector. But
I think we are losing sight of the ball; the problem is that the
quotas themselves have been diminished so far over the 20 years
of their existence that there is not enough to go around by any
stretch of the imagination, and certain sectors of the fishing
industry have grown without control, in particular the under ten
metre sector. There have been significant controls in all over
ten metre sectors since the mid-80s and indeed there has been
a downward pressure on those sectors. But the inshore fishing
community, which relies on the under ten metre sector, has been
growing in number and efficiency—some vessels have been
cut down from over 10 metres in length to under 10 metres in length
in order to avoid the quotas, and so that sector is trying to
cope more and more, catching more and more fish with less and
less quota to go between them. And so it is that the Department,
Defra, is seeking ways of dealing with that problem, by hiving
off one part of the quota, which they are going to call a community
quota, I suppose, and to say, "Right, we are going to earmark
that for this particular sector and the rest will be divvied up
amongst the over ten metres."
Q79 David Burnside: The Producer Organisations
would be responsible for promoting this concept and what financial
input would they have in the ring-fenced community quota?
Mr Portus: I do not think they
would have any, and indeed it seems to me that the intention would
be to take away from the POs and their members—the over
ten metre members—some of their quotas to dish out to what
the government is calling the community, but it is only short
of quota because the Department policy has enabled that sector
to grow in such an uncontrolled way.
| 
