Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-159)
MR BEN
BRADSHAW, MR
RODNEY ANDERSON
AND MR
CHRIS RYDER
8 DECEMBER 2004
Q140 Chairman: Welcome,
Minister. As you know, we are doing an inquiry into the Strategy
Unit's report on fishing and the state of the fishing industry.
We hope to have a run through of your views at this stage plus
have the advice of your advisers. We cannot take account yet of
what is going to be decided in Brussels, but anything you care
to say about that will be welcome. Welcome to you, to Mr Rodney
Anderson, the Director of Fisheries, and Mr Chris Ryder, the Head
of Fishing Industry Strategy Unit. May I start with a couple of
questions on yesterday's report which certainly hogged the headlines
almost as much as the BBC's own news item. How do you view it
now having seen it, as a guide to action which will need to be
followed to some degree or as an alarmist over-statement which
does not take account of the reduction in fishing fleets and the
effect of conservation measures so far on the stocks?
Mr Bradshaw: Thank
you, Chairman. I am grateful for the opportunity you have given
me because I was rather surprised by some of the newspaper coverage
today of my supposed reaction to the Royal Commission report which
tended to emphasise the latter. Like all Royal Commission reports,
this will be taken very seriously by governments, and I say governments
because this is a report not just about the UK fishing industry
but it is a report about the very serious environmental challenge
that the world faces. I believe it to be the second most serious
challenge the international community faces after climate change,
that is how we manage our marine environment in a sustainable
way. I think it will make an important contribution to the debate
that we are having in this country, that we are having in the
EU and the international community is having. As you yourself
have already highlighted in your introduction, it is one of a
whole string of important reports to have been published this
year, the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit's report being one, there
was the Royal Society report from Edinburgh and we have had the
Bradley Review of fisheries management.
Q141 Chairman: There are
more reports than fish at present!
Mr Bradshaw: I
think what this shows is that the issue of the marine environment
is very rapidly shooting up the national and international political
agenda and it is absolutely right that it does so. There was also,
as you may be aware, if you have not already read it I recommend
it in your Christmas stocking, a rather good and important book
by Charles Clover, the environmental editor of The Telegraph,
into the future of the fishing industry. All of these things are
coming together. We intend to publish our formal response to the
Strategy Unit report in the spring which, I think, will inevitably
be seen to be responding in some ways to the Royal Commission
report, but clearly governments usually respond to all Commission
reports in a rather more generous time-frame. In the discussions
I have had with the authors of the report they made it quite clear
to me that they would rather the Government got their response
right rather than hurried into a response. Perhaps I may say one
more thing about yesterday's and today's media coverage. I think
what I have tried to make clear all the time is that this is very
important. As I say, it is the second most important environmental
issue we face, but I have also tried to point out that quite a
lot of the things that are in the Royal Commission report have
either already been implemented or are in hand. Others will have
to be carefully considered and the timeframes that the Royal Commission
talks about are inevitably not the timeframes sometimes in which
the media like to live. I think that has given me a welcome opportunity
to summarise my initial reaction to the report, but we will be
looking at it very carefully and giving a more considered response
later.
Q142 David Burnside: I
think the media coverage was a seriously bad day for British fishing.
The report went out yesterday morning. A lot of the fishing representatives
attended the press coverage yesterday morning to try to represent
their own sectoral interests. We had my colleagues from both sides
of the Irish Sea and Scottish fishing representatives here yesterday.
I saw no coverage at all from your Department on national television.
I saw feature articles in news reports which were generally very
depressing on the future state of British fishing and which were
not all accurate in my opinion, but it is not the accuracy that
is the issue but the lack of a Government response. There may
have been some print media coverage but there was nothing on national
television.
Mr Bradshaw: That
is not the case, Chairman. I was on the Today programme.
Q143 David Burnside: Television,
I said.
Mr Bradshaw: I
was on the Today programme at what is widely regarded as
the prime slot, at ten past eight. I did interviews for both the
BBC and ITV national television. I did not have a chance to monitor
it all, but it was certainly shown because I saw it. My comments
were also carried by BBC News 24. I did a lengthy live interview
for Sky television and a recorded interview for Sky television,
both of which were used. Admittedly, later on in the evening Channel
4, who originally wanted to speak to me, no longer did because
they had other people. I was very busy yesterday giving responses.
Also, I think the coverage from the fishing industry itself was
a little bit more nuanced than you suggest because I certainly
did a discussion on Five Live with Paul Trebilcock of the
Cornish Fish Producers Organisation which was very consensual.
The problem was that the media and everybody highlighted the most
radical and drastic recommendation in the Royal Commission report,
ie that we close 30% of our waters to fishing within ten years
and I think presented with that, the instincts of the industry
were to say, "Well, we can't do it, it's impossible",
but if you listen more carefully between the lines to what they
were saying, they were saying what I was saying, which is that
a lot of the things we are already doing, ie we support the concept
of closed areas and we believe that they can serve a very useful
purpose in fisheries management, but they have to be based on
sound science.
Q144 Chairman: In a sense
it is not a report for you because whatever it recommends in terms
of closed areas you cannot implement, it can only be done by a
European decision which demands a consensus among other European
countries whose fishermen fish in the areas to be closed. Similarly,
Berwick recommends compensation and the Strategy Unit does not.
You cannot pay that under the present workings of the Fontainebleau
Agreement without an over-heavy strain on the Treasury which is
not going to accept it. This is a report for Europe rather than
for you.
Mr Bradshaw: You
are absolutely right, Chairman, to draw the Committee's attention
to the fact that this is a report not just for Europe but for
the whole international community. One of its specific and explicit
statements, like all the other independent reports that we have
seen in the last year, is an explicit rejection of the idea that
we solve our problems by trying to withdraw unilaterally from
the Common Fisheries Policy. This report, as do all the other
independent scientific reports, makes quite clear that that is
a nonsense because fish move around and this enormous environmental
challenge that we face Britain cannot face alone, we have to work
with our European partners and build on the reforms we have already
achieved with the Common Fisheries Policy and internationally
if this problem is going to be resolved.
Chairman: I had better
not refer to that area because I am deliberately steering the
Committee off it.
Q145 David Burnside: Minister,
the Strategy Unit report came out in March and a number of our
witnesses so far have expressed some concern about the time it
has taken to start the consultation process. If I heard the Minister
correctly, I think you referred to publication in the spring.
Does that mean before the Easter recess we will have a report?
Secondly, could you give us a general update on the consultation
process so far and the views that have been coming in from around
the country?
Mr Bradshaw: I
can understand that people are impatient to get a move on, but
I would say, Mr Burnside, that this was the first time really
ever that any Government had taken a step back and spent such
a considerable amount of time and resources in looking strategically
at the state of our fishing industry and how we put our fishing
industry on a long-term profitable and sustainable future. I would
urge against people expecting the Government's formal response
to be done too quickly. I think a year is a reasonable period
of time for publication and for it to be expected to be done.
I do not want to tie myself down at this stage to a commitment
to saying exactly whether it will be before Easter or after Easter
because my experience has shown me in ministerial office that
sometimes there are last minute hitches. As you know, there are
devolved issues to take into consideration here. The Scots have
very strong interests. I do not know whether you are intending
speaking to a Scottish minister during your evidence collecting,
but I would suggest that it is a very good idea given that they
represent more than half the industry in economic terms and Northern
Ireland as well has very strong interests. I want the Government
response to be the right one rather than a hurried one. Given
the fact that we have had so many reports, not least the one that
we have just been discussing from the Royal Commission as
well this year, I think it does make sense to try as far as we
possibly can to wrap our response to all of these up in a response
which will set the strategic direction for our fishing industry
for the next two decades.
Q146 David Burnside: Is
the future of the industry important enough to have a substantial
section in the Labour Party Manifesto if there is going to be
a May 5 election?
Mr Bradshaw: I
hope that the marine environment will feature prominently in the
Labour Party's Manifesto. As I am sure you have already noted,
the Prime Minister has already indicated his personal support
for a new Marine Bill, which again was one of the recommendations
of the Royal Commission report yesterday, in order to modernise
the way in which we manage our marine environment. Such a Marine
Bill would attract widespread support from both fisheries and
environmental organisations.
Q147 David Burnside: Will
there be any other legislative proposals?
Mr Bradshaw: I
can understand that you are seeking to try to get me to pre-empt
what we will say in our official response to the Strategy Unit
report when we give it, but there are other deliberations ongoing
that you will be aware of over the future management of our
inshore fisheries as a result of the recommendations of the Bradley
Review which again I think we will want to consider in the round
when we give our response to the Strategy Unit report. I think
there is widespread recognition that the time is long overdue
for a strategic modernisation of the legislative framework governing
our fishing industry and our marine environment. I think over
the next two or three years there will be a window of opportunity
for us to get that right and I want to make sure that we do get
it right rather than lose this historic opportunity.
Q148 Ms Atherton: I want
to talk about the whitefish fleet. Are you of the view that the
size of the Scottish whitefish fleet is the size reported in the
Strategy Unit report?
Mr Bradshaw: Yes,
although I am aware that there has been an on-going debate about
the modelling that was used in the report and these discussions
are still going on with the industry. What matters in the end
is that we get our fishing effort in line with the state of the
stocks and the stark choice facing the industry is whether to
have X number of boats that make Y amount of money or A number
of boats that make B amount of money. The point that the Strategy
Unit was trying to make—and this seems so obvious that one
should not even need to state it—is that if you have more
boats they are going to be less profitable, if you have fewer
boats they are going to be more profitable and that is going to
be the choice that faces not us but the industry. Does the industry
want a smaller fleet with more profitable boats or a bigger fleet
with fewer profitable boats? If you make comparisons with countries
around the world that manage their fisheries more successfully,
such as Iceland for example, they have decided to go for fewer
boats and more profitable boats. This is something that is very
much in the hands of the industry and it is a big part of the
discussions that we are having at the moment.
Ms Atherton: I am sure
it is a big part of the discussions. You would also accept that
the industry feel that they are being asked to decommission and
tie up various proposals and they do not feel there is any equivalent
pressure coming from the other Member States within the European
Union. What pressure are you as a fisheries Minister and as Government
putting on our partner countries to ensure that our industry does
not go through further decommissioning and is put at a competitive
disadvantage?
Q149 Chairman: We had
evidence yesterday from Northern Ireland that they feel that the
fleet of the Republic is put in an advantageous position because
they are still getting financial support and still building which
makes them more profitable than the Northern Ireland fleet. That
must be a universal phenomenon.
Mr Bradshaw: It
is mixed. There are other countries that have undergone similarly
painful decommissioning schemes as we have, but I accept the premise
of Ms Atherton's question, which is that because of the particularly
serious problem that we had with the decline of the cod stocks,
of which we have a disproportionately high proportion of the quota,
we have suffered more pain than other EU countries, although I
have to say, I think the time of reckoning is now nigh for some
of those countries, Spain for example on hake and you yourself
have mentioned the Irish Republic. I think there is growing recognition
both in the other Member States and certainly at Commission level
that the capacity of the EU fleet as a whole is out-of-sync with
the state of the stocks and that other countries are going to
face some painful choices that we have already gone through. I
think what is very important in the discussions we have in relation
to how we implement the Strategy Unit report but also in the
December Council discussions is that the Commission and others
recognise what we in the UK have already done to reduce our capacity
and that has not always been the case. To go back to the Royal
Commission report, they were collecting evidence over two years
and I am not sure that full recognition has been given either
in that report or at Commission level to what we have already
achieved in the UK. That is not to say we have not got more to
do particularly on enforcement, but we have taken some of the
painful decisions that I think other countries now face.
Q150 Ms Atherton: One
area that there has been quite a lot of criticism about not only
from the industry but also from environmental organisations is
a proposal for a 30% extra tie-up scheme. I get the impression
that there is such universal disbelief about this that maybe this
has now gone off the table.
Mr Bradshaw: Until
we publish our formal response I do not think anything is formally
off the table. I am aware, as I am sure you are, of the industry
opposition to this. I think I am right in saying that the Strategy
Unit proposal was for an industry funded scheme in order to accelerate
the recovery both of the cod stocks and therefore the profitability
of the fleets. It is one of those issues where the Strategy Unit
was presenting the industry with a choice, as it was over the
capacity and profitability issue, on how quickly it wanted to
move towards a position where the Strategy Unit saw the fleet
as being move profitable as well as being sustainable.
Q151 Chairman: We do not
provide the same level of spending on fishing that other countries
provide. We are in a double-whammy situation because the Government
is moving to fishing in my view and the Fontainebleau proposals
mean that if we do spend on fishing a disproportionate part of
it is borne by the Treasury. The Strategy Unit report did not
mention compensation. Would it not be easier to implement the
report and to reduce the fleet if compensation was paid, as the
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds recommended yesterday
and as the Royal Commission recommends? Should there not be compensation?
Mr Bradshaw: It
depends what you mean by compensation, Chairman.
Q152 Chairman: Compensation
for tie-ups for instance.
Mr Bradshaw: We
have spent tens of millions of pounds over the last few years
on decommissioning which could be seen as a form of compensation.
We also spend considerable amounts of money through FIFG funding.
What we do not do and we have not done for many years in the UK
is to spend taxpayers' money on increasing the capacity of the
fleet because we think that is a strategic error. We were at the
forefront in the UK of getting the European Union to recognise
this and to agree two years ago, as part of the historic reforms
of the CFP, that European taxpayers' money should no longer be
spent on increasing the fleet's capacity given the state of stocks
and that will end this year. You are right, we have not spent
money in that way for some time. I think the reality is dawning
in some other countries that they cannot go on as we have not
been going on for some time and I think that will be helpful to
all of us.
Q153 Chairman: There
is a lot of competition to be the nation which has the last fishing
vessels still afloat. Is a 30% tie-up proposal going to be acceptable
without compensation or have you now abandoned the 30% tie-up
proposal?
Mr Bradshaw: Clearly
the industry is not keen on the idea and if it is something that
we want to keep on the table we will have to consider those views.
I think we face a stark choice here as to how profitable we want
the individual boats to be and therefore how big you want the
fleet to be and how quickly we want to move to a position both
of real and dramatic cod recovery and real fleet profitability,
the kind of profitability you see in countries like Iceland for
example.
Chairman: The Strategy
Unit prefers Individual Transferable Quotas to the present system,
so let us move on to that area.
Q154 Alan Simpson: The
Committee has had quite a lot of responses to this suggestion
that there would not be any particular gain from moving from fixed
quotas to transferable quotas. What made the Strategy Unit come
down so strongly in favour of transferable quotas?
Mr Bradshaw: I
suspect they can better answer that question. Perhaps I can say
a little bit about the debate on Individual Transferable Quotas.
There is basically a debate going on about policy makers at the
moment as to how you best manage fish stocks and, to put it crudely,
there are two sides to this argument. One prefers Individual Transferable
Quotas, which is the system that the Icelanders operate, and the
other prefers effort control. There are arguments in favour of
both systems. The argument in favour of the ITC system is that
you give the fishermen ownership of the stocks, you give them
a real stake and this is a point that Charles Clover makes very
powerfully in his book, that in those fishery systems like Iceland
and New Zealand where fishermen have a financial stake in the
stock that gives them a very strong incentive to make sure that
that stock is managed sustainably because if the stock declines
then their wealth declines and they lose money, but if the stocks
does well then they increase the value of their holding and it
is this ownership that incentivises good practice. What happens
in Iceland, if you have the chance to study it in any detail,
is that fishermen can individually trade this ownership, it is
all computerised and the system works very well. The disadvantage
of any quota system, even with the Icelandic one, is that it has
not been able to do away completely with illegal fishing and with
discards and there you get the argument that is made in favour
of the effort control system which says that we are not going
to worry about what you catch and what you keep and what you sell,
we are simply going to restrict the amount of time or days that
you can actually fish. There are disadvantages with the effort
control system as well which I can come on to if you want me to,
but you asked me specifically about ITQs which is why I spent
most of my answer talking about those.
Q155 Alan Simpson: One
of the counter-arguments about the claims for the value of ITCs
is that the countries that tend to be cited as good examples of
that have much simpler systems of governance. In your own assessment
how far is the issue for the UK a question of the complexities
of being part of the Common Fisheries Policy rather than the specific
quotas system?
Mr Bradshaw: This
is a really important question, Chairman, and Mr Simpson is absolutely
right, it is not just that the countries that have ITQs tend to
have more simple systems of governance, they tend to be very different
geographically. We are talking about Iceland which is surrounded
by the Atlantic Ocean and New Zealand surrounded by masses of
ocean. They are not close to other countries with which they have
traditionally shared both fishing grounds and stocks. None of
them has such a complex mix of fish as we have around the coast
of the United Kingdom. All of these reports that we have talked
about make the point that managing fish stocks in European waters
is probably the most challenging of any of these countries we
are talking about. It may well be that a single system of ITQs
or of effort control is not appropriate for UK waters. What we
essentially have at the moment already is a mixture of quotas
and effort control. The cod recovery scheme is an effort control
scheme as it restricts the amount of days. There are proposals
on the table from the Commission to introduce that for sole in
the Channel, for example. It may well be that what we have to
move towards is a mixed system. There are also other problems
that countries with ITQs have when it comes to consolidation,
one of which is that it has tended to lead to a consolidation
of the fleet to the disadvantage of small boat owners. What the
Icelanders have done and what we would certainly do if we wanted
to move towards ITQs is to try to provide a system to protect
those fishing dependant communities from such problems.
Q156 Chairman: If we had
ITQs, would they need to be universal within the European communities?
Mr Bradshaw: Not
necessarily, Chairman.
Q157 Chairman: We cannot
have them just for ours.
Mr Bradshaw: The
Dutch already have a system of ITQs in some of their fleet and
there is no reason why we could not introduce our own ITQ system,
as the Strategy Unit Report recommended, to start in the pelagic
sector.
Q158 Chairman: That gives
our fishermen a stake in the catch, but that is in danger if other
nations are not having ITQs and do not give their fishermen the
same stakes.
Mr Bradshaw: There
is no reason why within our own quota share we could not have
a system of ITQs. Our quota share is not going to change because
of relative stability and we have our own share of a particular
stock and within that there is no reason in principle why we should
not have an ITQ system for how we manage that within our own industry.
Mr Anderson: As
an issue of principle ITQs would not move us any further forward
or backwards from the Fixed Quotas Allocations. We already have
a system of quota allocations which are tradable and in a sense
that does not change. The second point I would make is that there
is not a single definition of ITQs. ITQs, if one looks across
countries that have ITQs, are all different. Our first exercise
as part of the work we are doing with stakeholders in the follow
up to the Strategy Unit report is to identify what an ITQ system
might look like before we decide whether or not the ITQs are the
right route because there are different models that could be applied.
Q159 Alan Simpson: One
of the comments made to the Committee by fishermen themselves
is that a system of International Trade Quotas would inevitably
do two things. One, it would make it much harder to protect the
smaller and more vulnerable fishing communities within the UK.
The second is that it would also inevitably gravitate towards
the larger boats and in that sense the character of the industry
would be dominated by the larger industrial scale fishing, which
raises other questions about whether that is the most sustainable
form of fishing practice. I think that is quite a complex route
to explore. I wonder what your own current thoughts are?
Mr Bradshaw: That
is why both we and the Strategy Unit have said that if we were
to go down the route of ITQs we would want to be very careful
to include measures, whether we are talking about community quotas
or special protection for the small inshore fleet, in terms of
the proportion of the quota that they had. What has happened in
Iceland, for example, is that there has been consolidation, but
the industry has consolidated upwards and downwards in that the
medium-sized boats have tended to become consolidated into bigger
boats. Iceland has protected a proportion of the overall quota
and in fact has recently increased it for the small boats, so
in effect it runs two separate ITQ systems, it has a small fleet
ITQ system and a large fleet ITQ system. You should not automatically
assume that big boats mean non-sustainable fishery. Efficiency
does not necessarily mean non-sustainable. What is important is
that you get your fishing effort in line with the state of the
stocks and if the boats are profitable you take away the incentive
for people to cheat and that is very important because one of
the problems we have in the UK and perhaps historically which
at last we are getting to grips with is the reliability of landing
data. The more profitable your vessels are the less incentive
there is to cheat.
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