Examination of Witnesses (Questions 304-319)
SIR DAVID
SMITH, PROFESSOR
GAVIN MCCRONE,
PROFESSOR ALASDAIR
MCINTYRE,
PROFESSOR MONTY
PRIEDE AND
MR DAVID
SYMES
17 JANUARY 2005
Q304 Chairman: Let me welcome you to
our Sub-Committee. We have got representatives of the Edinburgh
Enlightenment, prolonged into the 21st Century, boosted by amplification
from Hull. It is certainly a good scientific cross-section. We
are very grateful to you for coming along to give evidence. Your
report was published at about the same time as the Strategy Unit's
own report. We would like to explore the views of the scientists
now, often at variance, the fishermen tell us, with reality but
certainly with the fishermen. Our main subject of inquiry is the
implementation of the Strategy Unit report and the state of the
industry today and how the two go together and we want to get
your perspectives on that. If I can I would start with Regional
Advisory Councils, which seems to me to be an attempt by both
the National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations and the Scottish
Fishermen's Federation to be a step away from the original policies
of withdrawal from the Common Fisheries Policy to an intermediate
stage which would be regional management. It has not started quite
like that. Can I just ask as a first question, and I hope whoever
wants to take the initiative will take it and others will signify
if they want to come in, add or subtract from what is said, how
satisfied are you that Regional Advisory Councils are going to
be effective and credible bodies? How should they develop?
Sir David Smith:
I will ask David Symes to begin and Professor McCrone to fill
in after that.
Mr Symes: The first point to make
is simply that we cannot tell at this stage how successful they
are likely to be. I think there is a very good chance of success.
I think there is a good deal of will amongst the fishing industries
around the North Sea, for example, that these should work although
I have some doubts as to whether all parts of Europe are equally
committed to the idea. The problem of trying to take the idea
of RACs forward and translate them from their present status simply
as Advisory Councils to committees which are more directly concerned
with management is that I think any suggestion that one should
formalise that new arrangement can only be made if the least progressive
of those Advisory Councils is up to speed. I would have said that
the success and the translation of the Regional Advisory Councils
into management committees would be rather more of a de facto
nature than a de jure nature for that reason. I am pretty
certain that if these Advisory Councils are able to convince the
Commission that they are working sensibly, fully representative,
then I think it will be almost inevitable that the Commission
will begin to adopt their views as their own. There is one slight
reservation I have about the situation and that is I am not sure
as to whether those Councils will succeed in uniting the different
interests around the table, both national interests but more specifically
the interests of, say, the environmental groups, the recreational
fishermen and so on. I suspect there may well be a majority/minority
view being iterated throughout their development.
Q305 Chairman: It is wait and see but
generally you are in favour?
Mr Symes: Very much in favour,
yes, because I am one of the people who has been arguing for this
idea for a very long time. I think I may have been one who was
responsible for changing the views of the NFFO in their change
of direction.
Q306 Chairman: Would they have to be
supported with administrative or scientific or financial support
by Her Majesty's Government, for instance?
Mr Symes: Yes, I think they would.
If they are to provide anything more than a knee jerk reaction
to a set of proposals certainly they will need to do a good deal
of investigative work. They will need to be able to commission
research on specific topics. Yes, I would expect this to be the
case. What I am uncertain of, and I do not know whether this is
a question you have in your minds, is what the idea of regional
managers, which is proposed in the Strategy Unit's report, has
to offer in terms of the development of the RACs.
Q307 Chairman: Just one final question
before I move on to David Drew. There has been a certain amount
of questioning about the treaty establishing a constitution which
says, and I think it has been a kind of building on previous positions
in the Common Fisheries Policy, that the management of the maritime/marine
resources of the sea are an exclusive competence in Brussels.
Would effective regional management be able to fit into that framework?
Professor McCrone: Could I just
say that you will find in our report that we questioned the need
for the European Union to have exclusive competence in the management
of marine biological resources: and we said that in the European
Parliament when we gave our presentation there. It seemed curious
to us that it should be singled out in this way, along with only
three other things, and we did not understand why that was necessary.
That was our starting point.
Q308 Chairman: I see the committee of
the European Parliament, in fact, voted against that being included
in the constitution.
Professor McCrone: Yes.
Q309 Chairman: The starting point was
there but what do you think now?
Professor McCrone: We were strongly
in favour of the Regional Advisory Committees, as David Symes
has said, because one of the problems with the Common Fisheries
Policy is that it is far too centralised. We think that especially
as the European Union now enlarges to 25 Members, with many countries
that have no interest in the North Sea but yet would have representatives
on the Fisheries Council, devolution of the policy is essential.
What I hope would happen, and I think my colleagues would agree
with this, is that in the long run instead of there being what
one might regard as a single Common Fisheries Policy, there would
be policies for the North Sea, policies for the Mediterranean,
policies for the Western approaches and so on designed by people
who are involved to fit in with the requirements of that particular
area. We have been encouraged so far in what we have heard about
the setting up of the Regional Advisory Committee for the North
Sea but the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. They have
got to prove that they can do a good job before they get executive
powers as well as advisory powers.
Q310 Mr Drew: If we can look at the issue
of the relative success of the first meeting. Is that your impression,
that the first meeting went surprisingly well and in outline at
least there is some understanding of what the size of the different
Regional Advisory Council areas are going to be?
Professor McCrone: I think it
is difficult for us to answer that, we were not there, of course,
and all we hear is reports from various people about how it has
gone. The impression we have is that they have made a good start.
I do not know whether my colleagues have anything to add to that.
I think we should not be drawn into something that we do not have
experience of.
Mr Symes: I think there were one
or two small hiccups at the start. Having talked to one or two
people who were at that meeting my understanding is, yes, it did
go quite well. It is interesting that one of its first contributions
should be on the Cod Recovery Plan and the idea of closed areas.
I think this is where the Councils have an advantage. Whilst they
have a common enemy in view, and that happens to be the Commission
in this particular case, then there is no problem, they are going
to come together with a degree of success. It is when they start
to come to issues where the views between the different Member
States may diverge which is where the test is going to come.
Q311 David Burnside: If we could move
to the whole contentious subject of quotas. The Royal Society
has been very, very critical of the present system or even variations
of the present system. Would you like to summarise for the Committee
why you believe so strongly we should move to the effort-based
quota system?
Professor Priede: The problems
with the quota system are well rehearsed, the problems being enforcement
and also that it encourages discards which have an adverse effect
on the environment. There has been a lot of discussion that we
should move towards an effort-based system to avoid the disadvantages
of the quota based system. We envisage that boats would be allocated
effort-based quota as opposed to tonnes of fish quota. One thing
in its favour is that it is now technologically possible, but
when the Common Fisheries Policy started no satellite monitoring
was possible. Now it is technically possible to find out what
a fishing boat is doing every minute of the day. To what extent
fishing boats are monitored is a matter of negotiation, I would
suggest, through the Regional Advisory Committees.
Q312 David Burnside: You differ from
the Strategy Unit in that the Strategy Unit only recommended mixed
fisheries.
Professor Priede: We also went
along the same lines. For example, in the mackerel fishery we
stated that the existing quota system works well but obviously
in a mixed fishery quotas for each individual species create all
kinds of absurdities. The problem we perceive in effort control
is that initially there would have to be a sharing of the effort
quota, but we need to bear in mind that the baseline for effort
will have to be adjusted, probably at quite frequent intervals.
This may be quite contentious, because once the system starts
working the fishermen will figure out how to catch more fish than
we expected given a certain amount of effort. Whatever system
is introduced we shall have to go into it knowing that we shall
have to keep adjusting the effort rules, which will require some
kind of rapid response in the administrative structure.
Professor McCrone: I think the
problem with the existing system, which we felt very strongly
was endemic in the system, is that if you have specific catch
quotas for different species in a mixed fishery, the fishermen
cannot determine what mix of fish they are going to catch. So
if they are over quota on some of those species, they either land
them illegally, and we had quite a lot of evidence about that,
or they discard them, which is an appalling waste. With effort
quotas you do not have that problem but you have a different problem
which is that there will be a tendency for fishermen to try and
fish for the most valuable species. That is why it has to be combined
with closed areas real time closures and other measures in order
to try to avoid that problem. We had evidence from the chief scientist
of the Faroe Islands about how the effort control system works
there and we found that quite compelling.
Mr Symes: I think the real problem
with effort quotas is going to be how to work out the tariff for
the different segments of the fleet. This is already apparent
with regard to the use of effort quotas and days at sea allocations
for the Cod Recovery Programme. When you multiply that out by
a whole range of species still within the general demersal field,
it is going to be enormously difficult. When you add in the need
to claw back in certain sectors from the fishing industry some
of those original allocations as the ability to catch the fish
gets technologically simpler it is going to be a very difficult
problem, but the end products are going to be very much an advantage
over the present rather clumsy system of catch quotas.
Q313 Chairman: It is difficult to combine
an effort-based system with a quota system, is it not? It would
have to be a universal effort-based system. You could not have
a situation where some nations are catching by individual quotas
or national quotas and some are seeking to fulfil those targets
by an effort based system, could you?
Mr Symes: I think you could. I
see no reason why you could not.
Q314 Chairman: They would accuse each
other of cheating.
Mr Symes: They do already.
Q315 Chairman: Do they cheat or accuse?
Mr Symes: Yes. You are still going
to have to start with TACs and TACs are going to have to be divided
into national catch quotas. The question is how you achieve those
national catch quotas, whether you do so by allocating catch quotas
to individual vessels or allocating effort quotas. It seems to
me that there is not a problem in having a mixed system, nor is
there a problem in having a mixed system within the UK of catch
quotas for the pelagic fisheries and effort quotas for the demersal
fisheries.
Q316 Chairman: Let us move on to fixed
quotas versus Individual Transferable Quotas. It is fair to say
that our predecessor Committee, which was the Agriculture Committee,
which inquired into fishing in 1996, I think it was, was attracted
to the idea of Individual Transferable Quotas which were then
becoming quite fashionable. It is interesting that now that the
Strategy Unit has expressed a preference for Individual Transferable
Quotas, the representatives of the fishing industry appearing
before us have emphasised the difficulties and been pretty cool
and sceptical of the whole idea. What impact do you think Individual
Transferable Quotas, if that is going to be the method of management,
would have on Scotland?
Professor McCrone: I think it
depends quite a lot on how they are introduced and what the system
is exactly. We thought quite hard about the ITQs and the Icelandic
Minister spoke to some of us about that because they operate them
there. There are two obvious problems with ITQs. One is that you
get a great concentration of ownership and the other is that,
within the terms of the Common Fisheries Policy and the rules
on competition, you might get the quotas being bought by people
in other countries, which is of concern to us. I think it is also
of particular concern to the Scottish industry, because the Scottish
industry is very largely owner-skippers and partnerships, whereas
in other countries there are some very well financed fishing companies
operating. There might, therefore, be able to outbid the local
skippers in Scotland. These things made us feel that one had to
be cautious about this. The present system goes quite a long way
to ITQs. The present quotas are actually bought and sold by people.
In fact, I understand that quite a large section of the quota
in the North Sea is actually owned by skippers who are not at
sea at all but at home and they simply lease the quota to other
people. There is quite a lot of opportunity for buying and selling
under the present system and I think one has to ask oneself what
is to be gained if you move to a full ITQ system. At the moment
there is great uncertainty about the legal status of the quota
and who it actually belongs to, whether if you buy quota you then
own it or whether it still belongs to the state, which appears
to be the position. That needs to be cleared up anyhow.
Q317 Chairman: Is it conceivable that
we could have a system, as has been suggested to us, where the
fish producer organisations can keep quota in their area by making
a financial contribution so as to stop the drift away which everyone
knows has gone on, certainly in Humberside, where the quotas have
been bought up by Scottish interests?
Professor McCrone: What really
affects all this is how it fits in with the various competition
rules in the European Union. The Shetlanders, I am sure you know,
have bought a substantial amount of quota and we, as a committee,
favoured the idea of community quotas, but they had a bit of a
rapping over the knuckles from the European Commission because
they were then going to lease the quotas on special terms to Shetland
fishermen leaving other people unable to get access on the same
terms. So they had to change that. There are quite a lot of complicated
legal aspects here which need to be sorted out. I think if producer
organisations were going to enter into this to try to safeguard
quotas for particular areas they would come up against the same
problem.
Q318 Mr Drew: If we can look at the way
some of this will evolve. Can you paint me a picture in perhaps
five years' time of how you see some of these apparently intractable
problems, but with some goodwill how we will have a different
looking industry in this part of the world? Will it be one that
we will recognise or will there have to be some much more dramatic
changes than have been anticipated so far?
Professor McCrone: I hope that
it will be one we recognise. The two reports—our report
and the Strategy Unit report—to some extent are complementary
to each other. One of the things which we did, which they did
not do, was to inquire into how this industry finances itself,
how it is organised and how it can be assisted. It was very clear
to us that with continuing technical progress, the catching ability
of the fleet keeps rising, other things being equal; and, therefore,
the industry has to get smaller and smaller because you have got
a finite resource. That is quite a difficult process to manage.
Just as the pelagic sector now only has 27 boats but has nearly
as much revenue as the whitefish sector, it does seem inevitable
that the industry will have to get used to the idea that it will
get smaller over time. But that does not mean its catching ability
will do down, far from it. We thought that the structure of the
industry needed to be thought about quite hard. We did not make
specific recommendations but in our report we said that the Scottish
Executive and the industry should think very hard whether the
structure of owner-skippers is actually suited to the 21st Century
or whether that will have to gradually change. We wanted to see
more equity finance for the industry, because we felt that the
present system of loan finance was far too rigid for an industry
where the takings are very volatile. We recommended that something
like a Fishing Industry Finance Corporation should be considered
as a means of raising equity on the market and getting it into
the industry. The companies that operate in other countries have
the opportunity to raise equity finance, and that makes it much
easier to cope with the ups and downs in an industry than if you
are entirely dependent upon loan finance. These kinds of issues
were things that we went into in some detail and I think there
is a fair chance that we will begin to see some change in these
areas. We understand that at least some parts of the financial
sector are quite interested in what we said about finance for
the industry.
Q319 Diana Organ: We understand that
both you and the Strategy Unit are of the view that information
and compliance has got to be improved. Can we talk about the difference
between what you are suggesting and the Strategy Unit because
the Strategy Unit's proposals to focus on forensic accounting,
on-board observers and risk profiling, how effective do you think
that is going to be and do you think there are more suitable methods
of improving information and compliance?
Professor McCrone: I think this
is where the effort control versus ITQ debate comes in to some
extent. We were aware that there was an intention to improve traceability
and all that kind of thing, and we were in favour of that. We
did not make any specific recommendations about it because we
felt that the effort control system, if it can be made to work,
will be much better from this point of view. With satellite monitoring
you can tell when the ships are at sea and whether they are at
sea for the lengths of time that they are allowed to be and so
on, whereas with catch quotas you are always going to have the
problem that people will catch more than their quota and then
either dump it at sea, which we do not want, or land it illegally,
which we also do not want. That is an endemic problem in a mixed
fishery with catch quotas, it seems to me. If you go over to effort
control and can make that work then all this becomes a good deal
easier, I think.
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