Examination of Witness (Questions 120-139)
Mr Bertie Armstrong
19 MARCH 2008
Q120 Chairman: Having said that the
first question is going to be which are the key areas that you
want to see reformed.
Mr Armstrong: Certainly, the CFP in the opinion
of the Scottish Fishermen's Federation is badly over-centralised
and top-down (to use that phrase). That presents an almost impossible
job to the Commission and it manifests itself in difficulties
and problems for a number of fisheries, from the northernmost
latitude to the southernmost latitude. To be covered in some respects
by elements of the same regulation will create unacceptable compromise.
The sort of form we would like to see is a regionalisation of
decision-making, with the strategic decisions being taken centrally,
and to move the decision-making process, as far as that is sensibly
possible, to the stakeholder level where a regional solution—for
instance, there are many examples in the Scottish fishing industry,
as you know—makes it appropriate for local decision-making
to be better than central. I have in mind what has happened about
decentralising or devolving the control of effort, days at sea,
for the Cod Recovery Zone, for those vessels so affected, to the
UK as opposed to holding it all centrally in Brussels. That is
one step, I think, in the right direction.
Q121 Chairman: You have hit on one
of the key issues that we have identified so far on the basis
of the evidence we have already received. I do not expect you
to do it just now, but is there anything around which gives us
a clearer idea of what a devolved management administrative scheme
would be? That idea that you keep strategic issues central but
you get the implementation of how to achieve the strategic targets
at a more local, regional level. Is there anything written which
shows you how you can operationalise that concept?
Mr Armstrong: Regrettably not. It has been done
in a piecemeal fashion. You will know of course that quota is
decentralised, in a way that is managed by each of the Member
States in accordance with their own regime for that, and effort
control will follow it. The only Member State to pick it up, to
go through the door in the legislation this year has been the
UK and we are being watched very closely. There is no central
document that describes the absolutely crucial bit of this: how
do we make that happen in regulatory terms? It is all a rather
vague concept at the minute. It is almost an experiment or a pilot
scheme to see how the UK does with effort control. We have been
handed a length of rope and we can either hang ourselves or make
something of it.
Chairman: Let us go on to one of the key issues:
the whole basis of the scientific evidence and the relationship
between the scientists and the fishermen.
Q122 Viscount Brookeborough: Mr Armstrong,
you make a number of interesting comments about both recovery
plans and management plans. The key to the success of each of
these would appear to be the evidence on which they are based
and the targets that are set. What is your assessment of the quality
of fisheries scientific advice and to what extent do you consider
there to be adequate dialogue and confidence between the fishing
industry and scientists? We have noticed in the press that, basically,
the scientists and fishermen seem to disagree. Would like to comment
on that?
Mr Armstrong: Yes, thank you. There are two
questions really. On the assessment of the quality of fisheries
scientific advice: because of the size of the problem or the volume
of information that would be required, that will always remain
a work in progress. We hope that progress is marked by advance
rather than by decline and we will probably never get to the end
because fisheries science is expensive and you get to the point
where you might threaten to spend more on the science than you
make from the industry. The problem, if there is one, with the
annual round, which looks at relevant fish stocks stock-by-stock
and makes an estimate of how healthy they are and therefore how
much can be withdrawn from them by fishing, is that at this point,
by necessity, it works a little in the past. You are always a
year or a year-and-a-half behind and you therefore make management
decisions on information which is, de facto, a little out
of date. That can be very unhelpful, particularly in a recovering
stock, where you might set the TAC too low and result in regulatory
or institutional discarding. The other question is rather more
exciting and that is the quality of dialogue and the confidence
in fisheries. When I joined the industry three years ago I found
we were just emerging from an area of deep mistrust, where the
fishermen would evince the argument, "I'm at sea all day
every day. You do your trips. You really do not know what is happening
out there." That was the general feeling: rather dismissive.
For reasons of our own good, the industry and science are drawing
together. If we want a more rapid assessment of fisheries than
the present set-piece round can manage then we need to talk a
bit more, and that has been recognized within the industry. I
think there is an increasing confidence. We have moved away from
the position of deep mistrust into a position now of increasing
confidence. It is helped by such matters as science-industry partnerships,
which are happening around the UK in several guises—certainly
there is a Scottish one—which means that we, by necessity,
in order to move the project forward, talk to scientists on an
almost daily basis.
Q123 Viscount Brookeborough: Are
you getting closer to, if you like, monitoring the equivalent
areas within the sea? Scientists do not monitor the same area
from which you are necessarily getting reports from the fishermen.
Mr Armstrong: Yes.
Q124 Viscount Brookeborough: And
the fishermen are inevitably in real-time.
Mr Armstrong: Exactly.
Q125 Viscount Brookeborough: But
the scientists are monitoring all age groups; therefore, why do
you think their forecasting is not correct, when they are the
people who analyse the age of the fish and therefore the juveniles
that will therefore come into the fishery later on? Why are you
sceptical about that?
Mr Armstrong: The fishermen themselves will
always say the same thing. The scientists will also. The scientists
say, "If I am to create a time series"—and to
make a piece of science robust, it must have a time series—"I
must not do this now and say, `I found that much there, therefore
I extrapolate it,' I must have a time series," and so the
fisheries surveys will fish—and this is a great generalisation—in
the same place, with the same gear, year after year after year.
The fishermen will continuously complain, " I use different
gear. I catch different fish." There are two trials going
on, one north and one south of the border right now, to test that
hypothesis. There will be a commercial vessel fishing alongside
one of the research trawlers under Defra's auspices and a similar
trial but slightly different will be happening north. That is
the criticism that is levelled by the fishermen: "You always
do the same thing, in the same place, and you are missing stuff"
is what they say.
Q126 Lord Cameron of Dillington:
Does that explain why the TAC is often set at 50% more than what
the scientists recommend? Is that right, that it should be set
like that?
Mr Armstrong: It will certainly influence the
representatives in the Council of Ministers if they have strong
evidence—sometimes anecdotal evidence but strong evidence—from
their own fishery that what is being seen by way of abundance
on the ground is very different from what the science is saying.
The science, in fairness to the scientists, is often precautionary
and has no real conclusion.
Q127 Viscount Brookeborough: You
would agree to setting TACs at 50% higher than what the scientists
recommend.
Mr Armstrong: No, I do not think anyone could
agree with that. That would be the wrong thing to do.
Q128 Chairman: Good try, Alan!
Mr Armstrong: The straight answer to your question
as to how that happens is that it happens in the background of
a political process.
Lord Cameron of Dillington: I agree.
Q129 Viscount Brookeborough: Recently
there were reports from fishermen that the cod stocks were recovering.
But the other side of that was that they were recovering, but
these were juvenile fish. Therefore, surely one cannot go along
with increased catches purely on the basis of juveniles increasing
because they are four or six years away from being the fish we
want to catch.
Mr Armstrong: Yes. Neither the industry nor
the scientists would wish to over-egg the pudding. That is a very
imprecise phrase—by that I mean to set the TACs too high.
There is a disparity between the opinion of the men at sea with
regard to abundance of cod and where it is and present scientific
evidence. That can be explained to at least some degree by the
fact that the science is slightly older—it is going to be
a year or so delayed—but no-one is suggesting from the industry
that TACs are set artificially high. There is a point in setting
TACs where, if they are set artificially low, then if they are
caught—as cod is for instance in the Scots industry—as
largely a bycatch in an industry chasing another species—haddock,
mostly—you get institutional discard (to use that phrase
again). If you cannot avoid catching them because of their abundance,
they are going over the side because the TAC is artificially low.
I recognize the obvious logical difficulties that that presents.
It is quite a hard problem. We are trying to address that, at
least to some degree, by selectivity, being more clever with the
gear to let fish that you do not wish to catch go or not catch
in the first place.
Q130 Viscount Ullswater: You talk
about setting some things at a strategic level, because when you
are dealing with a number of Member States and only a limited
resource it has to be divided up somehow. Would you consider that
the setting of TACs is still a strategic concept of the CFP?
Mr Armstrong: I would say so.
Q131 Viscount Ullswater: Because
it is involved with politics perhaps.
Mr Armstrong: It is rather easier to describe
defects in the system than to create schemes to fix them, but,
yes, it is a defect in the system. The fact that the whole of
the fishing opportunity for the following year is set at the December
Council of Ministers is a very complicated thing. It is a big
ask (to use that awful phrase) of the Council of Ministers and
is inescapably going to be governed by the politics of each participant
in that process. He or she may be near an election; they may have
the best interests of their industry at heart and are prepared
to abandon or at least pay less attention than required to the
overriding principle of sustainable fishing. A way forward conceivably
might be the breaking up of the process—and that has already
begun to a certain extent—where all the decision-making
is not taken all at once, because, if you do that, then you abandon
the process to the politics if the detail is inescapably too large.
Talking of strategic decisions, the setting of long-term management
plans, which do not depend on an annual change but which are rigidly
stuck to trends and expected adjustments in accordance with trends
rather than a wholesale reset, would be the way to go.
Q132 Viscount Ullswater: Could I
change tack a little bit? We have some evidence from Mr Horwood
that as a result of EU Marine legislation there is likely to be
a push towards more holistic marine management, which includes
fisheries obviously. You have touched on it in your evidence with
the ecosystem of the sea. Do you think that is the way forward?
Is that the way we should be guided for the future, to preserve
the marine environment in that holistic way?
Mr Armstrong: I think, inescapably, this is
the way we must do it. There are interdependencies between all
elements of the ecosystem, including, of course, counting man
as part of the ecosystem—since medieval times he has been
involving himself in it. Much would depend on which structure
was adopted. What often happens is an arm-wrestle for primacy:
are you talking about maximisation of economic benefit, or are
you talking about protecting the marine environment in the long-term?
The answer is that we must do both. Often we fall to arguing from
the red corner and the blue corner, if you like, for primacy of
one or the other. I think an element of an ecosystem approach
is balance and proportionality. There are lots of examples as
to how that can happen. In terrestrial terms you would not dream
of having a protected area in the middle of a Sainsbury's car
park: it is tarmac'd over and it is used for that. But it is entirely
appropriate to have protected areas for flora and fauna where
that is reasonable: in the national parks, for instance. The same
could apply in the maritime area. If an area has been trawled
for tens of years, then it is by no means necessarily wrecked,
like a ploughed field, it is just a little different, and there
is very little point in doing much with that other than continuing
to use it for sustainable harvesting. But there are other areas
that you may wish to protect. Proportionality and balance, with
the ecosystem approach encompassing that, rather than the primacy
of one or the other, which is where we tend to fall to arguing,
I am afraid.
Q133 Viscount Ullswater: Do you add
into that things like sand dredging or sea dredging and perhaps
even the establishment of wind farms, which is set to go on around
our coast and rather picking up.
Mr Armstrong: Yes.
Q134 Viscount Ullswater: Is that
all part of the ecosystem as you see it?
Mr Armstrong: Inescapably, it is going to have
to be taken into account. I now you know that is the stuff of
the Marine Bill and two pieces of legislation coming from Brussels.
The word "joined-up" management has been used and marine
spatial planning has now turned into marine planning and I think
marine planning is heading our way. For reasons of balancing and
being proportional in the uses that you have described for all
those things, I think we need to get the framework right and make
the legislation that governs it good legislation (to use that
term generally) which will not obstruct any of the individual
endeavours or give undue primacy to any of the endeavours, either,
for instance, fishing or marine nature conservation. You could
get a bit purist about either.
Q135 Chairman: It would mean, for
example, in some circumstances saying, "Okay, you have been
trawling, but you cannot do it in X, Y and Z because if you did
you would wreck the seabed."
Mr Armstrong: Yes, absolutely. We have noticed
in very carefully inspecting, for instance, the JNCC proposals
for UK offshore special areas of conservation that often these
things are mutually exclusive. For instance, if you look at Stanton
Bank, which happens to be to the west and south of the outer Hebrides,
there are some rock formations there which are very much worth
preserving. If you overlay the fishing patterns from the Scottish
Fishing Protection Agency's output from vessel monitoring systems
you find that the fishing happens in a small channel of muddy
seabed where prawns are trawled for and the rock is largely avoided—not
necessarily because the fishermen are avid conservationists but
because it would wreck their gear if they were to pull it over
the top of the rocks. The same thing applies to a certain extent
to coldwater coral, although you can do some damage there. So
there are solutions if proportionality and balance prevail.
Q136 Chairman: Perhaps we could switch
back for a moment to the science. Is not one of the difficulties
with the whole problem of the role of science in helping to set
the TACs and also in the relationship of confidence between fishermen
and scientists that it is a science that has a very high margin
of error?
Mr Armstrong: Yes.
Q137 Chairman: Because of that high
margin of error—some of the stuff we have read indicates
it is possibly plus or minus 40%, which is huge—you are
bound to get really difficult problems, like you will be setting
TACs that are inaccurate or that do not live up to the reality
that the fishermen experience in terms of the stocks that are
being brought out of the sea.
Mr Armstrong: Yes, I must agree with that and
can quote several examples in both directions where the imprecise
nature of the science—
Q138 Chairman: Is there any mechanism
of adjusting the TAC in-year, in the light of experience?
Mr Armstrong: Yes. That occasionally happens
but, because of the cumbersome nature of a top-down process, as
we have described the CFP as being, there will be received in
the Commission from a plethora of Member States such requests,
so that makes it a bit difficult. It is also difficult to drum
up hard scientific proof quickly. The scientists will, quite correctly,
in my view, resist that in order to produce robust science. The
answer will never be reached but progress in the right direction
lies in the increased dialogue which is hopefully being encouraged
between fishermen and scientists. If the fishermen are saying,
"Look, we've got this wrong, this is not as you are describing
it," then such hard science as extra observer schemes—which
are expensive but possible—total logging, a special look
at that fishery, can be produced in a relatively short time in
order to do that. We are going to have to do that this year to
a certain degree, in offering to the Commission proof of the pudding
for our control of effort rather than central control of the said
effort from Brussels. The normal scientific round will not produce
answers quickly enough and so we have asked for and are implementing
extra observer schemes, extra reporting from sea, to see if we
can—
Q139 Lord Cameron of Dillington:
How do you play that with your demand earlier for long-term management
plans that are "rigidly stuck to"?
Mr Armstrong: By "rigidly stuck to"
I meant to allude to taking the sting out of the political process.
If you know that the rule states that if x happens, if
the spawning stock of biomass rises above level y, then
there will be a maximum of a 15% increase in the TAC or likewise
a match of 15% down, it sort of de-stings the political process.
Anything we can do to stop widespread decisions which are not
based wholly on science, happening all at once in December, will
be a helpful thing.
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