Examination of Witness (Questions 140-159)
Mr Bertie Armstrong
19 MARCH 2008
Q140 Viscount Brookeborough: Currently
do you know what the cost is of the scientifically gathered evidence
as a proportion of the fishery industry?
Mr Armstrong: I can quote the Scots figures.
The Fisheries Research Service budget is in the order of £25-£27
million, I believe, and the overall turnover of the industry in
Scotland is in the order of £350 million.
Q141 Viscount Brookeborough: Who
is paying for it?
Mr Armstrong: That is a government-funded affair.
Chairman: Could we move on to the key issue
of simplification.
Lord Plumb: We like the word "simplification".
Chairman: We are a very simple lot!
Q142 Lord Plumb: As a reforming zealot,
how would you like to simplify the management? What would you
regard as the prospects of an "outcome orientated system"?
That was proposed by one witness who has written to us and would
involve setting objectives at European level while devolving decisions
on management tools to national, regional or even individual vessel
level. You partly touched on this in your opening remarks but
I think it is crucial, because we do not want to be seen as a
committee who have taken the last report off the shelf, dusted
it and sent it back again, and so you could regard perhaps all
of us as reforming zealots in this respect.
Mr Armstrong: Simplification is, indeed, very
important. When I was at a meeting the other day a fisherman said,
"The reason we're all sitting here is because none of us
came top of the class," so simplification is a wonderful
thing for all of us. I did go into a layer of detail that perhaps
I should not have, in that I said that simplification was not
helped by layering one measure on top of another, making it very
difficult then to see which one is working, and that is the truth.
The outcome-oriented system, whoever said that in written evidence—and
if it was my good friend Barry Deas, we see eye-to-eye on this—as
we do on most things, I hasten to add—that would indeed
be the direction in which we would wish to go and the setting
of objectives and the taking of the decision-maker as close to
the stakeholder as you can get because then the proper dialogue
can take place. The big bit about the outcome-oriented devolution
of effort control, which says, "Take this bucket of kilowatt
days, you sort it out within that scheme (ie, a strategic decision),
but incentivise and penalise your industry as best you can to
achieve the aim of a reduction of cod mortality"—and
that is almost a classic pilot study in this—is that it
allows something that is difficult from central control, in that
you can incentivise good behaviour and penalise bad behaviour
if you have the tools at your mercy, and what is being wrestled
with now at administration levels is getting this right. Everybody
is a bit nervous, reasonably so, and we want to get this right.
The administrations would be afraid of being seen, in the end,
as succoured into pandering to the industry and simply giving
more effort to the industry where that is inappropriate. The industry,
likewise, are carefully watching to see whether or not this is
just the transfer of one less than perfect system to a lower level
of less than perfect system. There is all to play for here, but
I think the central principle of central goal-setting and allowing
incentivisation and penalisation with a decision-maker who has
a straight dialogue with the relevant fishery is helpful. Also,
what might apply, even within the UK, to a Scots white fish boat,
fishing for haddock half in the Norwegian sector and half at home,
will be very different from a boat out of Yorkshire looking for
whiting. The point of that being that the moving of the decision-making
to the decision-maker, closer to the stakeholder, is helpful.
Q143 Lord Plumb: Would fishermen
in other European countries agree with that, do you think? Is
it subject to debate in your fisheries group in Brussels?
Mr Armstrong: Yes. The Regional Advisory Councils
are exactly the forum where that debate can take place. It is
a difficulty. You have put your finger right upon a difficulty.
Perhaps I might give you a good example: it was decided in Scotland—it
has been adopted around the whole of the North Sea now—that
there would be real-time closures. We do not want to catch these
fish, either aggregations of juveniles or, in the spawning period
at the start of the year, spawning fish, the cod stock. Therefore,
when we fall upon abundances of these, we will work out a system
of working out where abundances are, first of all by asking the
industry and putting squares on the map and saying, "This
is where we are likely to find them," and then inspecting
vessels when they are in those areas during the relevant season
and shutting down small areas. That had to be voluntary because
you cannot put it into legislation, unless you do it at the December
Council and that would never get through. We did it voluntarily
and we talked to the Danes who said, "The logic is obvious.
We would sign up to that." Now that system has not been abused
by other nations. The obvious interpretation would be, "If
they are telling me where it all is, I think I will go straight
there". That has not happened—well, not with foreign
vessels.
Q144 Lord Plumb: Would it affect
the licence or the quota?
Mr Armstrong: The way the scheme has been set
up now, it will affect your days at sea. The carrot and stick
approach is the carrot of an inducement by way of effort to obey
these rules and the penalty of losing that inducement if you break
the rules. But that only applies to UK vessels. Unless the legislation
has changed, it cannot apply to the other vessels of Europe.
Q145 Chairman: Given my background,
I am in favour of devolution. If you push implementation down
to regional level or something like that, at some stage somewhere
along the line there needs to be the ability of the centre to
impose a sanction. In this case, it would obviously have to be
on the Member State eventually. What would that sanction be and
how would it be applied?
Mr Armstrong: I can only speak from the experience
we have had thus far—and it is very early days in the scheme—but
the sanction that would be applied is withdrawal of your privileges
with regard to effort control. For instance, for people in this
scheme—north of the border it has been called the Scottish
Conservation Credit Scheme—if you agree to staying out of
real-time closures, you will be awarded your 2007 level of days
and you will be given the ability to manage your days in kilowatt
hours rather than kilowatt days—the advantage of that being
that there was always the rather perverse rule which meant that,
if you were going to be back at five minutes after midnight, never
mind the weather or fuel consumption, that used another day, so
people would battle through in order to get through for 23.59
instead of 00.01.
Q146 Chairman: Say a Member State
government was pretty lax in ensuring that the rules were being
obeyed and was turning a blind-eye to various bits and pieces,
what sanction would be available to impose on the Member State?
Mr Armstrong: I cannot sensibly answer that.
All I can say, certainly from the industry's point of view is
that such a sanction should exist. The level playing field—the
old cliché—is used nearly every day in one form or
another about the perceived compliance of other Member States
versus us, and our own perception is that we do everything in
general terms and that often this is not quite the case elsewhere.
There is certainly some hard evidence of that with regard to,
for instance, the penalties for past misdemeanours in the pelagic
world, in the mackerel and herring catching: a disparity in the
way Member States have pursued their miscreants and in the differential
treatment in that respect of, for instance, Scotland. If it is
bona fide law breaking, there is no truck with that, but
it is very galling when you see that happening elsewhere and that
industry is given the commercial advantage of not being penalised
so much. It is a problem. I have just described the problem. I
have answered your question by agreeing with it rather than saying
what can be done. I would say that some action really must be
available centrally, otherwise the system will fall apart, because
there is a differential approach—and you know this personally
very well—from Member State to Member State in the way they
approach their fishing industry.
Chairman: Let us move on to discards.
Q147 Baroness Jones of Whitchurch:
Do you think discards are an inherent part of the fishing industry?
To what extent has it always been like that? I know there have
been some recent scandals and pictures of wholesale throwing back
into the water but is it a feature that fishermen will always
keep their high value stock and chuck the rest over the side?
Mr Armstrong: I hope not. I actually did not
answer the question properly that was put originally, which was:
Why do discards happen? I think everyone is familiar with the
answer that if they are illegal, if they are undersized, then
it is not illegal to catch them but it is certainly illegal to
land them and so there is nothing you can do but put them over
the side. If a species has no commercial value, then if it comes
in in the net it will be discarded because there is nothing you
can do with it otherwise. Then there is what we could perhaps
call "high grading", where a fisherman may or may not
choose to keep the primest of fish and throw the rest away. All
of those are undesirable things. It is fair to say that the fishing
industry does not like discarding. Fishermen do not. When you
see those awful pictures on television, that is a rather misguided
attempt by the fishermen to say, "Look, couldn't we change
the fishing regulations because look what it is making me do"
rather than in any shape or form glorying in it. Apart from anything
else, if you are limited in your days at sea you do not want to
spend half a day catching stuff that you are going to have to
sort out and throw back. How do we address it, however, is the
rather more important question. It is a slightly dangerous statement
to make, with regard to it being reported back, but some level
of discarding is probably inevitable. In its very mildest form,
you have a tow in an area and you decide that there are fish that
should not be caught here, so you have to move away, then those
fish themselves will get discarded. A small amount of discarding
is almost inevitable but it needs to be small. It is also arguably
better to put it back into the ecosystem, where it becomes an
easy meal for a natural predator in the ecosystem—an undersized
haddock will be eaten avidly by a juvenile cod from the recovering
cod stock—rather than take it ashore and make fishmeal out
of it or do something else that really has no commercial basis.
A small amount of discarding is probably an element of the industry
but what must be done and what is being done is a sequential move
in the direction of reducing this dramatically. There are things
that can be done to help. The real-time closures, avoiding fish
altogether that ought not to be caught, if you can work out where
they are going to be or if you determine where they are going
to be—which is roughly what the Norwegians do—can
help. Also, gear selectivity where that is possible—and
it is very much possible in some fisheries—is very helpful:
bigger meshes to let juveniles go; separator panels which take
advantage of the different behaviour of different species if you
want to catch one and not the other or less of one and not the
other. There is a pretty widespread programme of trials going
on around the UK to help with this. The actions for the recovery
of the cod stock and the reduction of discards almost go hand-in-hand.
They are mutually helpful. If you avoid catching cod in order
to let the stock recover you will automatically avoid discarding
those cod you would otherwise have caught and the other white
fish that swim with them.
Q148 Baroness Jones of Whitchurch:
If you discard the bits that you say you always have—there
will always be an element in the nets of things that have no value
and seaweed and bits of rock and a few misshapen fish that you
really do not want—do you think the bigger problem is because
the scientists are getting it wrong? In other words, they are
saying, "If you go and fish here you should be able to catch
the right proportion of cod" and then they put their nets
down and it is completely different, so they are getting caught
out by the wrong scientific advice. Do you think that is at the
heart of the problem?
Mr Armstrong: The scientific advice generally
helps, where it can, with where fish will be and often the science
has as the basis of its evidence reports from sea. Certainly it
has the landing data and the reports of catching from sea. The
science can be helped by the fishermen and vice versa. I would
not wish to defend discarding at all or be quoted as defending
discarding and saying it is all right. It is not all right but
I think the reality is that there will always be a small amount
of it. I do not think the scientists are particularly getting
it wrong; it is just a question of moving in the right direction
with increasing dialogue all the time about discards. It is a
relatively recent topic.
Q149 Baroness Jones of Whitchurch:
In relation to the throwing back of juveniles, for example, I
know it could well be argued that you should change your gear
so that you do not catch smaller fish.
Mr Armstrong: I agree with that.
Q150 Baroness Jones of Whitchurch:
But would it not be better to land them, even though it is causing
problems in future years, and give them some use, rather than
throw them back as fishfood for other predators?
Mr Armstrong: I do not think we should underestimate
the value of them as fishfood for other predators. It may be the
other fish stocks that benefit from it.
Q151 Baroness Jones of Whitchurch:
Some have said it is all the sea birds that benefit.
Mr Armstrong: Certainly there are clouds of
sea birds—there is much visual evidence in every picture
that RSPB produces of sea birds round fishing boats. One of the
major problems—indeed, the major problem, I think—is
that of discards in mixed fisheries. It is quite easy in, for
instance, the pelagic to be chasing herring and mackerel, blue
whiting or horse mackerel: fishing in the mid-water for shoals
of similar fish is a pretty clean process. And that is fine. Mixed
fisheries in the white fish industry are a different matter together.
That is where selectivity has a part to play and selective closures,
be they temporal or spatial or permanent. If you know this is
always an area of juvenile nursery then, indeed, that should be
shut. A combination of measures to move in the right direction
will help. The word "discard-ban" is often used, but
an immediate ban early would be difficult. It is interesting to
note the Norwegian experience in this respect. They have, indeed,
a discard ban but a very interesting fact is that very little
of the amount of money and facilities they laid aside to processing
all these discards that were not going to happen now and were
going to be brought ashore has been spent. The Norwegian administration
would argue that that is because of behaviour change at sea: people
have really put their mind to avoiding these fish with a combination
of the fact that they know that is a good idea anyway and there
is a legislative framework which is for heavily penalising.
Q152 Chairman: We have heard the
Norwegian ban being described as a "pragmatic ban".
Mr Armstrong: Yes. Hence the lack of fishmeal
factories supplied with thousands of tonnes of small fish.
Q153 Chairman: We are going to have
to move on but, having said that, I am going to abuse my position
as Chairman and ask one question on discards. The type of discard
that people find most difficult to understand is when a fisherman
brings up the net and in it are fish that, because of the TAC,
because of quota, he does not have quota for and he is throwing
back fish dead that are—
Mr Armstrong: Saleable fish.
Q154 Chairman: Saleable fish, high
quality. How can that be avoided? In particular, is it possible
to get a system where, if you bring up the net and in the net
are fish for which a TAC exists, quota exists, and you do not
have that particular quota cover, some sort of mechanism and requirement
could be put in place where the fishermen would have to buy the
quota cover to cover what is in the net?
Mr Armstrong: That exists to a certain extent
already. You cannot do it on the hoof at sea.
Q155 Chairman: That is the problem,
is it not?
Mr Armstrong: Yes. You could certainly do it
if you prepare for that and say, "I'm going to try to catch
that amount this year and I therefore am going to go to my producer
organisation and buy the quota that is available."
Q156 Viscount Ullswater: Could you
do it retrospectively?
Mr Armstrong: That would lead to difficulty
in individual producer organisations. It is very easy to describe
several ways where this might be tackled. One might be an effort
only system, where you take a great leap of faith and say, "If
I only let them fish for that amount of time, then they bring
back everything that is commercially available and we see what
happens." Actually, it can be a little more scientific than
that: you can guesstimate what would happen. But that would be
a radical and revolutionary departure and one that might have
some risk in it. Adjustment of quota on the hoof at sea would
seem to make sense as well, but it would fall into the problem
of how the producer organisations then work because they have
no control. Their job is: "I have this amount of fish to
distribute and I am supposed to prevent anyone else catching any
more of that" and it would make their job more difficult.
It is hard to see at this point exactly which of those schemes
would work best. All of them would have merit for investigation.
There are a couple of places where effort only schemes are being
tried. Or you might try quota only. In fact we have tried quota
only and effort control was the result of that not working.
Chairman: All right, let us press on.
Real-time closures.
Q157 Earl of Dundee: You have already
said that you think the Scottish system of real-time closures
is working well. If so, how then do you see that developing and
extending?
Mr Armstrong: If it would become mandatory for
all and not voluntary for all—and mandatory for the Scots
fleet or the UK fleet if you wish to stay within that system—then
it would have to be applied in legislation at the end of each
year. It would have to be in the TAC and quota regulations for
each year. That would be perhaps the direction we need to go.
Everyone is watching this now. The Commission declared about last
September time that delegation of effort control to Member States
was coming. We were the only ones who picked it up in the UK,
so everybody is watching us now to see if we do hang ourselves
with this piece of rope or not. Once it becomes universal, assuming
that we make it work and the Commission decides so, then it can
be embedded in the annual TAC and quota regulations and be mandatorily
applied to all.
Q158 Earl of Dundee: If you say that
everybody is watching it, is the first stage of what they look
at to see how we make it within UK law mandatory?
Mr Armstrong: No, I think they are waiting rather
more to see the practical effect of it: Does this do anything
for the fish stocks and can the industry live with it or can the
industry and the administration between the pair of them make
it work?
Q159 Earl of Dundee: How long will
that process of assessment probably take?
Mr Armstrong: It is going to be done in year,
this year. We started voluntarily ourselves, without any form
of legislative underpinning, last September. It will run all this
year, underpinned by the TAC and quota regulations that presently
exist, and we will see what happens next. Our problem—and
I think we have touched on this—is producing robust scientific
evidence that it is doing anything for the fish stocks.
Chairman: Let us go on to a hobby-horse
of mine: "black" fish.
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