Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280-300)
Dr Clare Eno, Professor Colin Galbraith, Mr Mark
Tasker and Dr Tom Tew
2 APRIL 2008
Q280 Baroness Sharp of Guildford:
Whereas within the 12 mile limit this would require what?
Dr Eno: Between six and twelve if there are
other Member States who have access it has to be negotiated and
most of those negotiations are still under way.
Q281 Chairman: What you are saying
is there is no pressure from any Member State to reduce the six
mile limit, is that correct?
Dr Eno: I do not think there is any pressure
to remove either the six or twelve.
Q282 Chairman: Why does it have to
be negotiated, you cannot think of any reason why it is still
a derogation?
Dr Eno: It is just that it is a derogation from
open access. The single market and open access seem to be the
driving forces behind that.
Mr Tasker: If I might add, My Lord Chairman,
the only reason why the CFP has to be reviewed every ten or twenty
years is because of that derogation, so it is a testable way of
doing something.
Q283 Chairman: I see, it is a trigger.
Mr Tasker: Yes.
Q284 Baroness Sharp of Guildford:
Are there not Member States which have relatively little in the
way of continental shelf who are anxious to see it reduced?
Mr Tasker: The history last time around is that
everyone was afraid that the Spanish wanted to come and fish all
the way up to beaches, but when it came to the negotiation there
was no bid for it.
Chairman: Good. Lord Arran, perhaps we could
tackle control and enforcement.
Q285 Earl of Arran: Thank you, My
Lord Chairman. Obviously, one of the key management tools is control
and enforcement and, from the point of view of protection at sea,
illegal fishing. Do you consider that the control regulation should
be compulsory on all vessels, which it is not at the moment—it
is voluntary on some smaller ones at the moment—thereby
achieving a level playing field? Would it work, or what is the
situation at the moment and what is the aspiration.
Professor Galbraith: This is an area that I
know Mark Tasker has some detailed knowledge on so I will let
Mark lead for us on this.
Mr Tasker: Thank you. You are probably referring
to the so-called VMS, the satellite monitoring system.
Q286 Earl of Arran: Correct.
Mr Tasker: But I would just point out that there
are other electronic control systems which we would also be interested
in as well, but in terms of the satellite data, yes, at the moment
there is a limit to vessels over 15 metres and we would be very
keen to see the limit at least brought down to over ten metres
length. As you come down in size of course there are problems
in the opposite direction of too much data flowing in, too much
to handle, so we would certainly say more than ten metres should
have VMS on in the near future. For smaller vessels we really
would be quite interested in areas where there is a particular
feature we are interested in controlling and where we think there
may be problems. Our experience with that is that in some near
shore areas, as you mentioned yourself, there is voluntary use
of VMS. Examples would be that the Northern Irish have a mussel
dredge fishery in an area which has VMS on the vessels there,
the Isle of Man scallop fishery has similar and there is some
research on the Firth of Clyde nephrops fishery which had VMS.
Where VMS is voluntary, there is not really a problem, in other
words vessels will take VMS units; where VMS is not voluntary
there is an argument who pays for all of these things, particularly
for the small vessels that have a comparatively small income because
you are actually paying rather a lot to gain maybe not as much
as would be ideal. At the moment we say certainly more than ten
where there is a reasonable profitability and they can pay for
that system, but below that in areas where there is particular
concern over enforcement we would be keen on having it.
Q287 Earl of Arran: You are not going
to get a proper readout at the moment if some have got systems
on board and others have not.
Mr Tasker: That is true, but on the other hand
where do you draw your line on fishing, do you go all the way
down to recreational fleets, do you stop at boats that only go
out at the weekend and are only five metres in length? You still
need some sort of cut-off and the cut-off we would suggest would
be one where we think a significant impact is possible if you
are infringing a regulation.
Q288 Chairman: Are you suggesting
an area based approach rather than a size based approach for that
particular thing that you talked about?
Mr Tasker: We are suggesting both, My Lord Chairman;
in other words it is another tool that can be used in particular
circumstances.
Q289 Chairman: Would that be part
of a licence for the boats or how would that work?
Mr Tasker: That would be a possible way of doing
it.
Q290 Earl of Arran: You also suggest
in your evidence that some of the monitoring systems are being
tampered with. Is there real evidence of that, or what is actually
happening, how serious is it?
Mr Tasker: Yes, there is evidence of tampering,
to answer the question straight. If one goes onto the internet
and you actually type in and look at VMS systems there are kits
available that can adjust many of the current commercially available
systems. There is a rather good paper that was presented at the
ICES annual science meeting two years ago comparing satellite
over- flight data—in other words photographs of the earth
and of vessels location—and where the VMS was saying they
were meant to be. There was quite a big difference. Those vessels
were, admittedly, some way offshore because they were looking
mostly at the high seas to avoid implicating any particular Member
State—it was done by part of the European Commission—but
VMS can be tampered with and yes VMS are being tampered with,
but we are not sure of the level at which that is happening.
Q291 Earl of Arran: It is very difficult
to police this tampering, I imagine, as well.
Mr Tasker: I am not certain about that because
the difficulty of policing is actually the amount of time you
have available to look at the records. If you have suddenly got
a vessel that speeds up that cannot do more than 12 knots and
is suddenly doing 20 knots, that would indicate there is something
going on there, but actually the number of vessels out there and
the number of people who are available to look at those automatic
reports coming in is that the two do not work together very well.
I am fairly certain that some vessels have been detected doing
that and have been given warnings on it, but I do not think we
could do it systematically without a substantial increase in the
enforcement capability in the system.
Q292 Chairman: What about CCTV to
deal with discards or high grading or whatever it is that could
be going on?
Mr Tasker: That is why I mentioned we are interested
in the other electronic data collection systems, so electronic
logbooks—which are one thing which have been talked for
many years, and those are the fishermen filling in what they have
caught where more or less in real time—would be very useful
indeed. The negotiation on that has gone on for more than ten
years and we are still not there, but that would be an extremely
useful tool. You mentioned CCTV, yes, certainly, and those systems
are being used elsewhere in the world. One of my other areas of
knowledge is in relation to by-catch of albatrosses on long-lines
and they found on some vessels that pointing a television camera
at the long-line being hauled is actually quite a good way of
recording the number of birds that were also on that line. It
does work and it is another tool for a specific circumstance.
Q293 Lord Cameron of Dillington:
We are really agreed that the nub of the problem is the over-capacity
in the EU fleet really, and if we could solve that we would certainly
solve some of the fishery problems although maybe not some of
the ecosystem problems. Some Member States seem to be pushing
the bands of Member State subsidies to the very limits in order
to keep their fleet's capacity up or even increasing it; I am
just wondering whether you have any ideas for how we might achieve
a reduction in capacity of the EU fishing fleet.
Professor Galbraith: We are back to the earlier
discussion around the ecosystem. You can see that long term sustainability
really will only be achieved if we do get continual reduction
in the fleet, and that has to be balanced against the technical
efficiency of those boats that remain—and again we had an
earlier discussion. Historically there have been two main methods:
the market can decide or there can be subsidised capacity, reduction
overall, but again Mark Tasker has been involved in this for a
number of years and perhaps Mark could give some more details.
Mr Tasker: That essentially has put it in a
nutshell, but there are advantages and disadvantages of both.
Using the market has certainly been attempted in the UK in the
past but that does not work across the European Union with differing
ways of addressing subsidies. Certainly previous administrations
inside the UK have tried to take out all subsidies, but when you
have a subsidised fleet somewhere across the Channel it does not
really work in terms of a level playing field. The difficulty
with the subsidised capacity reduction is that there is quite
a lot of vessels sitting around not doing a great deal, waiting
for the subsidised capacity reduction to come along—in other
words the available capacity is much bigger than the used capacity
and as soon as you get a subsidised capacity reduction you get
a reduction in the available capacity rather than the used one.
One way of dealing with that might be to remove the fishing licence
at the same time, but actually that is one of the main investments
that the fishermen have got and that is quite difficult to do.
Yes, we think we do need to reduce and, going back to the point
we were making earlier about the continual technological creep,
it is a continuous process because of improving efficiency all
the time and you need to choose the correct tool at the right
time for various fleets.
Q294 Earl of Arran: On the subject
of governance some of the RACs have been delivered more quickly
and more effectively than others—the others probably for
the reasons that they have very complicated and different remits
et cetera, but if those RACs had not existed how do you think
the industry might be worse off than it is now? My real question
is what are the benefits really of the RACs and do you think they
have a future?
Professor Galbraith: We mentioned earlier again
in the ecosystem discussion about getting people to be involved
in decision-taking, and they are part of that structure in terms
of getting as local a buy-in as we can even on a large scale.
Again, Dr Eno has been involved in some of the discussions on
this.
Dr Eno: Thank you, Professor. I was certainly
involved with my colleagues in relation to advising the select
committee that previously reviewed the Common Fisheries Policy
and at that stage we were strongly supporting the establishment
of Regional Advisory Councils. Now most of them are established,
we have been able to see are some positives, but there are still
some negatives as they are going through teething problems. It
would be useful in terms of responding to your question to illustrate
some of the positives and negatives. One of the positives has
been in the convening of some extremely good workshops. There
was one a few years ago on marine spatial planning, then one looking
at cod recovery—that was a joint RAC meeting—and then
last month there was one specifically on marine protected areas
which was very progressive, and that was held within the Scottish
Parliament. For the first time ever there were representatives
from all seven RACs, including ones that are not even established
yet. The environmental groups were all represented and the Commission
was there in force, which was tremendous because it brought all
these different decision-makers and stakeholders together to talk
about marine protected areas. It was a tremendous opportunity
to debate the implications of Directives such as the Habitats
Directive and the Birds Directive and how they would apply and
certainly for the Commission officials to clarify the interpretation
of these. What the workshops allowed was discussion between fishers
and others to assess the scientific findings and best practice
and also concepts for some potential collaborative ways forward
before we actually reaching a crisis point. Another thing that
came out of the marine spatial planning workshop was that a spatial
planning sub-group was set up and that has been chaired by Euan
Dunn, who I believe gave evidence to you last week. That led to
some excellent work mapping fishing activity in important fishing
areas in the North Sea itself. I have been aware of a tremendous
exchange of emails around the various Regional Advisory Councils
and certainly the North Western Waters and North Sea RACs have
had a large amount of input to debates about maximum sustainable
yield and capacity in this last year and in relation to the deep
sea. They also make a detailed input when they are talking about
specific technical conservation measures that come up. This has
been very positive because the views are bounced backwards and
forwards between fishers and other stakeholders all around Europe,
and what happens is that this allows the thinking to mature. This
is something which did not really happen very much prior to the
RACs being in existence and that is very useful to Commission
officials when they are developing new regulations. It also, as
far as we are concerned, provided a mechanism for non-fishing
interests to communicate with the fishing industry at a wider
European level in relation, for instance, in relation to the offshore
Special Areas of Conservation consultation and related regulations
but in terms of that particular point we have got some reservations.
In a sense they start with the fact that fishing interests dominate
the Regional Advisory Councils and they tend to be more interested
in immediate concerns rather than horizon scanning. Thinking back
to the Natura 2000 sites, we gave a paper to the RACs essentially
outlining the situation about Natura 2000 sites and offshore Natura
2000 site regulations but there was no interest. We gave that
paper in the summer of 2006 and there was no interest until the
following spring when the Irish started announcing their offshore
Natura 2000 sites and at that stage, thankfully, we had the status
of observers and so we were present and we were able to reiterate
that offer of help that we made previously and so they started
dealing particularly with JNCC and my colleague Mark Tasker here.
We were able to really bring them on board from the UK perspective
because what happened in Ireland really did not go down well,
so as far as progressing the UK offshore Natura 2000 sites it
has worked better because of that. The consequence of not listening
to our earlier advice was essentially that they missed the opportunity
to make input to the offshore habitat regulations when they were
being drafted, so it was done and dusted by the time they finally
woke up to it. There is still a limited extent of engagement and
involvement in the RACs by the environmental groups and while
that is not a criticism of those NGOs who are currently involved
and it is probably more down to the manpower resources that they
have, it does mean that the environmental input is somewhat marginalised
still. We are very concerned about that because a lot of our reasons
for supporting and promoting Regional Advisory Councils previously
were because they are a mechanism for encouraging an ecosystem-based
approach to fisheries management and there has really been very
little uptake of that. There is a great opportunity for them,
they are sitting around the table and they have stakeholders there
who they could talk to about this but basically there is little
willingness to embrace it, and partly that is because they are
not looking to the longer term. Not looking to the longer term
also relates to management strategies. When you now have a new
method of managing the geographic region, which essentially is
what these Regional Advisory Councils are, the first thing you
could do is go in and say "Right, let us look at that region
and let us come up with a management strategy for that region."
There has been a lot of resistance to doing that and while Defra
has actually pushed it forward enormously it has been viewed with
suspicion by other Member States and other countries' fishers.
I hope the RACs will be able to overcome that and build more trust
and a more common vision of the future. I would say in relation
to the successes and how they work that a lot of it is down to
the sterling work that is done by the secretariats of some of
the RACs in essentially organising a somewhat unlikely group of
individuals, and then there have been individuals as well who
have done really good work and I would particularly emphasise
the work that has been done by many from the UK in this respect.
Q295 Earl of Arran: On balance in
your opinion they are beneficial, although you may have criticisms.
Dr Eno: Yes.
Q296 Earl of Arran: Suppose they
had an executive role rather than an advisory role, what would
you think about that?
Dr Eno: It would need to be looked at very carefully;
I do not think they are ready to go there yet. Some of the Regional
Advisory Councils are more advanced—the North Sea RAC and
the North Western Waters RAC are more established and maybe they
are starting to move to that stage where they are working in a
responsible manner.
Mr Tasker: Can I just add one thing on that
last question? There is a subsidiarity principle that might apply
here and I do not see any reason—going back to our earlier
comment on the goal-setting approach from Professor Galbraith—why
some of those goals cannot be handed over to the RACs on the subsidiarity
principle. That would give them a bit of an executive role, if
you see what I mean, rather than a whole executive.
Q297 Earl of Arran: A dangerous compromise.
Mr Tasker: That is what subsidiarity is about
after all, is it not? There are some things which already they
might be best at—here is your goal, go away and do it.
Q298 Baroness Sharp of Guildford:
And there is the buy-in that you get from that.
Mr Tasker: Exactly.
Q299 Lord Cameron of Dillington:
We all agree with you that we need to look at the whole ecosystem
approach really, but I guess my question can be summed up in the
words are we willing? Dr Eno's report on the RACs was slightly
more depressing than I thought it was going to be because some
of them, particularly the North Sea and the North Western ones,
seem as if there is light at the end of the tunnel and that might
be the right approach. I am just wondering whether, as well as
answering the question are we willing, do you think the marine
initiatives such as the Marine Bill, the Habitats Directive, the
Marine Strategy Directive are going to make a difference to whether
we win or not?
Professor Galbraith: They will make a difference
in two ways, one way will I hope be effective on the ground or
in the water as it were, but I believe they will change people's
perception as well and what you are seeing happening in the marine
environment now you could say happened on the land ten years back
in terms of the approaches that people take, the ecosystem approach,
the buy-in from people, so we will change the perception and will
change the level of activity if you like. That will be a big challenge
for many people there; for the conservation side it is certainly
a big challenge and it will equally be for the fisheries side
in terms of managing their work, perhaps in a different way, but
managing alongside other people who have come into that area and
who have an interest suddenly, and who, under directives, have
a statutory role to be there; that will change the situation quite
considerably. Again, this is Mark Tasker's territory and he has
been there for quite a number of years; perhaps Mark would like
to comment.
Mr Tasker: I have been interested in this area
for a very long time and, to answer your first question are we
winning, I think we are in that we have at least stopped the decline
and, certainly looking back to the last review, a lot of the things
that came through that last review were positive, and the RACs
are one of those, even though they have not bedded in as fast
as we really would like on that particular issue. You asked about
the other initiatives and perhaps we could split those between
the EU ones and the UK ones. The Marine Strategy Framework Directive
has regionalisation right at its core and, coming back to a question
you were asking as well which is how would regionalisation work,
I think that will help a great deal. To me it has always seemed
ludicrous that a minister from the UK can decide on what is going
on in the fisheries off Romania and vice versa; we need some form
of regionalisation at that level at the top. We know that in fact
DG MARE—that used to be called DG Fisheries and Marine Affairs—is
now regionalising inside its sub-structures, so in other words
I assume those units will be bringing forward proposals on a regional
basis. That chimes quite well with the Framework Directive that
is also coming through, although there are a lot of challenges
left, as Colin has mentioned. In terms of the other initiatives,
you have mentioned the Habitats Directive and I would remind you
that there is also a Birds Directive. We have got the Strategic
Environment Assessment, we have got the EIA, the Environmental
Impact Assessment, and then underneath the Habitats Directive
there are Appropriate Assessments. All of those assessment processes
apply to most other marine industries except fisheries and one
of the things we would be very keen on doing, and one of the things
that would bring these other initiatives together, would be making
sure that all industries, regardless of whether it is fishing
or not, are on a level playing field in regard to their environmental
performance. To translate that, if the oil industry wants to go
out and drill a hole it has to do an EIA in advance of that, it
has to be accepted before it is allowed to do it. There are challenges
in doing that inside the fishing sector and we are taking up some
of those challenges: we have a pilot project on Strategic Environmental
Assessment running off the north-east coast at the moment with
the North East Sea Fisheries Committee. An SEA is also being done
on the European Fisheries Fund proposals so those tools could
be applied to produce a lot more and would help integration. Coming
back to the UK I would say Marine Bbills—I live in Aberdeen,
Colin comes from Scotland; there is going to be a Scottish Marine
Bill as well as the English/UK one. The English/UK one seems to
have got rather long and gangly; I believe it is going to be published
tomorrow so we have not actually seen the full details but there
are a lot of extra bits and pieces being added into that and,
broadly, we are slightly worried that that is not going to do
all the implementation necessary for the Marine Strategy Framework
Directive. The Scottish, on the other hand, are taking a slightly
longer approach to this and are saying that they want the Scottish
Bill to actually implement the Directive in Scottish waters. The
danger you can see in England is that we are going to have one
lot of marine legislation and then a little while later another
lot of marine legislation, so we are advising that we would like
to try and see those brought together, although understanding
that the UK/English Marine Bill has taken a long, long time in
gestation and there is a political necessity to perhaps get something
out there sooner. In relation to fisheries both Bills indicate
a better management of the nearshore in different ways—the
nearshore area being the six to twelve miles and inside six miles,
Sea Fisheries Committees having enhanced powers south of the border
and some form of similar system north of the border but different
from Sea Fisheries Committees. We would also note that the UK/English
Marine Bill does allow for the development of marine conservation
zones beyond 12 miles but coming back the other way on integration,
unless those are agreed at a European level you are not going
to get any fisheries measures for these and one of our opening
statements is that the thing that affects the marine environment
most is fisheries. If you cannot manage the main thing that might
affect your protected area you have a problem. That is why it
is important that we make sure that the marine bills do implement
something European in relation to Marine Conservation Zones otherwise
we are going to have paper parks and not ones that have been managed
properly.
Dr Tew: I would be foolish to disagree with
my colleague of course but I am nervous about the "we are
winning" message, I think that needs to be held carefully
and lightly because the European Commission's fishing paper this
year looked at 110 stocks and there is no evidence of an overall
improvement in the status of any of those stocks, and between
2003 and 2007, 80% of these stocks were considered to be outside
the safe biological limits. There was a paper in Science
last year looking at the impacts of biodiversity loss and it concluded:
"Marine biodiversity loss is increasingly impairing the oceans'
capacity to provide food, maintain water quality and recover from
perturbations, yet available data suggests at this point that
these trends are still reversible", so I am much happier
with a picture that shows it is not over yet, there is still much
we can do and we are making significant progress. I am not sure
I would conclude we are winning at this stage.
Q300 Chairman: Certainly in your
memorandum in paragraph 3 you note those things and you also say
that the information is deteriorating, which is quite a concern.
Could I perhaps ask you this question: it seems that TACs and
quotas are very political in that they are discussed and agreed
at the Fisheries Council in December every year; is that the right
place for those decisions to be taken? You advise Government and
you therefore advise ministers; should ministers sit much more
with a strategic view as to what the future should be and some
other mechanism to deal with the detail which otherwise looks
as if there is this huge body of work that has to be done between
September and December and then a huge volume of work that has
to be done before 1 January; is that really the way that we should
be dealing with it?
Professor Galbraith: When you have a subject
like this which is a mix of ecology, of scientific disciplines,
politics, economics and local communities I suspect it is inevitable
that you will have something of a less than perfect decision-making
system around that. I suppose you could draw back and say, yes,
theoretically you can design different systems and that would
be advantageous; it is difficult to suggest that we should change
radically because what are the possibilities of that, recognising
all that complexity. I will come to my colleagues but I think
in theory probably yes, in practice it may be somewhat harder
to achieve.
Dr Tew: Leave it all to the scientists.
Mr Tasker: Colin is very close to the answer
there but I do think we have mentioned a few other things in our
evidence today. Long term management plans are essentially things
decided on by politicians. What politicians should be looking
at is the balance of how much risk do you want to place your fish
stock at, how much damage would you allow the environment to take.
That is a thing that politicians should do, it is taking an overall
broad view, but once you have got that broad view then the expression
of that in technical and in management terms, I do not really
see the need for politicians. The last CFP reform actually pointed
heavily in the direction of multi-annual recovery plans and multi-annual
management plans. They are taking a very long time to put in place;
some have been put there but not very many and they have taken
a fair bit of effort. Those should be more or less automatic:
we get the signal from this particular indicator saying the environment
or the fish stock is in such a state, that should feed through
that and then there is an almost automatic output. We would very
much like to see that on a regional scale, and I think that is
achievable still. The other point I made was about the decision
process in December. That is changing a bit in that a lot of that
was driven by the timing of when the science advice arrived. ICES
has reformed—I have personally been quite a large part of
that—the timing of when advice will be available, so advice
is going to be available much earlier in the year but with a degree
more uncertainty attached to it, so most of it will be out in
June for the main stocks that are of interest the UK. That means
that you should not have to end up in December with so much of
an intense pressure at that time. The science has done its bit,
can the political system do its bit? The jury is out on that.
Chairman: It remains for me to thank all of you—Dr
Eno, Mr Tasker, Professor Galbraith and Dr Tew—very much
indeed for the evidence that you have given to us. It has been
very helpful to our inquiry and we have learnt a great deal; again,
we are just very grateful to you for having come and given evidence.
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