Examination of Witnesses (Questions 480-489)
Mr Frank Strang, Mr Stephen Noon and Mr Paul McCarthy
1 MAY 2008
Q480 Baroness Sharp of Guildford:
Can I move on to control and enforcement where the Commission
are preparing a revised Regulation on Control and Enforcement?
Would you like to see that regulation? You note that you do not
wish to see sanctions harmonised but could you tell us whether
you would support a harmonised level of minimum sanctions?
Mr Strang: Like lots of these questions, it
is a really important issue. If you ask people about the CFP in
Scotland controls are one of the things people talk about a lot,
a level playing field, this kind of thing, and poor and unequal
controls are a key factor in the perception of the CFP. The Court
of Auditors report conclusion was that the controls are not capable
of ensuring rules are effectively applied, so from the Court of
Auditors, which is the highest level within the EU, that is a
serious indictment. It particularly grieves us because of the
efforts taken in Scotland and the UK in recent years, and I do
not know if the Committee has heard this but the sense of cultural
compliance, a sense of what the figures looked like five or six
years ago and negligible levels of black fish now, and probably
that has been the case for well over 18 months. It is a big deal
for us and therefore we want to see that kind of thing everywhere.
It is partly a legislative issue so the control regulation is
important. As an aside, we are concerned about the lack of time
we will have had to input into it. It seems to be happening last
minute and I know you are going to Brussels. I will not go into
details but in terms of headlines what we want out of the control
regulation I guess is the same point about outcomes in that it
talks about what it is we are trying to achieve, the high level
things Member States have to do but not going into all the detail
of what Member States should do to deploy their resources in a
risk-based way and what is most appropriate for them. We would
like (and this is linked to the comment about land-based controls)
the focus to continue to be on land-based controls, having seen
that here. We would like to continue progress using technology,
electronic reporting, and to make that standard practice. There
are areas where the famous expression "level playing field"
comes up. An example for us would be how you deal with historic
over-fishing so you have the same principles applying everywhere.
Legislation is partly the answer, obviously, but the biggest answer
is the will to make this happen. It is the will not just of Member
States to do it but of the Council and the Commission to hold
Member States to account. That brings me to the last part of your
question about minimum sanctions and all that. For wider reasons
of Member State competence we do not want the Commission and the
Council saying this is what your sanction should be in a criminal
court across the board but there are ways in which administrative
penalties could be developed not in the criminal courts. They
could be a serious deterrent—people are tied up for a certain
number of days or weeks. That hits people in a way which sometimes
financial penalties do not if they factor them into their running
costs, and there is scope to develop those, I guess. In any event,
whilst the Court of Auditors report was uncomfortable reading
in some ways, the idea of transparency about standards in different
Member States, transparency about what the controls are like,
like holding each other to account, must be a good thing.
Q481 Chairman: Given the success
of the registration of buyers and sellers, one of the big things
must be to try and make sure that errant Member States implement
it.
Mr Strang: Yes.
Q482 Viscount Brookeborough: You
believe in your report that the capacity for the demersal fleet
is now "in much better balance with the available resource".
To what extent do you consider that there may be a need for a
further reduction in order to bring it more fully into balance
or with your future predictions?
Mr Strang: I guess what is important is that
hidden in our comment there is what we have been through in the
last ten years. It is always important, especially in Peterhead
and around the coast of the north east, to remember what happened
in 2001/2003, 165 white fish vessels going out at £56 million
cost to the taxpayer and a serious impact on fishing communities.
In the cod recovery we are making sure that we get credit for
the things we have done in the past. I guess because of that we
think that in broad terms most fleets are in balance with stocks.
There might be some fine-tuning in some places. We have not identified
those, but we believe they are mostly in line with the requirement.
I guess there is an issue there with a level playing field (you
always have to say the phrase "level playing field"
many times in these things) to do with others taking capacity
out and, to be fair, there are more and more stories around the
Council table in Brussels on other Member States taking capacity
out but it is all very un-transparent. If there was more information
available about what other Member States are doing to ensure that
we are all responding as required to reduce capacity that is what
we would see as the priority.
Q483 Viscount Brookeborough: I wonder
if you would like to comment on areas outside Peterhead. What
has surprised me by coming here is that there is apparently only
one per cent unemployment and that there is a large migrant workforce,
and I was told this morning that if it disappeared the fishing
industry would collapse. Here, quite obviously, you have got the
newish oil industry which has taken up not only a lot of the employment
but many fishermen's hours doing similar type jobs right around
the oil rigs. What is the effect on the west coast compared with
here employment-wise?
Mr Strang: Obviously, you will be able to talk
to the Council representative shortly about that question. In
terms of the west coast, there are different aspects to this.
There is a sense of people believing in the sector again in terms
of, if you look at the Banff and Buchan College and other places
that used to have hardly any skippers, we have now got more people
coming through to be skippers. There is a sense that this is a
sector worth being in. There is more enthusiasm for the sector.
There is certainly no doubt that workers from other places, such
as eastern Europe (as was) are very important to the economy,
processing in particular. I myself was talking to a processor
this weekend, saying, "This is really good, really important,
it is working very well, but we have to also develop our own workforce
too in that, as these economies grow, people might not stay".
It is always important to remember that there are more people
employed in the processing than in the catching and for me part
of the story is about processing being part of the food industry,
Scotland being a place of good food and drink, and we have a government
priority to make it a niche quality product, which is part of
what we are about, and so to get people to say that this is part
of the future of the sector.
Q484 Viscount Brookeborough: But
the fact is that on the east coast, as far as we have seen, the
reduction in the fishing fleet over the last ten years has not
meant a destruction of the social community because there has
been significant other employment.
Mr Strang: I cannot comment on that. If you
went to some other places, some of the villages around the Moray
Firth, for instance, you might get a different story.
Q485 Chairman: Talking about fish
processing, what we heard yesterday from the processors' representative
was that increasingly second-level processing is going off to
China, so fish caught in Scotland may be headed and gutted in
Scotland and frozen, go out to China for filleting, be blocked
and then come back, and apparently there is not any blocking facility
in the UK now.
Mr Strang: You are into world economy issues
and market forces here to a certain extent. I personally think
that carbon footprints and all that may be more and more of an
issue and I think there will be more and more about provenance
and more and more about local British goods. As an aside, 50%
or so of the Scottish production is now going for MSC certification,
so there is a big issue around sustainability but that particular
one does not necessarily capture carbon footprint and food miles,
so food miles and provenance will certainly be more important.
Mr Noon: There is a parallel policy process
going on where we are currently engaged in trying to develop a
national food policy for Scotland and part of that is issues around
labelling and promotion of local food and engaging with the supermarkets
on these sorts of issues. It is part of a wider economic assessment.
Q486 Lord Cameron of Dillington:
Just on that last one, I suspect the provenance of that cod is
probably "Norwegian sea cod". The fact that it has been
to China and back does not get mentioned. Fisheries are only one
cog in the overall marine management and here, as has already
been mentioned, you have got oil, you have probably got wind power,
you have got bird life, marine habitats and so on. I am just wondering
to what extent your fisheries policy, either in or out of the
Common Fisheries Policy, is totally predominant in your marine
management. Can you imagine a scenario in which, say, fisheries
take second place to bird life?
Mr Strang: You are quite right: at every level,
European, Scottish, UK, we are looking at things in the wider
marine context and the marine environment in its widest sense,
and actually I suppose we are realising in Scotland more and more
that, just as food and drink are a really important asset for
us, our seas are a fantastic asset too in lots of different ways.
We are responsible in fisheries management terms for the biggest
area of the EU fishing waters at least of the continental area,
so it is a huge area and is hugely important, and not just in
fishing terms. In defining our marine objectives for the seas
we have talked about them being safe and clean, being healthy
and biologically diverse and being productive, all those things.
Obviously, within that we are saying socio-economic matters and
fishing are part of that cog. It is not the only thing. There
are lots of energy ideas, et cetera, in devising our own marine
planning ideas, our own marine bill, our input to the EU. Obviously,
fishing will shape some of what we say, but there are two things
I would say about that. One is that the more we look at the seas
as a whole the more regionalisation matters. If we can get a holistic
approach then we are looking at particular seas and the Marine
Strategy Directive is about regional seas. It is the same kind
of theme as our fisheries management. The other point for me is
that in dealing with the fishing sector this subject is a two-way
street. It is partly about influencing marine policy so that they
take account of legitimate fishing interests, but it is also about
what is the fishing sector doing for the marine environment? It
is about to what extent can they help identify the coral bank
off Rockall, which is now closed. There are various things they
can do. They can contribute. I guess it is the same old point,
that the more they are involved in devising the marine policies,
the more at a local understandable level which they are stewarding,
the more likely they are to contribute to the outcomes.
Mr Noon: The Scottish Government's approach
is that we have set ourselves a national purpose, which is to
increase sustainable economic growth. We have five strategic objectives
which take into account environmental and economic factors and
we have a series of outcomes and indicators, and so in terms of
the balance between a thriving fishing industry and thriving bird
stocks they are part of the creation of a sustainable successful
Scotland. It is about awareness in the Government's mind. We are
trying to adopt a holistic approach, and I think what is important
in the context of where we are policy-wise is that one of the
big discussions at the moment is over marine legislation. There
is marine legislation about to go through Westminster and about
to come through in the Scottish Parliament as well. One of the
things we think is important in terms of fisheries is being able
to have co-ordination here in Scotland over the range of policy
inputs in Scottish waters. We are very ambitious for offshore
energy developments. There are planning issues, there are energy
consent issues, there are conservation issues, there are fisheries
issues, and the majority in the Scottish Parliament would agree
that it is better to have these decisions within the responsibility
of the Scottish Parliament rather than having some taken by the
UK Government and some taken by the Scottish Government because
that is when you risk clashing policies or policies that do not
quite meld with each other. We just think in terms of the policy
environment the more responsibility that Scotland has the more
likely it is to co-ordinate it.
Mr McCarthy: Just to round off on this point,
I can think of measures we have introduced in Shetland and on
the west coast, and indeed in the North Sea. I would avoid saying
that one species is more important than another, but in order
to go and prevent competition between seabirds and fishermen for
sand eels at times when seabirds need them for feeding their young
chicks.
Q487 Chairman: I think that is it.
Can I thank you very much for coming and talking to us. Can I
just check one thing with you, going back to the first discussion
we had, and I do not want to re-open it? I just want to make sure
that we understand the procedural framework. You have mentioned
the expiry of the Common Fisheries Policy. My memory, and it may
be at fault here, is that that is renewed through regulation and
that it is on qualified majority, co-decision. Is that your understanding?
Mr Strang: That is my understanding of it too.
The co-decision is an interesting point, incidentally, in that
everything we do from January is likely to be co-decision.
Q488 Chairman: So the idea of using
the need for renewal and trying to operate a veto in that context
is not possible?
Mr Noon: That was not the context we were talking
about, a veto. The context was the political reality of Member
States having the ability to try to forward their specific national
interests and the various mechanisms within the European Union
which allow that to happen.
Q489 Chairman: There are various
mechanisms that prevent you from doing it as well. Okay. Thank
you all very much indeed.
Mr Strang: I understand you are reporting quite
soon. Richard Lochhead has asked me to say that if, when he is
back in the office, he is down in London some time and he can
help he would be very happy to do so.
Chairman: And, as I said at the beginning, please
convey to him our congratulations and best wishes.
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