Examination of Witnesses (Questions 520-527)
Mr Chris White and Mr Malcolm Morrison
1 MAY 2008
Q520 Earl of Arran: Fish and chips
beckon and the final question we have is about employment, but
I think I am right in saying that in the past some of the Member
States did regard the CFP as an employment tool, as a welfare
state almost rather than a business. My feeling is that it is
very much the opposite now. Would I be right or are there still
some aspects where that has to be justified?
Mr White: I want to use this question to draw
two conclusions which we have discussed so far. First, the CFP
began by being seen as a very distant imposition and not as something
which was going to lead to where I think we are today, which is
a much more consensual approach to how fishery is beginning to
be managed. All the indications I have seen over the last six
years have been much more about what you are referring to, about
right sizing businesses, about leading to a positive future for
fishing in the north east of Scotland, which I do not think people
were predicting at the turn of the century looking forward. The
growth of consensus across the industry sectors has been absolutely
consequential on that and to a large degree I think we are moving
in the right direction at the moment through the Regional Advisory
Councils and others. People are not beating a path to my door
in the way that they were in 2002 with a whole host of problems.
The only one I am really picking up at the moment is the fuel
price being an overriding industry concern, and for that read
farmers, read every other business that operates in the north
east of Scotland relative to the peripheral economy. My overriding
conclusion is that it has been used as a way, by hook or by crook,
to get to where we needed to get to. I now think we can be positive
and look forward and I think the industry is starting to feel
that as well.
Q521 Earl of Arran: Did I hear you
aright when you said that very few of the owners would have, for
instance, a three-year business plan?
Mr White: Banff and Buchan College did some
work on our behalf in terms of looking at attitudes to training
and development. They interviewed a whole series of companies
in Peterhead and Fraserburgh. They struggled to get through all
the doors first of all, which was in itself a little concerning,
bearing in mind they were bringing a chequebook with them at the
time. The figure I remember was that only 30% of them had a business
plan which looked more than 12 months ahead. That is maybe symptomatic
of the industry and the turbulence that it was going through.
It is probably more to do with, put very bluntly, some outdated
attitudes towards business management.
Q522 Earl of Arran: Yes, I am sure
that is right.
Mr White: They had been family concerns. If
you do not mind my being colloquial, it has been the back of a
fag packet stuff and that clearly had to change.
Q523 Viscount Brookeborough: On the
whole would you say that you were happy with the CFP and that
with some of reforms it will continue to do as good a job as you
say it has done here?
Mr White: That is a dirty question. The gentleman
on my right will have a much more technical background. In my
view it would be yes, but he may disagree with me.
Mr Morrison: On a personal basis I would disagree
with Chris on this one, that the CFP has started completely in
the wrong direction. In one way that has been beneficial because
it has been so wrong that everybody has struggled to find the
right answer. Where the people that are affected by the decisions
are involved in the decisions to a degree that can only be better
for the industry in the long term.
Q524 Lord Cameron of Dillington:
Looking at some of the figures we have here, I notice that Fraserburgh,
for instance, has had a huge increase in the value of fish landings,
which seems to be largely related to the nephrops catch. Is there
is a big increase in the nephrops catch and is that a concern
to you in terms of over-fishing?
Mr White: I remember a Fraserburgh skipper saying
to me, "They are walking off the beach at the moment, Chris".
There has been specialisation increasing over recent times. More
and more of the pelagic has been based in Peterhead and more and
more of the prawns based in Fraserburgh. Malcolm again will know
the technical background much more than I but certainly there
have been gluts in nephrops in recent times.
Q525 Lord Cameron of Dillington:
Is it a concern that the nephrops catch is getting too big?
Mr Morrison: The scientific evidence says that
the nephrops stock is in good standing and the level of catching
is fine.
Q526 Lord Cameron of Dillington:
We heard a slightly different story from a traditional nephrops
fisherman this morning, but he was probably trying to lobby us.
Mr White: Perhaps he is one of those fishermen
who have not had a good year.
Q527 Baroness Sharp of Guildford:
Can I just raise one other thing which you mentioned? I was quite
interested in the degree to which you saw the RAC as having been
one of the instruments that had turned round feelings in the industry.
For the question that you were asked about the RACs you rather
played them down as being one of the things that was changing
the industry and yet, certainly when we took evidence from them,
we did get this feeling that they had helped to create a sense
amongst players in the industry that they were players and also
to increase trust between different players, particularly getting
people together from different countries and getting the scientists
talking with the fishermen themselves. On the whole your attitude
is positive, not negative, towards them, is it?
Mr Morrison: I have to declare a vested interested
in that I sit in the office that hosts the North Sea Regional
Advisory Council. In Aberdeenshire it has long been the way that
we work that the council works along with the catching side of
the industry, the processing side of the industry, the scientists
and the ancillary trades to try and work together and make a clear
picture, and that has moved on from having the North East Scotland
Fisheries Development Partnership and that moved on to the North
Sea Commission and Aberdeenshire has been very strongly involved
in that. Then there was a fisheries partnership there which brought
scientists and fishermen together from around the North Sea and
then eventually that led on to the North Sea Regional Advisory
Council, I guess. It has always been part of the way we have worked
together and hopefully the Regional Advisory Council will be something
that will be remembered from here.
Chairman: Thank you very much, Malcolm, Chris.
It is a nice context in which to place what we are hearing about
the industry.
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