Examination of Witness (Questions 671-679)
Mr Ian Hudghton MEP (SNP), Ms Elspeth Attwooll MEP
(Lib Dem), Mr Struan Stevenson MEP (Conservative) and Ms Catherine
Stihler
7 MAY 2008
Q671 Chairman: Good afternoon, and
thank you for coming to assist us in our inquiry. Could our MEPs
introduce themselves please for the sake of the record, then I
think the best way of starting is to ask you to say how you would
like the Common Fisheries Policy to progress and what would be
the main elements of any reform.
Ms Stihler: I am Catherine Stihler, one of the
Labour MEPs, and I represent Scotland.
Mr Hudghton: I am Ian Hudghton, one of the SNP
Members of the European Parliament and a long-term member of the
Fisheries Committee.
Mr Stevenson: I am Struan Stevenson, a Conservative
Member of the European Parliament, a member of the Fisheries Committee.
I was Chairman of the Fisheries Committee for two and a half years.
Ms Attwooll: I am Elspeth Attwooll, Liberal
Democrat Member of the European Parliament, a member of the Fisheries
Committee since I was elected in 1999 and currently one of its
Vice Chairs.
Ms Stihler: We were given the list of questions
and I thank you for inviting us to have the opportunity to speak
with you. Just in summary, Elspeth, Struan, Ian and myself worked
hard on the 2002 reform of the Common Fisheries Policy where we
saw the introduction of Regional Advisory Councils, the end to
EU money for subsidising boat-building, which is a great success
for us, and the protection of relative stability which we wanted
to see there and in terms of the preservation of historic fishing
rights. For this next reform, how do we go forward with the review
on the work of the Regional Advisory Councils? We know that Joe
Borg will come forward in the next few weeks with his own analysis
of what is happening with RACs, which is of great interest to
us. Again, the issue of relative stability and historic fishing
rights and the preservation of those for the United Kingdom and
in particular for Scotland are also very important. In the recent
report, which I had to withdraw my name from, we saw the very
real threat that the issue of relative stability was being undermined
and that we needed to do our utmost to protect that very basic
principle of the Common Fisheries Policy, but then on discards,
conservation, and finally again on the retention of relative stability,
those are the ways I see in terms of the health check that is
going to happen on the Common Fisheries Policy in the next few
months. We were told that the next Fisheries Council meeting in
September will include this debate about the health check and
the Common Fisheries Policy, so we wait with interest to see the
results from that, but we are very conscious that the reform in
2012 of the Common Fisheries Policy is only four years away and
we really need to get our act together now to see what we would
like to see come out of that reform.
Mr Hudghton: Thank you for this opportunity.
I think it is fair to say that, in the run-up to the 2002 reform,
in Scotland politically, as well as Scotland in terms of its diverse
range of fisheries business interests, were united in proposing
something that did not happen at the end of the day, and that
was zonal management as opposed to regional advisory input. I
was certainly extremely disappointed that Scotland had put so
much work over a two-year period or more into a well argued case
for a more local element to have real control over the management
of the resource, which is fisheries. Since then we have seen substantial
scrapping of vessels in Scotland and a very substantial reduction
in the number of people involved in the industry, but as a result,
I suppose it could be said, an element of stability for those
who are still active in the fish catching sector. Already, as
Catherine has said, the 2012 review which was part of that 2002
agreement is not just being spoken about but actively considered
in the Commission, in terms of interests in Scotland, the Government
and the industry, and the Commission last July received a report
from a couple of scientists which it had commissioned. It has
not been published although it has been leaked all over the place
and it is pretty damning in its introduction to the conclusions
that have been provided to the Commission as a result of this
request, that it is a "top-down, command and control fisheries
management instrument, its objectives are broad and do not provide
much guidance on how to manage fisheries", and then it goes
on to list a substantial number of areas where the CFP has basically
failed, including the status of stocks. We would not have a crisis
and the need for recovery plans if the CFP had been successful
over its life. We had another exchange of views with Commissioner
Borg on Monday afternoon here in our committee and it was about
the priorities of 2009 and the implications of the Lisbon Treaty,
but amongst all of that he said that he was of the view that a
"root and branch" reform—those were his words—of
the CFP was what he had in mind and he hopes that the present
Commission will make some progress on that before handing over
to the new Commission in 2009. I would agree that we are in need
of a root and branch reform of the CFP, but, of course, there
may be different ideas about the nature of "root and branch".
Mine would be pretty straightforward, namely, that we do indeed
build upon the tentative steps towards stakeholder involvement
through Regional Advisory Councils and I would certainly be looking
for a root and branch reform of the CFP to mean absolute devolution
of management, the return of real management control of the whole
business of fisheries management and conservation to sensible
areas like the North Sea. I was interested to note at the same
committee meeting that we had here on Monday when we had Mr Fotiadis,
the new Director of DG Mare, that he was talking about maritime
policy being devised, constructed and managed in logical maritime
basins. If that is logical and sensible for maritime policy in
general I hope that that kind of thinking finds its way into the
Commission to begin with and indeed into Member States' thinking
in terms of reform of the CFP.
Mr Stevenson: Again, can I echo my thanks to
the House of Lords for inviting us to come and say something about
this. Like Ian, I believe that the CFP has been something of a
disaster for the UK which has seen roughly 60% of our white fish
fleet scrapped and decommissioned over the last five years, and,
of course, with far fewer vessels now chasing white fish there
is a better living to be had; it is inevitable. The fishermen
are doing better. We have seen new white fish boats being built
without any subsidy. One of the things that we have achieved in
the last five years has been doing away with subsidy for new build,
which was ludicrous, while at the same time Member States were
subsidising the decommissioning of vessels, so we were subsidising
vessels being broken up in Britain while the Spanish were subsidising
new vessels being built, all to catch our white fish. We have
done away with that and the Spanish are still nibbling at the
edges trying to reintroduce it by the back door. They are asking
for subsidies for safety measures, for refurbishment, for improving
fuel efficiency, for hygiene and welfare of the crew and all the
rest of it, so we have to beware that we do not allow this subsidy
to creep in by the back door. Our opinion here really has been
that the CFP has been driven, as far as the North Sea is concerned,
by the Cod Recovery Plan. Everything has been focused on cod recovery.
We have seen again and again ICES making their annual recommendation
that the cod fishery should be reduced to zero because the cod
stocks were not recovering but they have then gone on to say that
because it is a mixed fishery we should also reduce the haddock
catch despite the fact that we have seen three really excellent
years of haddock stocks with an abundance of haddock on the grounds.
They have been talking about cutting the nephrops fishery because,
again, the occasional cod gets caught. The cod is hardly even
any longer a targeted species by the fishermen in the North Sea.
It is not an important fishery. Haddock and nephrops are highly
important fisheries and for the fishermen to be told to cut those
species to save cod is not going down terribly well, as you can
imagine. The fishermen also deny that they are entirely responsible,
although they admit that there has been heavy over-exploitation
of cod in years gone by. They say that that is not the only reason
the cod stocks have diminished and that it is necessary for ICES
and the scientists to look at the other reasons. For instance,
we have taken evidence from and visited Plymouth University where
they have studied over 60 years the movement of calanus, the phyto-plankton
on which cod larvae feed, and they have noted that the calanus
has moved several hundred miles north in search of colder waters.
This may be climate change, it may be cyclical. In fact, there
is some evidence that many hundreds of years ago the cod moved
out of the North Sea at that time as well and it could be a cyclical
thing; they could start coming back. The cod, the scientists tell
us, are a very slow evolving creature and continue to spawn in
the same grounds that they have always spawned in and, of course,
the young cod larvae find that there are no phyto-plankton for
them to feed on. The calanus has all moved up to waters around
Iceland and Norway and there is huge mortality as a result amongst
the cod larvae. That is part of the reason that cod stocks have
diminished. In addition, there is the seal problem, the problem
that dare not mention its name. You cannot speak about it. In
all of the studies that you hear from the Commission you never
see a mention of seals but we know for a fact that there are now
about 160,000 grey seals in the North Sea. They eat on average
a couple of tonnes of fish each a year. That is a hell of a lot
of fish. It is a lot more than our fishermen are allowed to catch,
and at least some of that will be cod. We have studies that prove
that. We are not allowed to take account of that in any of the
studies that we do in the Commission and that is ludicrous; that
is political correctness gone mad. We should be allowed to take
into account the deprivation of the cod population, or indeed
fish stocks in general, by seals. After all these years of the
ICES telling us that we should stop catching cod and close the
fishery it was remarkable that this past year we were suddenly
told by ICES, "Actually the cod stocks are recovering and
you can start catching them". Having ignored them for the
last ten years and having been blamed by the WWF and Greenpeace
for ignoring the scientific advice, we now find that the scientific
advice could not have been entirely correct because suddenly the
cod stocks, despite our having ignored their advice, have begun
to recover and they have agreed that there should be a certain
cod TAC set this year. Against all of that background I am not
a fan of the Common Fisheries Policy and I agree with Ian that
what we should see is devolved management down to involving the
Regional Advisory Councils, involving scientists at that level
with the fishermen and getting them working together. When we
come on to discuss discards later we can talk about the more intrusive
management that I think is going to be necessary and which has
been tried and tested elsewhere. Finally, I have to say that when
Mr Fotiadis was telling us about the new set-up for DG Mare, and
Elspeth Attwooll raised this very salient point, he was talking
about six new units and we will see that there will be a directorate
for the Baltic Sea, the North Sea and landlocked Member States
with a Director-General, John Richardson, and that will include
under its jurisdiction Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Latvia,
Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Finland, Sweden and the landlocked
Member States, but the UK will be under Directorate C, which is
the Arctic, Atlantic and Outermost Regions; presumably that is
because of our attitude to the CFP, and that will include Ireland,
Spain, France, Portugal and the UK and that will be under Director-General
Richard Priebe. Separately, in Directorate A under Mr Deben Alfonso,
we see the Common Fisheries Policy and Aquaculture. He will have
jurisdiction over that. It seems to me that this is not a terribly
clever reorganisation of the new DG Mare and that the position
that the UK finds itself in is such that the company we are keeping
there with Spain, France and Portugal may not be to our long term
wellbeing, particularly when the North Sea is in a different directorate.
That does not make sense.
Ms Attwooll: My thanks too for the invitation
to speak to you. Since 2002 we have had limited but nonetheless
very positive steps towards improving the Common Fisheries Policy
in the sense of trying for much longer term planning, more stakeholder
involvement and moves towards, if not decentralised management,
at least greater sensitivity to local conditions and I think this
is reflected in the most recent proposal for cod recovery, which
seems to me to reflect a lot of the concerns that were put forward
by a stakeholder symposium in Edinburgh. I would agree with my
colleagues that we need to move towards a much greater role for
Regional Advisory Councils and towards decentralised management.
I was not, because of problems with flights, at the part of the
meeting where it was suggested that there might be a root and
branch reform of the Common Fisheries Policy There are two comments
that I would like to make, however, in relation to the possibilities
that might involve. For a long time I have had a purely personal
concern about the compatibility of a system which manages fisheries
at one and the same time through quotas and through effort management.
It seemed to me that quotas were initially introduced as a market
mechanism in order to make sure that prices were reasonably sustained
and they have now been converted into a conservation mechanism,
and marrying them with effort management as well I think creates
a large number of complications. As your questions also ask about
rights-based management, I think perhaps I should touch on this
and in particular comment on the nature of the European Parliament
debate on the issue. In my original report I tried to make it
clear that there were various different types of rights-based
management and that in fact individual transferable quotas, which
are basically tradable quotas, should not be confused with rights-based
management. They are simply one form of it. However, it was quite
clear that the impetus to discuss this coming from the Commission
was from the economists in the Commission, and I think various
issues came out in the course of the discussion, which I have
to say in a sense was polarised in the European Parliament, and
because there were differing imperatives somehow in the course
of the amendments we came out with a relatively balanced report
which did admit that there are advantages in having transferable,
indeed tradable, quotas in terms of reduction of capacity, but
these can at the same time bring certain disadvantages as well.
One thing that has become clear in the course of the discussions,
and certainly is clear if you look at the way that what I want
to call tradable quotas were introduced in Iceland, is that unless
you have a limit on the amount that individuals can acquire you
can have a large shrinkage in the number of people engaged in
the fishing industry. You can have effectively perhaps not a monopoly
but a kind of oligopoly and the problem with that is that it can
have adverse effects on fisheries-dependent communities when the
fishing rights pass into a limited number of hands. We do in the
UK at the moment have, as I understand it, a somewhat inchoate
system of individual transferable or tradable quotas and I can
see both the advantages and the disadvantages of those. I think
we have not actually yet paid enough attention to the system operating
in the Shetland Islands, which is community transferable quotas,
and I think this is something that should be investigated more
closely. I do have concerns because I think there is an impetus
from certain quarters of the European Union to move from a system
where some Member States at least allow quotas to be traded between
their own fishers towards a European-wide system of individual
transferable quotas, and I think the effects of that on relative
stability could give very great cause for concern indeed. I think
that is all I want to say on the initial questions.
Q672 Earl of Dundee: On the prospect
of the management of the Common Fisheries Policy, a nice Pavlovian
objective from which none of us would wish to dissent, does the
panel agree that the RACs should graduate from being an advisory
body to a hands-on management one? How much political will within
the EU and Member States is there for that to happen, and, if
it did happen, which particular benefits would then ensue?
Mr Stevenson: There is no political will for
that, except from us perhaps, from our Irish colleagues, maybe
from some of the Scandinavians, but the southern Mediterranean
Member States see great benefits from the way the CFP has been
run. They are inexorably moving towards a rights-based management
system of ITQs which would destroy relative stability and they
see huge advantages for themselves in that, so they are totally
opposed, I would say, to seeing RACs becoming anything other than
advisory at any time and they will vote against it all the time.
You have heard from all of us that we would see great benefits
in devolving management down to that level. Perhaps you could
allow the overall supervision to remain in Brussels under the
Common Fisheries Policy and devolve the actual hands-on management
to that level. Maybe that would be the way of dealing with it
but I do not see the political will for it and if the Lisbon Treaty
is implemented from 1 January next year the Fisheries Committee
will have full co-decision powers, equal powers with the Council,
and I would not hold my breath that you would see a majority on
our committee in favour of it.
Mr Hudghton: I would not necessarily say that
the Regional Advisory Councils as currently constituted would
continue to be management bodies but management in logical zones
by countries which have fishing entitlements in certain fishing
areas like the North Sea. One of the reasons I was less than enthused
about the 2002 reform was that it established Regional Advisory
Councils but it allowed any Member State to volunteer to sit on
any Regional Advisory Council. That has not caused any great difficulty
at the moment because they are only advisory, but I most certainly
would not envisage having devolved management other than to countries
and representatives of countries who have fishing entitlements
in particular areas. The big political problem with that scenario
is that the CFP as reformed in 2002 states that "there shall
be equal access to waters and resources" and there are people
around who are looking forward to the day when that might be translated
into reality. One of the few protections that we still have, or
at least Scotland still has, is relative stability, which was
seen as a temporary variation from this principle of equal access
to waters and resources, and that is, I think, big political difficulty
that surrounds real devolution and real change or "root and
branch" change, as the Commissioner described it. That is
certainly what I would do.
Ms Attwooll: Could I say that I am not quite
as pessimistic as Struan because I have, I think, in recent months,
particularly because of problems with blue fin tuna and also because
of differing fishing interests in the Mediterranean, detected
something of a move towards a more conservation-minded attitude
and a recognition that stakeholders do actually need to talk together
in order to resolve some of the problems. Certainly there has
been pressure from some of my colleagues for a separate Regional
Advisory Council for the outermost regions, so those colleagues
will obviously have come from the more Mediterranean-type countries.
I also detected when we were discussing the funding of Regional
Advisory Councils that there was not perhaps quite so much resistance
on the part of some of our colleagues to this, so I feel there
is a slight softening. I agree that perhaps there is not the same
level of enthusiasm yet in all parts of the European Union for
this method of doing things but, as I said, I am not quite so
pessimistic on this one as perhaps Struan is.
Ms Stihler: As I said previously, we are waiting
to see what the evaluation is of the functions of the RACs and
we should get that in the next few weeks. The Commissioner told
us that when he was in our committee. There is an issue which
has just come to mind, that with the new DG and the new structures
within the new DG we need to look at how RACs are monitored and
supported. I think there are a number of issues that we need to
look into but on the whole I think the RACs have worked well,
certainly the one that we have been involved with, the North Sea
RAC, has worked well, and they have enthusiastic people working
within it who all wanted to contribute, which makes a difference
when people are wanting to work together. I think this evaluation
will be very interesting and I hope that you will get a copy of
it when it is published in the next few weeks.
Q673 Lord Plumb: You have all been
fairly critical to a different level or degree. I assume you still
want a Common Fisheries Policy at the end of the day if it can
be a policy that is more acceptable and you do not want to get
rid of it and you do not necessarily want to go down the regional
route, or you may want to go down the regional route but you want
a common policy at the end of the day. In terms of the Lisbon
Treaty, first we have got the referendum in Ireland and secondly
it is being debated in the House of Lords at the moment, not today
but it was being debated yesterday; we have got six days of debate
on the Lisbon Treaty, one of the proposals is, of course, that
we have a referendum in the United Kingdom. We shall see. Subject
to it going through, it does mean that you will be involved in
a totally different way because of the co-decision procedure.
I am disappointed to hear from one or two today that we have been
taking evidence from that there are those who say that if the
European Parliament is going to be involved that means considerable
delays. That disturbs me a bit because, and I have not told my
colleagues this as yet, I proposed the co-decision procedure in
1988 and I thought it was time that the Parliament grew up and
co-decision has been going for a considerable amount of time.
Therefore, in the say that the Parliament has, which is means
that they do have a say, you have now a better chance, I would
have thought, of reforming the Common Fisheries Policy; in fact,
I know you have, but I do not think it is right to wait for debate.
You say you want to delay until you hear what is going to be said
by the Commission. I think you want to be in there now and say
what should happen. I am sure you have to the Commission in your
own way, but if you are going to be involved then I do hope that
that does not mean a delay, and I would like your views on it,
because it should not if you are all party to it and it could
be surely that the Parliament itself is ahead of the game and
pushing as part of the team rather than hanging about and saying,
"We do not like what we see and therefore we will refuse
to go along with it", on the decision principally.
Ms Stihler: It has not been the Parliament that
been doing it; it is the Council that has been doing it. If you
look at the issue of fishing authorisations and the IUU, the Parliament
has produced the reports, kept to the timetable, produced our
opinions, so in fact it is quite the opposite situation. I thought
you might be interested in that. The reason I was talking about
waiting to hear about the evaluation of RACs is that it is important
before we give RACs more powers to have the evaluation in front
of us so that we know that what has been happening has been effective.
With regard to the Lisbon Treaty, what is coming out is that the
Commissioner said that by the end of the year we would be clear
about how we would work within the competences and all this but
there is still a lack of clarity in the legal advice we get about
the different things that we are going to be involved with. For
example, there is a big controversy about the fishing agreements
because of what is happening in the developing world and some
people say that there is real exploitation of fish and that we
are not getting value for money and that the poorest in the world
are suffering because we are taking their fish, and so we have
the assent procedure now under which we will be able to say yes
or no, as far as I can understand, to these fishing agreements.
On other issues in terms of conservation and how we work with
other committees, one of the debates that is happening is about
what will happen with the new structures, such as DG Mare. Should
we have maritime as well as fisheries? Should that be how we are
structured as a committee? We are also more a neutralised committee
which means that we are not as supported in terms of secretariat
and also we are considered one of the lesser committees in the
Parliament. Many people believe that we should now be considered
a full committee rather than a neutralised committee. These things
have to be agreed upon and so I thought I would just share some
of those issues with you that have been happening in the committee.
Q674 Lord Plumb: Can I just clarify
what I really meant? We cannot wait. We are a committee that has
to come out with a report, hopefully in July, so therefore we
are out in the field to listen and to learn and therefore to try
to represent the views of those who are involved in the business.
We need your views. It is the future we are concerned about, not
the past. We know a lot about the past and some of the difficulties.
Our Chairman was minister at the time so it is a long time ago.
Mr Stevenson: We have not forgotten.
Chairman: It is all my fault!
Q675 Lord Plumb: I just wanted to
say that. That is what we are after. We want to get to grips with
this and we want to be helpful and we want to produce a positive
report, but we do not want to be giving a history lesson. We want
to be saying, "This is where we should be going". I
just wanted you to understand what I was saying.
Mr Stevenson: Can I throw something back then
in response to what you were asking? You were talking about whether
we would favour reform of the CFP in some shape or form. There
is a problem at the Member State level just now and it is a problem
unique to the UK, and that is co-financing. You will know well
how it did not work to our advantage, to our farmers' advantage,
and still does not, and it is exactly the same with fishermen.
We came up against it this week with the issue of the fuel subsidies
that the French and Spanish are giving to their fishermen. If
you fill a 4,500-litre, average-sized trawler tank with subsidised
red diesel it is costing our fishermen £765 more because
of the £230 million subsidy that the French have agreed to
give their fishermen. We asked Commissioner Borg on Monday, and
he said that they are looking at a sectoral restructuring which
will enable this to take place provided it is part of a package
of restructuring, and he said, "It is not up to us in the
Commission to force a Member State to involve itself in that restructuring,
but if they do then there will be money available from Brussels,
from the fisheries fund, but on a co-financed basis". Britain
will never access that money. We came across this at the time
of the decommissioning when major parts of our fleet were being
scrapped, and at that time Fischler was the Commissioner. At our
request he even held a press conference to plead with the British
Government. He said, "The money is here in Brussels. It is
ready. Come and access it to help the socio-economic costs of
your fishing communities who are going to suffer from the scrapping
of these vessels, but you have to co-finance it." It is on
a 50-50 basis. You put one euro on the table, you get one out
of Brussels. With us, because of the rebate, it is 71-29. You
have to put 71p on the table to get 29p out of Brussels because
the rest of the money has already been paid back to the Treasury
by way of the clawback, and they have it in their war chest. I
am not pointing the finger at this Government or the previous
Government. It is any Government in Britain that will not give
this kind of aid to fishermen or farmers. They would rather hold
on to that money and use it for some other purpose, usually as
tax sweeteners before a general election. What a cynical thing
to say! It is a unique British problem and until we start accessing
the funds that are available in Brussels to help our fishing communities
and our fishermen for all sorts of things --- we are talking now,
with the discards issue, about perhaps insisting on CCTV being
fitted on the decks of all fishing boats. They have just implemented
this in Denmark and it is working successfully in Alaska and in
New Zealand and it will eventually come, but again you will see
every Member State co-financing it, Brussels putting a share in
and the Member States putting their share in, and Britain will
say, "It is up to the fishermen. They can pay for it themselves",
and it will cost them thousands. This is deeply unfair and it
puts us at a competitive disadvantage all the time. If you take
any message back, and I am sure my colleagues will agree with
me on this, this is something that we have to overcome. It is
not that the rebate has been a bad thing. It has netted Britain
a lot of money back from Brussels, but we have to overcome this
problem of a level playing field.
Mr Hudghton: On the substantive question, do
I envisage a CFP in some form, not really, not one that could
be compared in any way to what we have had anyway, because when
I say that I favour the devolution of management to countries,
I mean totally and there would be very little that I would envisage
the European Union assisting with in terms of the management,
which is really the nub of the whole series of problems and bad
experiences that we have had. In short, what we need to get to
is somewhere where we have never been with the CFP and that is
to a position where those who have most to gain from conserving
the resource, the fishing communities, have the incentive to conserve
for the long term, knowing that they and their families in the
future will benefit from the sacrifices that will be required
from time to time under management rules, whoever is setting them.
That has not been the position and it is not the position if you
take the current CFP. Literally, the much talked-about scary Spanish
Armada is not that much of a figment of imagination when you look
at that one-liner about "equal access to waters and resources".
We have to get rid of that. We have to get real management returned
to the countries around the North Sea, the countries in other
fishing zones who have fishing entitlement in these areas, so
that they themselves can make the rules and benefit from the results.
Ms Attwooll: Could I just say that I agree with
Ian on that insofar as we are talking about management by the
countries having fishing entitlement in a region. I think it is
difficult to imagine having relative stability and historic fishing
rights and holding those dear and saying that that is consonant
with re-nationalisation because if you look at the pure geography
of the United Kingdom and the waters which we effectively share
with other people and where, if the line were drawn, our fisheries
would then be fishing in other people's waters, I cannot see that
as the way forward, but proper regional management by countries
with the fishing entitlement in clearly defined zones I think
is very much the way forward.
Mr Hudghton: I forgot to mention co-decision.
Generally I have welcomed co-decision to the European Parliament.
It was a great thing to get started and the more areas that we
have it in the better for the whole working of the European Union
in general. Fisheries is the one potential example where I am
less enthusiastic because it brings in MEPs from half a dozen
countries, just as we have ministers from half a dozen countries,
who have no interest directly and therefore their input is tradable,
buyable, and that brings all of that into the European Parliament.
Things may well take longer because in areas where we have co-decision
we take it very seriously and we want to do it properly. In an
area like fisheries, if we, or whoever is representing Scotland
or Britain in the future, actually make some headway in here on
fisheries matters then it is possible that we will find ourselves
at loggerheads with the Council and therefore we may end up with
lots of negotiation, hopefully. That is just the way it works.
Q676 Chairman: The discussion that
we had with the Commissioner was along the lines of him envisaging,
not tomorrow but further down the track, a situation where the
EU would "set the policy parameters", was the phrase
he used, and that turned out to be setting basically stock mortality
rates and then leaving it to some regional management body, undefined
but he did not look totally unfavourably upon the gradual emergence
of the RACs as playing that role, although it was not absolutely
clear, to choose how to get to those policy parameters. Would
that approach appeal to you?
Mr Hudghton: Yes.
Mr Stevenson: Very much.
Ms Attwooll: Yes, definitely.
Q677 Chairman: Is everybody nodding
at that?
Ms Attwooll: Yes.
Mr Hudghton: Yes.
Mr Stevenson: There may be varying degrees of
enthusiasm, but yes.
Ms Stihler: I think most of it we will accept.
One of the things that keeps coming back in terms of the CFP is
the fact that the CFP is part of your membership, part of being
part of the European Union.
Q678 Chairman: Exactly.
Ms Stihler: And much as there are things that
we detest about it, I believe that you reform from within and
that is why I think having Commissioner Borg as the Commissioner
responsible for fisheries has been very helpful.
Mr Hudghton: Yes.
Q679 Viscount Brookeborough: I thought
we almost had a male/female split on support for the CFP but if
everybody thinks that we can reform it perhaps it is okay. I was
interested in what you said about communities and funds for communities.
We have just come back from Peterhead and what definitely surprised
me, who had only read a lot about that side of the fishing community
in the newspapers, was that even after decommissioning and a number
of people had left the industry Peterhead is thriving with an
unemployment rate of only one per cent, and the people who do
remain in fishing are also doing oil rig work, so I am not quite
sure where you needed the money from. Perhaps you would like to
say something about the other fishing communities who may not
be lucky enough to have oil as a fallback position. Secondly,
whatever we end up with in the CFP, it will need policing and
I wondered if you would like to say something about the Community
Fisheries Control Agency and how you might perceive it in the
future giving an overview to the management side of the policing
of it in the future.
Ms Attwooll: We had a report on the developments
in the Community Fisheries Control Agency from the Director this
week. It does look as if the joint deployment plans are moving
forward and there is good co-operation between the Member States
in relation to these. I still have some anxieties as to whether
enough resources are being put into that. One particular concern
I have relates to the fisheries partnership agreements and how
well those are being monitored. That side of things does seem
to be developing slowly, but I think until the Agency has completed
its move to Vigo it will not really get under way. Where I have
a continuing concern, and there seems to be a reluctance on the
part of the Commission to move forward, I think because there
is a reluctance on the part of Member States, is in terms of the
variety of sanctions that there are for serious infringements
of the Common Fisheries Policy. There is divergence between Member
States as to the extent to which they use administrative and penal
sanctions and there is an enormous variety in the kinds of fines
that are imposed. I think if we want our own stakeholders to accept
that there is a level playing field this is something we have
to press towards trying to get a degree of uniformity in. Obviously
you have to have some variety because people can make honest mistakes
as opposed to doing something with deliberate intent. Sometimes
it is the first offence, sometimes it is a repeat offence, so
you have to have some flexibility but we do really need to achieve
a greater degree of equivalence if we are to have effective control.
Mr Stevenson: On the question of where the socio-economic
help is needed, I said earlier on that the north east has come
out of all this really rather healthily and new boats are being
built up there and the white fish sector seems to have recovered
because there are so many fewer fishermen now involved in the
sector. When you look at some of the smaller ports, for instance,
only last week Anstruther said goodbye to its last white fish
boat when the fisherman whose boat it was retired, and yet recently
I was in Asda having a fight with the directors of Asda over their
pricing policy and where they source some of their foodstuffs.
They had Spinks Seafood Cocktail and they had a lovely picture
on the box of Anstruther harbour in Victorian times with happy
fishermen pulling full nets onto their boats in Anstruther harbour.
When you read the small print the seafood cocktail contained squid
from Vietnam and mussels from Chile. There is nothing now of any
significance being landed at Anstruther. Similarly, if you go
round the north west coast, places like Lochinver have suffered
terribly.
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