It is another thing, however, to give primacy to one aspect of environmental sustainability over all other objectives; and to prioritise environmental purity in the short as well as the long-term, whatever the cost. Yet, this is the force and intent of an amendment sponsored by the opposition parties in the House of Lords.
Accepting this amendment would carry serious consequences for practical fisheries management. In particular, it would tie ministers’ hands when setting quotas each year. The government would be required to set all quotas at levels which (theoretically) would deliver maximum sustainable yield, in all circumstances. No ifs, or buts. And irrespective of the costs.
The rest of this article explains what this would mean in the real world, but the core message is clear: accepting this amendment would provide a fundamental impediment to practical and effective fisheries management. We do not think that this is what the authors of the amendments intended.
Setting Quotas
Sound, pragmatic, yet principled, fisheries management decisions often require that a particular TAC (total allowable catch) to be set below MSY. This is not, as is sometimes suggested because ministers are cowed by the “powerful fishing lobby” but because it is necessary to secure the best overall fisheries outcomes.
Scientific advice on setting TACs according to MSY is presented annually on the basis of single stocks, not as they relate to one another in mixed fisheries settings. It is the responsibility of fisheries ministers (acting as fisheries managers) to balance out the tensions between different stocks in the advice. Responding to this, even the EU had to develop the concept of MSY Ranges to cope with the real world, where fish swim and are caught together, and stock abundance of individual species vary naturally in response to environmental signals. This kind of flexibility would be proscribed in the UK from 1st January, by prioritising short-term sustainability in all circumstances and under all conditions - if the amendment was accepted. Minaisters would find themselves repeatedly subject to judicial review if they used their judgement that the best outcomes required a trade-off between different objectives listed in the Bill.
Mixed Fisheries
In mixed fisheries, where a range of different species are caught together, the conservation status of the individual stocks often varies. One stock, for environmental or fisheries reasons, might need to be rebuilt, whilst the others are already fished sustainably – at or around maximum sustainable yield. In these circumstances, fisheries managers might consider that a three to five-year rebuilding plan, with supplementary measures to rebuild the weak stock, would be the best way to bring that stock back up to MSY, without causing undue socio-economic harm. This pragmatic, staged, approach would be ruled out if there was a legally enforceable environmental priority.
If we still have a landing obligation along current lines, the situation would be worse. Ministers would be faced with the unpalatable choice of tying up whole fleets, when the quota for that species was exhausted - or breaking the law.
This is not an abstract theoretical argument. We currently have a real-life example in the Celtic Sea where cod, which represents less that 0.1% of the catch, threatens to close down the demersal fisheries in the South West of England, denying the fishing industry access to their main economic quotas for hake and monkfish worth respectively £7million and £19 million in landings and hundreds of jobs in fishing. The scientists confirm that hake and monkfish are harvested sustainably. Nevertheless, the fisheries for these species are jeopardised by the very low TAC set for cod to meet MSY.
Rebuilding the cod stocks in the North Sea, whilst continuing to fish for the abundant haddock and whiting stocks, presents the same challenge. Cod in all of our waters is facing a distributional shift, probably caused by warmer sea temperatures. Cod, already at its southernmost extent in our waters, is moving northwards by 12km per year. This presents a management challenge.
Similarly, whiting in the Irish Sea, which could potentially close down the nephrops (prawn) fishery worth £25 million and on which whole communities depend.
These examples illustrate that sustainable management of mixed fisheries requires necessary trade-offs between the short and long term, between different species caught together, and between the biological and the socio-economic. These necessary compromises would be impeded by giving primacy to environmental over all other criteria. It would remove our ability to apply a careful balanced approach to harvesting which takes care of both fish, and fishers, along with their communities.
Three-Legged Stool
The sustainable use of natural resources is generally understood to require three pillars: environmental, economic and social. Like a three-legged stool, if one of the pillars is missing the policy will fall over. There is abundant experience from the last 40 years which illustrates the truth of this insight. Blunt and unimaginative fisheries management measures have time after time, foundered, or generated unintended consequences. People require livelihoods and economic security as well as long term sustainability. Measures which ignore this will condemn themselves to failure one way or another. The original Fisheries Bill suggested that this important lesson had been learnt. It would be desperate if that lesson was now unlearnt.
Unintended Consequences
We have learnt that top-down, blunt, management measures in fisheries tend to generate unintended consequences, which are often of the unwelcome variety. Displacing fishing activities into adjacent areas, or other fisheries, is one of the most common knock-on effects. Increasing the level of discards and driving discards underground is another. One way of reading the history of the Common Fisheries Policy (and quite a bit of domestic UK fisheries policy) is about constant efforts to mitigate perverse side effects of well-intended legislation.
International Negotiations
In the future, we can expect that bilateral (or trilateral) international negotiations will be the main vehicle for managing shared stocks. However tough these negotiations become, they must be rooted in mutual respect for the rights and sovereignty of all of those involved. It would not be acceptable for one party to enact domestic legislation and then expect international partners to bow to it, whether they agreed with the thrust of the measures or not. That is not how international negotiations work, yet that is what the EU has brought to the table in recent years with its unilateral but mandatory requirement to set TACS at MSY by 2020. During EU/Norway negotiations, independent coastal states like Norway, with much stronger credentials on conservation of fish stocks than the CFP, have made plain their scorn for a crude attempt to shoehorn unrealistic, poorly drafted, EU domestic legislation into international negotiations. If every country insists that its domestic legislation takes priority, international fisheries negotiations would be stuck in a perpetual impasse.
If the UK wishes to avoid putting itself in the same position, this amendment must be allowed to fall.
More Rigid than the CFP
In fact, prioritising the sustainability objective would, if accepted, mean that UK law was more inflexible and less balanced than the CFP. The first objective of the CFP reads:
“The CFP shall ensure that fishing and aquaculture activities are environmentally sustainable in the long-term and are managed in a way that is consistent with the objectives of achieving economic, social and employment benefits, and of contributing to the availability of food supplies.” Article 2.1 of the Common Fisheries Policy Regulation EU 1384/13
At least the authors of the CFP recognised that there are three pillars, not one, to sustainability and these must be balanced carefully.
In-built Accountability
With a balanced portfolio of objectives, the government would remain accountable for its obligation to meet sustainability objectives. The five interrelated sustainability objectives would be given force through the Joint Fisheries Statement and Fisheries Management Plans. These instruments will provide for a more refined interpretation of the management objectives for particular circumstances and include inbuilt prioritisation of particular elements of sustainability, including:
⦁ Provisions to specify policies for restoring or maintaining a stock at sustainable levels (section6(3)(a))
⦁ Improve evidence to assess a stock’s maximum sustainable yield (section 6(3)(b)(ii)).
⦁ The requirement to follow the precautionary approach (in line with the objective) where evidence is not sufficient to assess a stock’s maximum sustainable yield (section 6(4)).
Reporting requirements will ensure that government decisions are scrutinised and that the various objectives relating sustainability are upheld over the long term (section 11).
Commons
The Bill returns to the House of Commons on the 1st September and it is at that stage that these amendments will be considered. The House will have to decide whether it prioritises virtue signalling over truly effective sustainable fisheries management.
Notes
Fisheries Bill objectives
The fisheries objectives are—
1. (a) the sustainability objective,
2. (b) the precautionary objective,
3. (c) the ecosystem objective,
4. (d) the scientific evidence objective,
5. (e) the bycatch objective,
6. (f) the equal access objective,
7. (g) the national benefit objective,
8. (h) the climate change objective.
Amendments introduced in the House of Lords
The “sustainability objective” is that—
1. (a) fish and aquaculture activities do not compromise environmental
sustainability in either the short or the long term;
2. (b) subject to subsection (2)(a), fishing fleets must— 15
(i) be managed to achieve economic, social and employment benefits and contribute to the availability of food supplies, and (ii) have fishing capacity that is economically viable but does not overexploit marine stocks.
The sustainability objective is the prime fisheries objective. 20
The “precautionary objective” is that—
(a) the precautionary approach to fisheries management is applied, and
(b) exploitation of marine stocks restores and maintains populations of harvested species above biomass levels capable of producing maximum sustainable yield.
Full story courtesy of the NNFo website 24TH JULY 2020 IN BREXIT, EUROPE / COMMON FISHERIES POLICY
In related story that appeared in the Northern Scot newspaper it is apprent that feelings are running high with some north of the border:
The Scottish Government claims it is being "frozen out" over talks about the future of the fishing industry and maritime security.
Humza Yousaf, the Justice Secretary, is complaining that the devolved governments have been omitted from the UK Government’s Ministerial EU Exit Operations Committee, where maritime issues are being discussed.
Justice secretary Humza has called for an urgent four nation ministerial meeting on the issue. He said: "While we remain opposed to leaving the EU and believe it is extremely reckless to rule out an extension to the Transition Period, as a responsible government we want to be as fully prepared for Brexit as possible, including working with the other UK Governments."
Scotland’s waters cover 62% of the UK’s domestic exclusive economic zone. Marine and fisheries compliance is a fully devolved issue. As such, Marine Scotland Compliance regularly inspects and patrols Scottish waters to ensure fisheries are sustainable and to provide protection for the marine environment.
Mr Yousaf said: "The Scottish Government has responsibility for many aspects of maritime security, in particular marine and fisheries protection. "Given Scotland represents a large area of UK waters, we have extensive expertise to share.
"We have had a good working relation with the UK Government, but it is deeply concerning that devolved governments have now been frozen out of UK Ministers’ maritime Brexit discussions."
The Department for Transport co-ordinates the UK Government’s work on maritime security. Mr Yousaf says he has written to the UK’s Transport Secretary Grant Shapps calling for an urgent four nation ministerial meeting.
He said: "This is more than just another example of UK Ministers seeking to undermine devolution and respect for devolved competencies. "It compromises our ability to protect Scottish interests and seriously hampers the UK’s Brexit preparations on this critical matter."
By Alistair Whitfield- alistair.whitfield@hnmedia.co.uk
Meanwhile, the Yorkshire Post also carried a story by Emma Hardy (MP for Hull West & Hessle)
THOSE of us who are privileged to live on the Humber understand better than most the importance of fishing – not only to our region, but to our country. Unfortunately, for all their bluster on making fishing a priority after Brexit, the Tories have proved once again that they just don’t get it.
In setting up a new Trade and Agriculture Commission, a body that will bring together farmers, retailers and consumers to advise government on future trade policy, Defra and DIT (Department for International Trade) seem to be on the right lines.
The creation of the Commission seems to recognise the need for close collaboration in policymaking on food production and trade – something any farmer would tell you was common sense – so why have our fishermen been left out?
The new Commission will be an important means of securing opportunities at home and abroad for UK farmers, maintaining environmental and animal welfare standards and looking after the interests of consumers. It is true that fishing represents only a small part of our total economy, but the Government should not undervalue the thousands of jobs fishing creates not just on boats large and small, but in processing, logistics and food service. They are also at risk of ignoring the cultural and historical importance of fishing as part of our maritime heritage and our communities.
The creation of this Commission is to be welcomed and the NFU and its supporters congratulated for their successful campaign.
However, there is concern that the Commission may lack the teeth to affect the Government’s trade policy and that its recommendations will come too late to impact upon the contents of the trade agreements currently being negotiated with the US and others. Labour supported amendments to the Agriculture and Trade Bills to prevent food being imported if produced to lower standards than those that must be met by our own British farmers – an issue highlighted by The Yorkshire Post’s own Editorial last week. But these amendments were voted down by the Government, despite its manifesto pledge not to compromise on standards in future trade deals.
Boris Johnson’s government often seems to be guided more by dogma than it is by common sense, but even by those standards this is a negligent failure to look after the interests of those thousands of fishermen dependent on international trade. While trade and agriculture interests are brought together in the same Commission, the Government seems content that fisheries and trade policies do not mix.
For decades in Britain we have imported most of the fish that we like to eat (largely cod, haddock and salmon) from waters controlled by Norway, Greenland, Iceland and the Faroes, while we have exported most of the fish we catch in our waters, mainly to the EU27. This is all down to national tastes and historical fishing patterns, and it means that for most people in the industry, as well as for retailers and consumers, the number one priority is a healthy cross-border trading environment. Fishing and trade are not only mutually dependent, they are virtually one and the same thing. Like many industries, British fishing has suffered heavily during the pandemic. One of the reasons for this was the virtual collapse of the markets in the EU where we sell our high- quality shellfish and other specialist catches.
While prices for some seafood collapsed by up to 80 per cent, UK consumers did not switch to langoustines and chips, but stuck to their imported favourites. UK fishermen still need an open and frictionless global market to trade in, and open waters to fish in, while processors will need a good supply of fish from UK waters and beyond, as well as an open export market to sell their products into. British retailers and consumers will need a plentiful supply of fresh fish from waters such as those between Greenland and Norway where the fish for our national dish are most abundant. For the sake of the fishermen of Hull, Bridlington and Whitby, and for coastal communities all around the country, the Government must lay ideology aside and recognise that fishing and trade go together in exactly the same way as agriculture and trade.
Fishing is not a second-class industry, and our fishermen deserve a Fisheries and Trade Commission to protect their interests now.
Emma Hardy is Labour MP for Hull West and Hessle.
The new Commission will be an important means of securing opportunities at home and abroad for UK farmers, maintaining environmental and animal welfare standards and looking after the interests of consumers. It is true that fishing represents only a small part of our total economy, but the Government should not undervalue the thousands of jobs fishing creates not just on boats large and small, but in processing, logistics and food service. They are also at risk of ignoring the cultural and historical importance of fishing as part of our maritime heritage and our communities.
The creation of this Commission is to be welcomed and the NFU and its supporters congratulated for their successful campaign.
However, there is concern that the Commission may lack the teeth to affect the Government’s trade policy and that its recommendations will come too late to impact upon the contents of the trade agreements currently being negotiated with the US and others. Labour supported amendments to the Agriculture and Trade Bills to prevent food being imported if produced to lower standards than those that must be met by our own British farmers – an issue highlighted by The Yorkshire Post’s own Editorial last week. But these amendments were voted down by the Government, despite its manifesto pledge not to compromise on standards in future trade deals.
Boris Johnson’s government often seems to be guided more by dogma than it is by common sense, but even by those standards this is a negligent failure to look after the interests of those thousands of fishermen dependent on international trade. While trade and agriculture interests are brought together in the same Commission, the Government seems content that fisheries and trade policies do not mix.
For decades in Britain we have imported most of the fish that we like to eat (largely cod, haddock and salmon) from waters controlled by Norway, Greenland, Iceland and the Faroes, while we have exported most of the fish we catch in our waters, mainly to the EU27. This is all down to national tastes and historical fishing patterns, and it means that for most people in the industry, as well as for retailers and consumers, the number one priority is a healthy cross-border trading environment. Fishing and trade are not only mutually dependent, they are virtually one and the same thing. Like many industries, British fishing has suffered heavily during the pandemic. One of the reasons for this was the virtual collapse of the markets in the EU where we sell our high- quality shellfish and other specialist catches.
While prices for some seafood collapsed by up to 80 per cent, UK consumers did not switch to langoustines and chips, but stuck to their imported favourites. UK fishermen still need an open and frictionless global market to trade in, and open waters to fish in, while processors will need a good supply of fish from UK waters and beyond, as well as an open export market to sell their products into. British retailers and consumers will need a plentiful supply of fresh fish from waters such as those between Greenland and Norway where the fish for our national dish are most abundant. For the sake of the fishermen of Hull, Bridlington and Whitby, and for coastal communities all around the country, the Government must lay ideology aside and recognise that fishing and trade go together in exactly the same way as agriculture and trade.
Fishing is not a second-class industry, and our fishermen deserve a Fisheries and Trade Commission to protect their interests now.
Emma Hardy is Labour MP for Hull West and Hessle.