Meeting of the Parliament 07 December 2017
As is the Holyrood tradition, I, too, wish the cabinet secretary good luck in the forthcoming December talks. It is always the culmination of a long and very involved stakeholder process across Europe, and having spent a brief spell as a member of the North Western Waters Advisory Council, I recognise the toil involved in spending many months poring over stock assessments in windowless meeting rooms in Brussels. Of course, we do not know what the arrangements in bilateral and multilateral agreements will be post-2019, and nor do we know what common UK frameworks will emerge from the UK fisheries bill. However, whatever machinery of negotiation we end up with, the hard-won principles around sustainability must endure post-Brexit.
It is absolutely clear that nature demands that we do not fish beyond the capacity of a species to reproduce itself, which is why the principle of maximum sustainable yield needs to be embedded. Alongside that, the key European principle of the precautionary approach must be retained, and it is essential that we hold back from levels of fishing effort that could tip stocks into serious decline. Stock recovery plans will always cause fishers pain, but preventing collapse through precautionary action is the best up-front course we can take. With regard to this year’s negotiations, will the cabinet secretary be pushing for the science to be followed on all stocks to ensure that we meet our MSY 2020 obligations? If he does not support the advice on some stocks, he needs, in the interests of transparency, to set out in more detail than he has today his reasons for not doing so.
A number of members have reflected on the fact that in the EU we have turned the corner on overfishing. Just a few years ago, nearly three quarters of stocks had been dangerously fished out; the figure today is less than half, but there is still a long way to go. A commitment is needed to ensure that scientific advice and limits are actually reflected in fishing practice on the water. Discarded fish may not contribute to business balance sheets, but they have a big impact on ecology, so a discard ban needs to be enforced. Illicit discarding also undermines the very stock assessments that fishers, conservationists and Governments need confidence in to make the right decisions, leading to a downward spiral of overfishing and further declines in stock health—a point that Rhoda Grant reflected on.
Eliminating discards on the six key whitefish species would clearly add economic benefit, with estimates showing that the additional value of landings in Scotland could bring in an extra £28 million a year by 2020. It is worth investing in developing the selective gear and techniques to avoid non-target species and Scotland has a good track record in leading those conservation approaches over many years, but we should now also be leading the way in monitoring. At present, less than 1 per cent of fishing activity is monitored at sea. That will change, obviously, and Scotland has the opportunity to lead that race to the top in verifying the quality and sustainability of our produce through remote electronic monitoring cameras on our boats.
I note the cabinet secretary’s response to my earlier question. I would like to hear in his closing speech whether he would support remote electronic monitoring on all boats over 10m long, because the data that we can gather through electronic monitoring will not only ensure that we make the best use of limited budgets for compliance, but it will also help to deliver some of the science needed for more accurate stock assessments that benefit everyone, including the industry.
Science also tells us where key habitats and species thrive and how we can save and enhance them through marine protected areas. By enhancing spawning grounds, we protect the parts that lead to greater productivity and resilience overall, which is essential in an age of real and growing threats from climate change. Boldness is needed from the Scottish Government in completing the MPA network set out by Scottish Natural Heritage three years ago.
I turn briefly to the post-Brexit picture—a subject on which we have already heard many contributions in this debate. The fishing lobby in Scotland and the UK want to take back control of the exclusive economic areas of the UK’s seas and unpick fishing rights held by other countries, some of which pre-date our entry to the European Union. The question is at what cost that could be done and whether it would actually result in any more fish being landed. The United Nations laws of the sea require states to allow access to surplus fishing quota based on historical use and it is unlikely that the EU would want to strike a deal with the UK without preserving some access to those historical catches. If the UK ignored that, what would the impact be on trade?
We are in a position in which the vast majority of what is caught in our waters is sold to Europe, as we have heard from many members, while the tastes of our domestic markets rely heavily on the nets of Greenland, Iceland and Norway, so unravelling and separating access to markets and fishing areas would be highly problematic. If the UK decided just to walk away from deals, that could be disastrous, leading parties to ignore the science and go back to the unsustainable levels of catch that we saw during the mackerel wars, alongside all the sanctions and port prohibitions that that brought.
That is why we need a debate on both fisheries and agriculture that focuses on what the public interest actually is and what public goods those sectors can deliver. What replaces the European marine fisheries fund in a post-Brexit UK fisheries policy remains to be seen, but to deliver public goods it must be focused on science and technological innovation to deliver healthy stocks and an industry that serves the needs of communities, rather than a small handful of quota barons.
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