Meeting of the Parliament 03 December 2015
I will make a little bit of progress, if I may.
We must be clear that the recovery in cod and other fish stocks is down to the sacrifices of Scottish fishermen, who have done more for conservation measures in the past 10 years than any other fishing fleet in Europe.
On a personal note, I have been fisheries spokesman more often than not during four parliamentary sessions, and my recognition and respect for the calibre of Scottish fishermen, who face great dangers in bringing much-needed protein to the tables of our people, has done nothing but increase. I shall miss representing them as much as anything else that I have done.
Although there is some good news, I will run through the many issues and difficulties that our Scottish fishermen currently face.
The phased introduction of the discard ban in the demersal sector from 1 January next year, with the full ban to be in place by 2019, is a truly massive challenge. Last week at a briefing in the Parliament, Mike Park of the Scottish White Fish Producers Association described it as an approaching storm with the potential to go badly wrong, especially at the mid-point in the transition period. Ross Dougal of the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation, whom I saw today at the European and External Affairs Committee, described it as
“a potential economic disaster for the Scottish fleet and subsequently the onshore processing industry.”
The problems of choke species—I am referring to the point at which an individual vessel runs out of its lowest quota in the mix and has to stop fishing altogether—and how the landing obligation will cope with species with a zero total allowable catch are still to be addressed. All industry stakeholders agree that a quota uplift is crucial to allowing demersal fishermen to manage the move towards a discard ban. However, that in itself will simply not be enough. The Scottish Government needs to give the industry more support to fulfil the landing obligation, especially in small ports that have no nearby processing facilities.
My colleague Ian Duncan MEP has been at the forefront in arguing that case. He makes the point that, even at this late stage, funding should be made available, especially to smaller and remoter ports such as Mallaig, to help them to adapt to what will be a transformation in the way that demersal fishermen go about their business and the additional burdens of disposing of fish once it is shore side, which will include the storage and transportation of fish that cannot be sold. I think that there is £107 million in the European maritime and fisheries fund; perhaps some of it could be used for that.
I call on the Scottish Government to do everything in its power to ensure that there is a level playing field across all demersal fleets that fish in EU waters as regards compliance and monitoring, and I am pleased that WWF Scotland makes that point in its briefing for today’s debate. It would be unacceptable if our demersal fishermen were subject to extra monitoring controls while other fleets were not. Our fishermen must not be put at a competitive disadvantage.
In the pelagic sector—that is, the sector in which herring and mackerel are caught—I support Scotland’s mackerel fishermen and processors, who want a reduction in the current access arrangements for Faroese fishermen who catch mackerel in Scottish waters. In a recent report, Seafish found that the current arrangements are heavily skewed in favour of the Faroese, and Scottish pelagic fishermen and processors rightly want a more equitable agreement to be reached between the EU and the Faroes. Our processing sector is under real pressure, because the current arrangement allows the Faroese to catch more than £40 million-worth of very high-quality mackerel in Scottish waters. That mackerel is being sold into the same market as the mackerel from our own processors.