Hansard

It is up to Mr Stevenson how he engages with the industry; I certainly do not have any problems on that front. I regularly speak to Bertie Armstrong, who does an admirable job of representing fishermen across Scotland.

Fisheries management should not be an ideological crusade: it either works or it does not. As other members—including the cabinet secretary—have pointed out, for European policy to stop any fish being thrown over the side of a vessel, it must work in a practical sense. It can work where there is no by-catch—for example, mackerel and herring shoal, so they will be caught without other species—but the basis of Scotland’s North Sea and west coast white-fish fishery is that boats catch many more than one species at one time.

Can an EU-wide discard ban work in a mixed white-fish fishery? That is why my amendment highlights the importance of not only 2016 but the next three years in getting the implementation right. The interpretation of the regulations must be sensitive and appropriate, and it must work. As the cabinet secretary recognised, the industry has highlighted the danger of choke species, but if Government gets that interpretation wrong, ministers will face the unenviable task of having the fleet tied up because of the lack of just one species in a mixed fishery. That is the reality of the discard ban. Beneath the rhetoric and language about how wonderful it all might be is the reality of what such a ban could mean.

At the EU December council, quotas for the stocks affected in 2016—principally haddock and prawns—must be large enough to cope with the discard ban. That is why I use the word “substantially” in my motion, and I cannot see why anyone would be against that. Indeed, the cabinet secretary will, in winding up, probably point—rightly—to the increases that there will be for a number of those species: they are very large indeed, which is helpful. There we are—that is the reality.

The other point that I wish to raise with the cabinet secretary is that Shetland’s fleet—and it will not be alone—will catch only two thirds of this year’s haddock quota. The fleet is worried, as I know Scottish buyers and processors across the country are, by a glut on the market and a collapse in price. That is, as usual, the dichotomy that that market faces.

As Mr McGrigor said, Scotland must not get ahead of itself on implementing the discard ban. No other EU fishing nation will be doing that. Fishermen from the Baltic to the Mediterranean are as worried as our fishermen are about how the ban will work in practice. The cabinet secretary was right to say that a discard ban must be implemented consistently, and with enforcement and compliance, across EU waters.

I bow to Graeme Pearson’s knowledge about enforcement and compliance. However, I hope that he would take the point that we cannot have circumstances in which, while our boats are enforced in a certain way, our fishermen see a Spanish, French or Dutch trawler steaming by without experiencing the same level of enforcement or compliance. The outrage felt by our fishermen about the actions of the Faroese pelagic fleet in Scottish waters or, indeed, about Spanish gill netters and their aggressive behaviour west of Shetland should be warning enough. I have raised the matter of the Spanish gill netters with the cabinet secretary and I am grateful for his responses. Between 2016 and 2019, the discard ban must be fair, seen to be fair and fairly monitored.

As the cabinet secretary said, the omens are reasonable, indeed positive, for Christmas. That is good news for all and I strongly welcome it. Next week’s negotiations in Copenhagen on access to mackerel quota are important to the industry. Ian Gatt from the pelagic industry said today that the industry is looking to demand an urgent rethink of the political deal that allows the Faroes to catch a third of its mackerel quota—40,000 tonnes—in EU waters. I am grateful to the cabinet secretary for recognising that point and being prepared to make that case. He is right that our white-fish industry benefits from some counterbalance to that, but that is a small part of it. There are not many boats from Lerwick steaming up to Faroese waters, yet we see Faroese white-fish and pelagic boats in Scottish waters. I am sure that the cabinet secretary and his officials will seek to achieve that balance.

I have two final points. The first is on investment in fisheries science. I appreciate that the cabinet secretary is strong on the need for stock-deficient species to have the right scientific support. I hope that he wins the internal funding battles on the spending review that are no doubt going on and ensures that fisheries science is maintained.

My final point is that the cabinet secretary must ensure that, in the quota consultation, which is on-going, he makes the right decisions, conscious of the unknown consequences of the discard ban and how important it is for the Scottish white-fish industry to have flexibility, certainty and, crucially, banking confidence in the decisions that it makes over quota swaps, quota leasing and quota purchase. I suggest to the cabinet secretary that he might wish to be pretty cautious of any change in that area that would be damaging to our industry at this time of incredible uncertainty, which has been caused by the introduction of the European discard ban.

Those are important matters. We wish the cabinet secretary well in his deliberations and negotiations, and we all hope that he comes back with a deal that will help the Scottish industry in 2016.

I move amendment S4M-15031.2, to insert at end:

“; believes that the December 2015 EU Fisheries Council must ensure that quota allocations for species covered by the introduction of the discard ban in 2016 must increase substantially; notes the widespread concerns of the Scottish industry and processing sector regarding the difficulties of introducing a discard ban in a mixed whitefish fishery governed by quotas and relative stability; notes the importance of Marine Scotland applying enforcement and compliance regimes that are consistent for all EU vessels in Scottish fishing waters; expects the Scottish Government to avoid the gold-plating of regulations imposed on the Scottish fleet that would create both an uneven playing field and increase financial risk to the Scottish industry, and recognises that data-deficient fish stocks should be the subject of scientific research and not arbitrary quota changes”.