That this House takes note of the Report from the European Union Committee Fisheries: implementation and enforcement of the EU landing obligation (26th Report, Session 2017–19, HL Paper 276).
My Lords, perhaps I may say to those Members who are about to leave the Chamber that fisheries is going to be a big issue over the next 11 months, so do not miss this chance to educate yourselves.
I will speak to both of our reports, but before I start I want to make clear that, although parts of the committee’s report may be critical not just of the industry but of the sector, we should recognise that fisheries is one of the toughest and most dangerous professions, so we should have this debate in that context. I also welcome the Minister, in his continued role, in this House, and I welcome the fact that he will be replying to the debate on behalf of the Government. I look forward to his speech.
I shall go through one or two facts about the landing obligation or, as we know it in common parlance, the discarding ban, although the fishing industry itself would argue that the two things are rather different. However, most people can think of it as being pretty much the same thing.
In 2013, when legislation in the European Union on the landing obligation came into force, the estimated amount of discarding by European fleets was running at 1.7 million tonnes of fish in that year. That is not just a biodiversity challenge; it is obviously an obscenity in terms of food waste. Of course, for some people who do not know much about this subject—and why should they?—returning fish to the ocean because the vessels do not have a quota for them might sound quite benevolent, but in fact the vast majority of those fish are unable to survive.
Why are these reports, the first of which was published in the middle of last year, still important? It is because this is a challenge for the European Union fleet as a whole and will continue to be relevant once we become an independent coastal state. No doubt one of the questions that will be asked is whether it is still the Government’s policy to have a landing obligation once we have “control of our own waters”. Confirmation of that would be useful, although I know that the Government have been quite strongly supportive of the landing obligation since it was introduced.
I shall give a timeline on how the legislation has been working. It was passed in 2013, much of it as a result of pressure generated in the United Kingdom by celebrity chefs and British NGOs. It was implemented over a four-year period, meaning that it was gradually introduced. It was a major culture change for the fishing industry, so it was sensible to introduce it gradually to cover different classes of fish and stocks over the period. It was finally implemented in total on 1 January 2019, after that long period of preparation— six years overall—since the legislation was agreed.
For our second report, the committee wanted to understand how the discarding ban or landing obligation had fared. The answer was not something good or anything that could be welcomed. What became quite clear from the stories we heard in the evidence, some of which I will go through, is that in reality, if I can be harsh enough to put it this way, the fishing industry itself has carried on as it was, the regulators have been gentle in terms of trying to enforce the discard ban but have not had the tools to be able to do so, and member states have effectively turned a blind eye to what has been happening. We still have that great challenge there.
My Lords, it is a great privilege to sit on the committee and to follow the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. As a member of the committee which produced the two reports, I express my admiration for the patience and stoicism of our chairman, who has waited patiently for the opportunity to bring them before your Lordships.
We can also thank the staff of the committee, who amassed evidence from far and near for our consideration. It has been quite a revelation to hear from scientists and fishermen’s representatives of all sorts about how they view the regulations they currently have to deal with. As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, pointed out, we are considering such a swiftly moving topic, and even more time has now elapsed since our last report, so it is equally as dated as our first one was. Perhaps the current developments that my noble friend the Minister, who we welcome to the Dispatch Box, can give us will serve as an update as to where the industry sees the progress.
Perhaps it is going back a little far, but I want to look at how the situation developed. By including our fishing waters as a way to secure our entry into the Common Market, we opened up a rich vein of opportunity for fishermen from all around Europe, but there was no desire to oversee or conserve the fish stocks. Gradually, elements of the stock were eroded to a point where recovery was in question. In those early days, it was almost inconceivable that rational controls could be imposed. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, pointed out what we in Scotland call the thrawn nature of fishermen; they were most unlikely to accept any kind of imposed direction. Who knew where the fish, the boats or the stocks were, or what chance the fishermen actually had of catching them?
In the intervening years, great effort and quantities of new technology have begun to offer the answers to some of these questions, but this has progressed to the present crisis. I think we are all familiar with the fact that, when Brussels sees a problem with a production system, the time-honoured policy is to impose standards and rules and to introduce quotas. It then comes down to enforcement of the rules if they are not adhered to, and the enforcement is ultimately pretty draconian. A number of your Lordships are, like me, familiar with the scene in my own industry of agriculture, where all support and finance can be withdrawn for relatively small infringements.
My Lords, I too welcome the Minister to his new role, and very much look forward to working with him. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and the committee on two thorough reports.
I find myself terribly torn by the most recent government response, which, to summarise, said, “We’re making piecemeal progress, but it’s all rather difficult because of Europe.” The result was a bit of gloom, but of course, in these troubled times of leaving the EU, one must constantly search for rays of hope and small signs of some benefit from Brexit, and fisheries by-catch must be an area where we can now do something ourselves to revolutionise our poor performance on the landing obligations. Time is pressing for a radical improvement in performance. We can do something once we are out of Europe, and we must, because UK waters are among the most heavily exploited in the world, and shortly we will have full accountability for managing our fisheries sustainably. If we continue to overfish our waters, it is bad not only for the marine environment but for the future of the fishing industry and for coastal communities.
I will give two examples. In the UK, 59% of stocks were fished at or below sustainable levels in 2019, down from 69% in 2018. We are heading in the wrong direction. Secondly, and worryingly, UK cod stocks have declined to critical levels due to overfishing. Cod has lost its MSC certification and, with that, potentially valuable market access. This is not good.
As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, outlined, the landing obligation was agreed in 2013 and implemented in stages from 2015, but the committee’s report demonstrates that despite that long lead-in time we have not made much progress. It is estimated that less than 1% of what fishermen catch is currently monitored or verified, and it is likely that there is a widespread lack of compliance for the landing obligation. The UK Government and the devolved Administrations still do not have mechanisms in place to monitor compliance, and the lack of historic data on catches means that there is no real way of knowing the extent of illegal discarding. The result of oversetting quotas and failing to monitor discard is simple: overfishing.
12:32 pm
Baroness Byford (Con)
My Lords, I thank and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, his committee and members and staff who researched and produced these two reports. I was not a member of that committee but have, over many years, raised the challenges of discarding fish. I recognise that the industry has made progress, slow though that is, in reducing the unwanted catch and that this is a complex issue that no single approach can successfully resolve, as has been indicated. But the situation is still dire, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said. Earlier this year, only 85 tonnes was landed whereas the figure for the year before was four times that. We clearly cannot go on with that situation.
Before going into further detail on the report, I take this opportunity to welcome my noble friend Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park to the House; I look forward to his maiden speech when he winds up at the end of this debate. He has been a long-standing champion of the environment, seeking ways to improve it and addressing wildlife, biodiversity and climate change.
The marine environment is increasingly being affected by climate change, pollution, ocean acidification and warming seas. However, today we focus our thoughts on the long-term sustainability of fishing stocks. In reflecting on the Government’s response to the second report, I have some questions for the Minister, particularly on the landing obligation.
The report highlights the significant challenge facing the fishing industry, but comments that the new rules seem to have had little impact since they came into force six months earlier. In their response, the Government commit to working more closely with key stakeholders, which is to be encouraged. What tonnage of undersized fish has been landed in each of the past five years respectively? As has already been indicated, if that tonnage has not increased, one must pose the question; is that due to discards being dumped in the sea? Catch data is obviously needed and if it is not available or not working, what are the Government’s plans to resolve this matter?
The report stresses the importance of having mechanisms in place to monitor and enforce compliance. One of the ways suggested in the report is the use of remote electronic monitoring. I understand that EU member states did not agree to such a proposal. In their response to the several suggestions on compliance and enforcement in the report, the Government state:
“When the UK leaves the EU it will be in the position of being able to place requirements on foreign vessels who wish to fish in our waters as a condition of access”.
My Lords, I too welcome the Minister to the Dispatch Box and look forward to working with him.
As others have said, when we in our committee did our original report on the landing obligation at the end of 2018, it was obvious to us that no one was prepared for the dramatic change that was to be introduced to the common fisheries policy. The Government had not really addressed all the practical actions necessary to make it work; there was no data on the current level of discards; there was no data on the take-up of more selective fishing gear; there had been very little education of fishermen, particularly those of the inshore fleet with smaller boats; and there was no real preparedness for how such a new total ban would operate and be policed. Furthermore, the MMO was underresourced and underprepared for its inevitable policing and enforcement duties. The port authorities also had made minimal plans to deal with any increase in the landing of illegal fish.
Meanwhile, the fishermen, both large and small, were in a state of panic. They knew that, if properly enforced, the landing obligation and the associated problems of choke species would close them down and possibly bankrupt them—some said by March and others said, at best, by June 2019.
However, of course, as we all now know, the total ban on discards came into force on 1 January 2019 with more of a whimper than a bang. I have to admit that that was probably the best thing that could have happened in the short term for the survival of our crucially important fishing industry. It was not ready. No one was ready. But now we really have to move on as soon as practically possible to full and proper implementation if we are to ensure the long-term survival of this same crucially important fishing industry.
In their reply to our report, the Government state that the early part of 2019 was taken up with training and informing the various parts of the industry regarding their obligations under the landing obligation and how to best implement them. The Government state:
Does the noble Viscount agree that we have insufficient ships within our fishery protection squadron to carry out enforcement at the level he is talking about?
First, I am not a Viscount—I should perhaps correct that. However, the answer is at the moment, yes, but I am assured that we are building up to it.
The Government have been slow to grasp the nettle but are moving in the right direction. That is a good thing. In the meantime, bearing in mind that fish are an international commodity, it is important that we try to persuade our neighbours also to pursue and enforce a ban on discards. There is no doubt that the reluctance to enforce the landing obligation is not only a British phenomenon; it seems to be the norm across all EU fishing states. We heard from a Dutch fishing representative, who was adamant that the whole idea was ridiculous, and there was no doubt from our conversation with the fisheries Commissioner that even DG FISH was taking a very softly, softly approach.
However, Brexit gives us an opportunity to lead by example. In spite of the dog’s dinner that will be the fisheries negotiations, I believe that we should end up with at least some extra quota. Thus, it should be possible for us to devise a system of a government-owned reserve of quota, especially in the choke species, while also granting some additional quota to the under-10 and under-15 fleet in order to relieve some of the existing social and economic tensions.
We must then be rigorous in our enforcement of the landing obligation, not only within our own fleet but in relation to EU and other visiting vessels in our waters. To my mind, and clearly to others in the debate so far, that means having compulsory remote electronic monitoring—REM—on every boat. In the argy-bargy of the fisheries negotiations, we should insist on cameras on every boat fishing in our waters. I realise that we will encounter strong opposition, particularly among the French and Spanish, to our desire to enforce the landing obligation. However, the landing obligation is the law, and both the French and the Spanish signed up to it, so there can be no legitimate excuse for them to object to it, or to its enforcement.
The global depletion of the fish stocks is a prime example of the environmental depredations that have been occurring throughout the 20th century and of which we are becoming increasingly conscious. Fish stock depletion is an example of the phenomenon that has come to be known as the tragedy of the commons. This refers to a circumstance where the self-interested pursuit of individual advantages leads to an outcome that is to the detriment of everyone.
The tragedy of the depletion of fish stocks has been rendered all the more intractable by the invisibility of the marine environment. Nevertheless, awareness of the hazard is not new. The threat to the northern fish stocks became apparent in the 1880s with the advent of steam-powered trawlers. In comparison with their sail-driven predecessors, they were able to travel further, to be at sea for longer and to use larger gear that could reach deeper.
Already by 1885, trawling had become controversial. A government inquiry of that year was charged with examining claims that fish stocks were being reduced and marine environments damaged. However, given the abundant and increasing quantities of fish being landed, the claim must have seemed to many implausible. Here, we have an early instance of an illusion regarding the abundance of fish that has beset the fishing industry for many years. The size of the fish harvest has been maintained in the face of declining fish stocks by deploying ever-improving fishing technologies. Eventually, and inevitably, one will be faced with the reality that most of the fish are gone and the harvests have been severely reduced, if not extinguished. This is the current reality throughout the world.
It has been estimated that the biomass of the fish stocks of the North Atlantic is today only 10% of its pre-industrial levels. This inference is based on the size of the harvest relative to the efforts devoted to catching it. This might be startling until it is recalled that, by 1990, the once-abundant stock of Newfoundland cod had been eliminated through fishing.
12:54 pm
20 of 32 shown
What is the evidence for that? First, we should have had a lot more undersized fish landed. Half way through 2019, the total tonnage of undersized fish landed in the UK was 85 tonnes. Noble Lords might think that sounds small, but, interestingly, even more was landed—almost four times as much—the year before, so that had actually gone down.
Secondly, there were very few facilities in the ports in reality. One of the big issues is around choke, which is when a vessel in a mixed fishery—very relevant to United Kingdom fisheries—runs out of quota for a species and therefore has to stop fishing altogether. That is one of the problems of the landing obligation, which no doubt many speakers will talk about. But, to the end of 2019, I do not think there was any sign at all of any choke arising and fleets having to stop fishing because of that.
Thirdly, another area that should be an indicator of problems, with the landing obligation coming into operation and fear of the choke, is that quota swaps would stop happening, because fish quota owners would not wish to lose the opportunity to carry on fishing. Yet the information from Defra is very much that the level of swaps continued.
It is not only the fact that this is not happening out there on the high seas; there are also particular dangers. First, a disregard of legislation and the law is clearly not a good thing generally and is a bad culture in any industry. Secondly, quotas were increased to take account of the fact that fish would be landed rather than thrown away. Those quotas have gone up, but the way in which people have acted has not changed, so we have the real issue of greater overfishing.
What are the challenges here? First, there is enforcement; this is always difficult on the high seas and in territorial waters. Fishing is a secretive industry in many ways; people do not want to say where those resources are. There is culture; this is a major change in the way the fishing industry works, and all industries find it difficult to change quickly. Also, there are not the tools to do the job. The stark fact is that it has been proven in other areas—New Zealand, British Columbia, parts of the United States and other parts of the world—that you need remote electronic monitoring, effectively closed circuit TV, to be able to do this. The technology has been tested, works and is getting much less expensive. The other area of challenges is exemptions. If you have too many exemptions, the whole system starts to fail—and those have been increased recently. I suppose there is also the experience of two other nations, Iceland and Norway. It is said that it took some 20 years for Iceland in particular to adjust to its landing obligations. No one is saying that this is easy.
This is relevant because these whole issues will remain post Brexit, when we have control over our independent waters. My questions to the Government that arise from this report are: will it remain government policy to keep the landing obligation? I looked through the Conservative manifesto, which says a number of good things about fisheries, but I did not see a specific commitment to this. If you really want to stop discarding, you need remote electronic monitoring technology. Will the Government bite the bullet, however difficult that is, and eventually—hopefully in the medium term—introduce this technology? If so, will they also then insist that non-UK vessels coming into UK waters also have that technology? Also, when will the fisheries Bill—which I understand might be introduced to this House—actually arrive, so that we can see and start to really look at legislation on these issues?
What is quite clear is that the discard ban is the right policy. Discarding however many million tonnes of food is clearly wrong commercially, ecologically and morally, so I support the Government entirely in what I hope is their intention to keep this policy. But we have to make sure that we have a way to implement it. I beg to move.
Fishing has, for some time, seen quotas and they have been complied with, but the practical way compliance was achieved was by discards of overquota landings or unwanted species. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, has just quantified what that amounted to. This is a totally destructive way to look after a finite resource. The immediate remedy appears to be to ban discards. In our reports, we worked out how this would work in practice and suggested ways that the Government could most efficiently implement this ban. It appeared that the Government were quite ready to ignore our recommendations. I think I can say that most of us on the committee were dismayed to find that, within the UK and more widely in other European countries, the letter of the regulation was not being enforced.
The difficulty for the fishing industry that is now apparent is that, with a large proportion of fishermen being involved in mixed fisheries, if one species has a restricted or no quota and you are likely to catch them, the result of compliance will mean the closing down of the enterprise. What could be more draconian than that? As we now pass the first anniversary of the policy, it is a good moment to assess what has worked out.
It appears that the fishing industry in general is profoundly dissatisfied with the discard regulation. Scotland administers the largest part of the UK’s marine economic zone, and I have taken an interest in it for a great many years. I took the opportunity to find out what the experience of the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation has been. The good news is that the fishery managed to complete the year within quota, and with no fishermen suffering through having to abandon their activity because of choke—which was explained by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. At the same time, the fishermen can see that, next year, with their cod quota being halved, there will be serious problems for the industry within a few months.
The federation asked me to look at a paper put out by the Shetland Fishermen’s Association last April. It sees the approach of the present regulation as being based on the idea that fishermen can easily choose which fish to catch and which not to. In a mixed fishery, this is an impossibility. The association shows considerable approval for the way discarding is managed in Norwegian fisheries, where they suddenly voiced a policy of no discards but with a regime of exceptions which reduces this to the absolute minimum. One outstanding aspect, in its idea, is that there should be rules on discards but a requirement to record all discards, so that these can be taken into account when assessing the overall health of the stock. The association goes as far as to suggest that there is a role for having observers on boats, who can report on the circumstances surrounding discards. But it certainly thinks that all discards should be recorded. In general terms this appears to be favoured by the Scottish federation, but certainly the fishing industry is looking for a new approach. Can the Minister and his officials look into this?
The pressures both from our own fishing industry and from others in the future from the new fisheries management arrangements post Brexit could make this very much worse. The fisheries Bill has an opportunity to define our post-common fisheries policy approach to fisheries management. Will the Minister now indicate how our approach to the landing obligation, or at least a UK equivalent, will meet the Government’s promise of a gold standard for sustainable fisheries in the future? In its previous form, the fisheries Bill fell far short of that gold standard. Will the Government include in the Bill binding legal commitments not to fish above scientifically recommended sustainable levels, as is currently the case with the common fisheries policy? Will the Bill require CCTV cameras on all vessels fishing in UK waters to record what is being caught in our waters, improve data and ensure full and verifiable documentation of catches, as well as robust monitoring and enforcement?
Effective monitoring of discards is essential for a number of reasons: to determine whether discards are still occurring and ensure that future catch limits are effective. Catch limits may assume negligible discards and by-catch, but that cannot in reality be guaranteed because discards are not adequately monitored or enforced, so those catch limits could be wildly adrift.
It is widely acknowledged that remote electronic monitoring—REM—with cameras is the only effective tool to ensure control and enforcement of the landing obligations at sea and to deter illegal discarding. I support the Select Committee’s view that the Government should commit to introducing REM. No doubt the Minister will say that they are considering it or that it will be expensive. The Government’s response listed lots of things that they are doing, including a doubling of some inspections—although not inspections at sea, only on land. Will the Minister tell the House the additional costs of these piecemeal measures that are not working and how they could compare with the costs of implementing effective REM that would work? If the analysis of the costs and benefits of the REM system is still under way, as the most recent government response implied, will the Minister tell the House the timetable for this analysis coming to fruition?
There is no time for delay. We are on the brink of having sole responsibility—if that is not a pun in a fisheries debate—for our own sustainable fisheries management. That cannot be achieved without effective monitoring and management of discards, and REM is the answer.
I welcome that statement and hope that remote electronic monitoring will be at the heart of the other proposals already indicated in the government response. The White Paper made it clear that we will seek to deliver on our sustainability objectives by attaching conditions, which could include the use of REM for some sectors.
The National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations suggests in its briefing that REM is not a panacea and that, particularly in mixed fisheries, wider thinking is needed. One suggestion is to authorise the landing amounts of unavoidable catch. For example, when a quota is exhausted and a choke situation arises, the fish could be sold for human consumption, but vessels would not receive the full value of the catch. I understand that that is not possible under current CFP proposals. Will the Minister comment on that?
I am well aware of the importance of the fishing industry to this country and especially to local communities whose living is dependent on the long-term sustainability of fish stocks. I welcome the improvement to fishing gear selectivity, which should reduce species being caught unintentionally. I also welcome the more detailed inspections of catches at sea. In response to the report, the Government made several suggestions, including recording the last-hauled catch to assess the catch profile, as opposed to simply looking at what has been retained on board; ensuring that legitimate discards are recorded; ensuring that juvenile fish are recorded and counted against quota; ensuring that all catches are correctly recorded after landing and that juvenile fish do not go direct to human consumption; using data resources such as scientific data to evaluate levels of compliance; and, most importantly, working with producer organisations to ensure that quota is assessed by fleets facing chokes. My earlier point about juvenile fish being sold for human consumption might give the Government an alternative suggestion. The government response list had more proposals, but I will not go into them.
Improving the health of our species is vital to long-term sustainability in these waters, which we will be responsible for very shortly. There is much work to be done and in this new decade we must use all the tools we have to achieve a successful outcome. It is a hugely important issue: this is about not just fish being caught but the long-term environmental sustainability of our seas and oceans.
“Following this initial period of education, the MMO is now moving towards a more enforcement-centred approach ... We are stepping up enforcement ... to include more detailed inspection of catches at sea in high-risk fisheries.”
There is thus in those remarks a tacit admission that the Government were slow to grasp the nettle in 2018—
It was interesting that during our earlier inquiry, we heard the view that applying universal REM among a whole fleet—for example, in Iceland and Canada—could be a boon to fishermen where choke species were a problem. Because all boats would have instantaneous knowledge of who was catching what and where, they could more easily avoid catching unwanted species. However, I suspect that not telling your fellow fishermen where you go to find your catch is so ingrained in the competitive nature of boat captains that they would probably still prefer to do without this particular aid to avoiding choke species. However, I regret to have to tell them that, if they want international equity in the catching of fish, they will have to accept REM as part of that agenda.
The second aspect of our post-Brexit fisheries that I would like to see is a commitment by the buyers, both processors and supermarkets, to ensuring that all their suppliers always—and I mean always—fish according to the highest principles of sustainability. They ought to insist on REM on all their boats. As I see it, only when their marketplace is threatened will the fishing industry as a whole conform.
I am glad that we have produced this follow-up report after our earlier intervention, because there is always a tendency for everyone to focus on an issue for a moment, but then real life reasserts itself and we carry on as usual. Even some of the NGOs, having been very fired up about discards a few years ago, seem to have let this issue slip off their radar, possibly because they thought it was fixed. I believe that for the long-term future of our fishing industry and, more importantly to my mind, the communities it supports, we must not let go of this issue.
The landing of fish by the British home fleet provides only a dim indication of the state of the fish stocks, but they are of some interest in their own right. In 1910, they weighed over 1 million tonnes and followed a downward trend to reach 400,000 tonnes by 2010. During both world wars, fishing was severely curtailed. That allowed the stocks partially to recover but thereafter the downward trend resumed.
The depletion of the fish stocks occasioned the so-called cod wars between Britain and Iceland, during which Iceland sought to preserve its local resources while Britain continued to demand access to them. The cod wars concluded in 1976 with a victory for Iceland. The United Kingdom agreed to a 200-mile exclusion zone around Iceland. Not long after, in 1982, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea established exclusive economic zones in which nations have sole rights to the economic exploitation of marine territories that lie within 200 miles of their shores. If the seas do not extend far enough, the zones are bounded by median lines between adjacent territories.
Britain’s fishermen were highly aggrieved by their exclusion from Icelandic waters. That sense of grievance has continued to this day, albeit aggravated by other causes. It has made them willing, if not eager, to flout the rules and regulations that seek to constrain their activities and ensure the sustainability of fishing. When Britain joined the European Union in 1973, there was little thought of her asserting exclusive fishing rights. Britain could not reasonably exclude other European nations from the waters in which they had traditionally fished.
All maritime members of the Union were given access to the common seas, via the common fisheries policy. Each member was given quotas that defined the amount of fish of each species that they were allowed to catch. The allowances are supposed to be set according to the advice of marine scientists regarding sustainable levels of harvesting. In practice, they have been subject to intense bargaining among the member states and they have invariably exceeded the advised levels.
The quotas defined only the quantity of fish that could be landed legally. The intention of ensuring the sustainability of fishing has been vitiated by the resort of fishermen to the practice of discarding, whereby they throw back to sea any fish in excess of their specific quotas while they attempt to fulfil the remaining quotas. There is also the common practice of upgrading, whereby any fish that are undersized and might otherwise count towards the quotas are discarded.
In 2013, the European Union Commission enacted a ban on discarding fish. The intention was that the ban should be introduced gradually, to become fully applicable to all fish subject to quotas by 2019. The two recent reports of the House of Lords EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee have testified that the discard ban has been widely ignored by British fishermen. Moreover, our Government have not been effective in enforcing the ban. Their defence has been that they cannot be expected actively to implement the ban until other European fishing nations do likewise. This will no longer be a valid defence after Britain has left the European Union, when it will seek to assert control over its fishing territories and over the access of other nations to those waters.
It appears that the Government are intent on asserting rights to the entirety of the UK exclusive economic zone. The exclusive economic zones of some European fishing nations, including Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark, are highly constrained by their proximity to Britain, while that of the UK extends far into the North Sea. Given the exorbitant extent of the UK zone compared to those of other European nations, this intention is liable to be strongly resisted. It is possible that a dispute over fishing rights will vitiate the other negotiations that must accompany Brexit.
Recent statements by the Government suggest that they wish the resources of our local seas to be exploited more fully. Therefore, one can imagine that the objective of conserving the fish stocks is liable to be neglected. The pursuit of a policy of conservation is liable to be frustrated by the fact that the supervision of fisheries is to be devolved to the authorities of the constituent parts of the UK. These will have to contend with the pressures of some highly organised and assertive parties, not least the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation.
Nevertheless, models exist for how Britain might successfully manage its fish stocks. The Norwegians, who are not members of the European Union, have successfully managed their fisheries for many years. They have effectively nationalised their fishing industry, giving ownership to their Government, albeit that the ownership is licensed to fishing co-operatives. They have also maintained an effective discard ban for at least 30 years.