The first piece of primary fisheries legislation in decades is set to pass through Parliament, putting in place legislation that provides fisheries ministers with the powers needed to set quotas and control access to UK fishing grounds as the UK leaves the European Union and the CFP. The Bill now faces scrutiny and possible amendment in the House of Lords before returning to the Commons for a final vote.
According to the NFFO, despite the febrile, not to say toxic, atmosphere in Westminster, there is something like a cross-party consensus that these powers will be necessary, post-Brexit, as it would be irresponsible to leave a vacuum.
The Bill also provides wide delegated powers to UK fisheries ministers to amend fisheries law retained from the CFP. Ministers would have delegated powers and secondary legislation to provide for an adaptive and responsive future UK fisheries policy.
‘In this too there seems to be a broad cross-party consensus, but with concerns to ensure that there are safeguards to ensure that such discretionary powers are not used in a capricious or perverse way,’ an NFFO spokesman commented.
‘Outside these central themes, the Bill is heavily shaped by the devolution settlement. The settlement inarguably makes fisheries management in the UK infinitely more complex and vexed, especially when there are different complexions of government in London and Edinburgh. The main vehicle for cooperation between the devolved administrations – joint fisheries statement – is an untried and untested concept with plenty scope for ambiguity and future conflict.’
‘In English fisheries, the Bill provides for powers to auction quota that are novel and likely to be controversial when it comes to implementation. Perhaps less controversially, the Bill provides new ways of mitigating chokes caused by the application of the landing obligation to mixed fisheries,’ the NFFO states, commenting that given the wide recognition that the Bill is a necessary piece of enabling legislation that will allow the UK to manage its fisheries outside the CFP, the main focus of proposed amendments as the Bill passes through the various parliamentary stages, has been on various add-ons sought by MPs.
‘These have varied from the useful, to the pointless, to the potentially damaging. There is a danger that poorly thought-through amendments and a tendency to seek to overload primary legislation, could, if allowed, replicate the CFP’s rigidity. The Government, so far, in committee stage has fought off the more potentially damaging of these amendments.’
Sustainable
‘The Government rightly puts sustainable fishing at the heart of the Bill’s objectives and affirms its commitment to manage our fisheries in line with the maximum sustainable yield principle. The arbitrary 2020 MSY deadline has correctly been dropped, mainly because it is unachievable and scientifically illiterate but also because it is an impediment to the practical, sustainable, management of real fisheries. The biomass of individual stocks can slip below MSY for environmental reasons affecting recruitment, and often do,’ the NFFO said, adding that the application of MSY in mixed fisheries often requires trade-offs to secure different but equally important objectives.
‘MSY is a valuable aspirational marker but as a legally binding straightjacket, it undermines sustainable fisheries management. As a warning, it should be carefully noted that if the MSY objective had been applied as a rigid, legally-binding, requirement at the Council of Ministers in December, most demersal fisheries in Western Waters would now be closed. It is important therefore that the Fisheries Bill contains realisable objectives and avoids superficially desirable but catastrophically naïve legal requirements.’
According to the NFFO, which has supported the main purpose of the Bill, provided written and oral evidence to the Bill’s Scrutiny Committee and the Scottish Affairs Committee, and provided comprehensive briefing materials to MPs of all relevant parties, the main danger with the Bill lies not so much with the proposed legislation but with ill-considered add-ons.
‘The lesson was well learned with the CFP, that overloading primary legislation delivers a cumbersome and inflexible system, incapable of addressing obvious errors, or dealing with new information, including formal scientific advice. In dealing with dynamic natural resources and a dynamic fishing industry, this rigidity has been disastrous within the CFP,’ the NFFO’s spokesman commented.
‘As de facto fisheries managers, the Government has learned this lesson well and foresees an important role for secondary legislation which can be amended relatively rapidly to meet new contingencies. All those concerned with practical implementation, rather than superficial posturing, will support this approach. In granting wide discretionary powers it is important to have necessary counterweights.’
According to the Federation, Parliamentary scrutiny of secondary legislation will be important but equally, future fisheries policy should be informed by knowledgeable and experienced individuals in the form of an advisory council.
‘The Government has not yet accepted this although there seems to be wide cross-party support for something to be put in place.’
