Mather backs call for reform of Common Fisheries Policy

Argyll’s MSP, Jim Mather, has condemned the discredited EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) not only for making serious difficulties for Scottish fishermen but, ironically, for working against best practice in conserving fish stocks under threat.

In saying this, Mr Mather has backed his colleague, Richard Lochhead’s, call for widespread reform of the policy.

Of continuing concern is the ecologically indefensible pracitce of discarding fish as the only way to ensure that skippers are not charged with being in breach of the law.

Richard Lochhead, the Fisheries Minister, in addressing the Inter Regional Advisory Council Conference in Edinburgh made a powerful call for radical revision of the CFP. He wants to see much more control returned to national fishing fleets rather than, as at present, having regulation – as he memorably describes, ‘ being formulated from desks in land locked bureaucracies’.

Lochhead and Mather feel that the performance of the Scottish fishing fleets demonstrates that they deserve this greater trust and responsibility.

Almost two-thirds of Scotland’s top fish stocks for which the status is known are being fished sustainably. Over half of all Scottish fisheries by value are accredited by the Marine Stewardship Council.

Some of the regulations are clearly as uninformed by common sense as they are by practical experience.

In a bureaucrats world, when you consider the condition of a single species, you consider it in isolation and theoretically. This rarely marches with the reality in the water.

Confusing as it may seem to the theoretician, different species such as cod and whiting swim together – or at least they do in Scottish waters. Yet Europe issues separate quotas for each individual species.

This means that when fishermen haul in several species in the one net, the law makes them discard those fish for which they have no quotas – even though the fish are already dead. Fishermen do deploy selective nets and these help greatly. But in a mixed fishery like Scotland’s, it remains almost impossible to catch one species at a time.

During 2007, £60 million worth of whitefish was discarded into the North Sea.That is not just an economic waste. In a world where significant numbers of people still starve, it is morally threadbare.

Since the scale of this wastage was known, Scotland has developed a number of innovative conservation measures like selective gear and closure schemes to reduce catching fish outwith quotas and then having to discard them.

These measures are reducing wastage, but Scottish Ministers believe that Europe must change its rules now to prevent the waste of hundreds of millions of pounds worth of our fishing resource.

There is no possible argument for a system which takes life for nothing, which wastes scarce food resources and which drags sensible people into having to perform such obscenities against their will simply to be allowed to continue to work for a living in their chosen job.

As Jim Mather says: ‘Our Scottish fishermen at present lead Europe in taking ground breaking conservation measures and they can be trusted to deliver if awarded additional responsibilities’.