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Scotland Act 1998 (River Tweed) Amendment Order 2015 [Draft]
Under agenda item 2, the committee will take evidence from the Minister for Environment and Climate Change on a draft order that has been laid under the affirmative procedure, which means that Parliament must approve the instrument before its provisions may come into force. Following this evidence session, under agenda item 3 the committee will be invited to consider the motion to approve the draft order.
I welcome the minister, Paul Wheelhouse, along with Jeff Gibbons, who is policy manager for salmon and recreational fisheries, and Johanna Irvine, who is a principal legal officer at the Scottish Government. Good morning to you.
I invite the minister to make an initial statement.
Thank you for inviting me to speak to the draft order, which has been laid for Parliament’s approval.
Members of the committee will be aware that freshwater fisheries management and conservation are, largely, regulated by the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 2003, but separate arrangements are in place for the border rivers. Following the committee’s consideration of the provisions in the Aquaculture and Fisheries (Scotland) Bill, an amendment to the 2003 act came into force in September 2013 to provide a new enabling power allowing the Scottish ministers to create a regime for tagging salmon that are caught in Scotland.
I confirm that it remains our intention to consult fully on the structure and extent of any future carcass-tagging scheme, and I am currently considering the options, alongside the wider recommendations that are emerging from the report that was produced following the independent review of wild fisheries.
However, it is necessary to address a technical issue with the current legislation to ensure that a single carcass-tagging system can be introduced across the whole of Scotland. The 2003 act and the amendments to it that were brought in last year do not extend to the River Tweed, which, as a border river, has its own governance. The governance of the River Tweed is provided by the Scotland Act 1998 (River Tweed) Order 2006 (SI 2006/2913), which allows a whole-river management scheme to operate across the border. As a consequence, the order that we are discussing today will amend the 2006 order by inserting a new power that will allow for the creation of a regime for tagging salmon that are caught in the Tweed district, and will ensure that when such a scheme is introduced in Scotland as a whole, that can be replicated for the Tweed. The power will allow provisions to be made about the nature and form of the tags, record keeping and enforcement.
The purpose behind the regime will be to enhance existing conservation measures for wild salmon and to ensure that fish that are caught in Scotland and which find their way to market are traceable. It will allow tagged fish to be measured against fish stocks and it will supplement existing mechanisms for identifying unlawfully caught fish. The detail of the tagging regime for the Tweed district will be set out in a separate order, and the detail of the scheme for the rest of Scotland will be set out in regulations that will be made under the 2003 act. I confirm that I have been in correspondence with my counterparts in the United Kingdom Government, who will be taking the order through the UK Parliament.
I hope that that provides a brief overview of the order and of our longer-term strategy. I will be happy to answer any questions.
Thank you very much, minister.
I will start with a geographical question. How much of the Tweed basin is in Scotland, roughly speaking, in terms of the catching of salmon, overall?
If this was a game of Trivial Pursuit, I would fail miserably. I will look to Jeff Gibbons, who might have some knowledge of that. If he does not, we can come back to you with the detail.
The River Tweed Commission area extends 5 miles out to sea and includes the coastline between Holy Island and Cockburnspath.
As well?
Yes.
I was thinking about the tributaries that flow into the Tweed from England and the length of the Tweed that has England and Scotland on either side of its flow.
We will get the measuring tapes out and provide you with an answer to that.
It is very important that we get positive signals from London that the UK Government will be doing something similar. I believe that most of the Tweed is in Scotland as far as the catching of salmon is concerned.
It is worth pointing out that carcass tagging already goes on in England. We are bringing in our own regime.
That is fine.
Conservation measures are already in place in England. Unfortunately, we are having to catch up. For the committee’s benefit, we can provide some detailed information in response to your question.
I am sure that, because there are fewer salmon in England, the tagging process is easier there. My point is that we are keen that best practice be followed.
As someone who lives on one of the tributaries of the Tweed, I would guess that about 90 per cent of it is in Scotland, but that is just a Trivial Pursuit guess.
Why has there been no general consultation on the order? How will you get the message out to interested parties?
I will ask Jeff Gibbons to talk about the process that we have been going through. We have engaged closely with the authorities in England about concerns that they have. I believe that, so far, they have indicated that they are happy to progress the proposed measure with us. We have done a first scan at Government-to-Government level to establish whether the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has concerns about the measure. The Secretary of State for Scotland has been copied in, too, because of the cross-border nature of the activity. Nothing has been flagged up to us yet. Jeff Gibbons will talk through the consultation process.
As you know, the power in the order is an enabling power; the specific aspects of the scheme that will follow are not detailed. A full consultation on how the scheme will look across Scotland will follow in due course, as the minister indicated.
We have spoken to the River Tweed Commission about the purpose of the order. It is aware that we want to encapsulate as much of Scotland as we can, and it is quite content—indeed, it has been pushing for carcass tagging for some time. As far as consultation about the enabling power is concerned, we have spoken to the commission, and a wider consultation on how the scheme will look in practice will follow in due course, as the minister said.
I add that the Crown Estate has also been consulted. Jeff Gibbons was referring to the River Tweed Commission.
Is the scheme being looked upon in any way as a pilot scheme for something for the rest of Scotland, or is it a completely separate issue, given the rather unique nature of the Tweed?
The latter point is the most relevant one. As I said in my opening remarks, at the moment we are in a situation in which we cannot apply a single tagging scheme across the whole of Scotland. The instrument is a technical measure to make sure that we can take the Tweed within any scheme that comes forward.
It is important to put the matter in the context of the fisheries review—we are scanning through the recommendations from Andrew Thin and his group and clearly we want to come forward with a comprehensive package rather than do things piecemeal. However, the order will at least allow us to move forward so that when we produce detail on the carcass-tagging scheme that we set out in the Aquaculture and Fisheries (Scotland) Act 2013, we will be able to apply it across the whole of Scotland rather than having to do two separate schemes—one for the areas that straddle the border and one for the rest of Scotland. Jeff Gibbons may want to comment further on that.
Agreeing to the enabling order at this stage will allow us to progress wider options. Should we look, in the first instance, to a pilot as an option, it will sit in with those wider options, depending on the wider considerations.
As there are no further questions, we move to agenda item 3, which is to consider motion S4M-11509, which asks the committee to recommend approval of the draft order. Officials cannot take part, at this stage, which is the opportunity for debate. I invite the minister to move the motion.
Motion moved,
That the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee recommends that the Scotland Act 1998 (River Tweed) Amendment Order 2015 [draft] be approved.—[Paul Wheelhouse.]
Motion agreed to.
I thank the minister and his officials. We will change witnesses and bring in the witnesses for draft budget scrutiny. I think that the minister is going to stay with us for the next item.
I thought that that was my opportunity to escape.