Rural Affairs and Environment Committee, 21 Nov 2007

Meeting date: Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Official Report 289KB pdf

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Fisheries Council

Welcome to today's meeting of the Rural Affairs and Environment Committee—it is our eighth meeting this year. No apologies have been received, and no other MSPs have indicated that they will arrive at any stage. Before we begin, I remind members to switch off mobile phones and pagers, or at least to keep them a long way from the electronic equipment; the closer they are, the worse will be the distortion that they cause.

Under agenda item 1, we will take evidence from Fisheries Research Services officials on issues that will be considered at the European Union December fisheries council. The three officials are Nick Bailey, John Simmonds and Coby Needle; Nick Bailey is sitting in the middle. Various written submissions have been made. Most members are fairly up to speed on the issues because of evidence that we took at the previous committee meeting. I ask Nick Bailey to make a short opening statement of no more than five minutes to allow maximum time for questions. We will move to the question and answer session as soon as he has finished.

Thank you for the welcome and for giving us the opportunity to contribute information to the committee. Together with my colleagues Coby Needle and John Simmonds, I hope that I will be able to provide helpful input. In the event that additional material is required, we will do our best to get it to the committee as quickly as possible.

Our written submission outlines the types of work in which we are engaged. The overarching role of FRS in the fisheries process is to provide objective science. I will summarise briefly two broad activities that characterise our work and the fisheries science process. The first activity is assessment of the state of fish stocks using data from a variety of sources, and comparing the metrics from those assessments with predefined reference points or targets. In relation to the species that we are likely to cover today, that involves international co-operation, mainly through the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. The activity is essentially retrospective.

The second activity is provision to fisheries managers of scientific advice on on-going management of fish stocks. That can involve the evaluation of strategic longer-term management targets and plans or the suggestion, development and testing of particular management measures—for example, technical measures—that might be used to meet management objectives. It is essentially a forward-looking process. To be effective and to remain credible, our input and advice in both areas must remain consistent and objective.

As members know, ICES has issued its advice for 2007, from which we see that some stocks are doing quite well and others are not. To some extent, the ICES advice on catches reflects that. We have brought along some CDs that contain more detailed key information; there are enough copies for all members, if the committee wishes. It is important to note that in some cases the advised catch reductions arise directly from advice that is linked to long-term sustainable management plans and does not necessarily imply problems with the stock.

An important change this year is the removal of the zero North Sea cod catch advice, following a modest improvement in recruitment of cod in 2005. Of course, that affects the dynamic of the discussions surrounding mixed demersal fisheries of the North Sea and presents challenges for management and fishermen in ensuring that those fish are able to contribute to the stock. Earlier this month, the European Commission's scientific, technical and economic committee for fisheries met. Its report, which is due shortly, will further update the science.

At the moment, FRS is heavily involved in advising fisheries managers during the various negotiations that culminate in the December council. Immediately after this evidence-taking session, Coby Needle will head off to Brussels to join the second round of the EU-Norway talks. At this stage, we view the process as being still fluid. The Commission has still to issue its proposals for 2008. As is often the case at this time of year, we anticipate a particularly busy few weeks.

Thank you. That was commendably shorter than five minutes. I would recommend your submission to some of our other witnesses.

You said that recommendations for reductions in catch might be part of long-term sustainable plans, rather than an indication that there are problems with the stock. Can you expand on that? Is the aim to allow the overall population to grow larger, so that there can be a higher regular sustainable catch? Are you simply allowing for a margin of error, so that the population can grow larger in case you are wrong?

I will invite John Simmonds to come in on this issue. The purpose of long-term management plans is to set a target or range for fish removal rates—fishing mortality rates. The objective is to keep the stock in a fairly stable condition, with limits that allow us to avoid risk and that lead to long-term improvements in yield. Advice may be given to address that issue, rather than to address a biological problem with the stock that suggests that it is about to collapse. The purpose of the plans is to keep stocks well away from such situations. Reductions in the total allowable catch are often interpreted immediately as indicating that there is a problem with the stock. We make it clear that that is not always the case.

The conclusion to be drawn is that fish stocks naturally fluctuate. One would expect both the stock and the catches that are taken from that stock to go up and down through normal and natural variability. It is not always possible to have consistent and steady stock levels. Such changes are a natural occurrence.

Different stocks exhibit different variability—mackerel stocks will be more stable and will fluctuate more evenly than haddock stocks, which will fluctuate very considerably. Recruitment of young fish into haddock stocks is irregular, whereas recruitment of young fish into mackerel stocks is more stable. To some extent, changes occur naturally from year to year to which a fishery must respond.

I have another quick question, although I promised not to ask too many questions.

That answer implies that it is important to estimate a single year's cohort, given the high variation that can occur from year to year. As the cohort approaches the age at which it can be fished, does the accuracy of our estimates improve or is the accuracy of our estimates constant from the first recruitment measurements right up until the point at which the fish can be caught?

I am sure that we could all answer that but, as John Simmonds was in full flow, I will ask him to answer the question.

I should perhaps warn that Bill Wilson has a background as an environmental scientist.

I have also been warned not to ask too many questions.

I warned Bill Wilson not to allow his instinctively scientific nature to carry him away.

The answer is very simple: the accuracy of the estimates improves from year to year throughout the life of the cohort and is most accurate when the cohort is gone.

Is that because repeated measurements are taken?

Repeated measurements are taken and the information grows over time. Each year, we learn something about the current year's cohort and more about those of previous years. By a natural process, information about each cohort increases over time.

I have no instinctively scientific nature, so my question should be easier to deal with.

I was intrigued to hear Mr Bailey say that the ICES study of the state of fish stocks is retrospective in nature. Can you explain that a bit more clearly? To me, that indicates that the data are old and could be out of date before we have them. Is that the case?

It is useful to seek clarification on that. The comment that John Simmonds made about how we know most about a stock when it is gone is indicative of the fact that the studies are retrospective. You are quite right that our information is only as good as the most recent data that we have to put into the assessment. In the current framework in which ICES operates, assessments for many stocks are provided annually and rely on the most recent complete year of information. The simple practicalities of scheduling in an international framework mean that meetings usually take place after the end of the calendar year. We are moving to a system in which, for most stocks, those meetings will take place in May of each year. Our advice for the formal assessment in 2007 is only as good as our information from the end of 2006.

Obviously, as scientists we collect daily real-time data on board fishing vessels, from markets and from our research vessels. That contributes additional information that can help in understanding what is happening with stocks and the management process, but it does not formally affect the ICES assessment.

Our other task—to which Nick Bailey alluded—is the forward-looking task. In that sense, our survey information and fishery-independent information from within the year is extremely important. That information, along with admittedly anecdotal information from the industry itself, provides the basis for what we think is happening during the current year and what will happen next year.

I want to focus on the bycatch, which I think people on all sides agree is a terrible waste of resources and of food. The committee has received information about a ban on discards that the Norwegian Government introduced in 1990. In the Norwegian system, the bycatch is not considered the fishermen's property and must be forfeited. The forfeited fish are not deducted from the fishermen's quotas—they can keep the legal part of their catch—and the fishermen receive 20 per cent of the value of the undersized fish as compensation for bringing them ashore. The fish are not just dumped at sea. Everybody agrees that the European Union's system is nonsensical and hugely wasteful, but nobody can agree on how we should deal with the matter. Norway seems to have dealt with it. Is that too straightforward? Are there bigger reasons why Norway can do that but the EU cannot?

I will answer first, but I will hand over to Coby Needle, who will have additional points to make.

Mike Rumbles clarified the question by mentioning discards, but his opening remark was about bycatch. Bycatch is, in fact, an important component in mixed fisheries. Can you confirm that we are talking about discards?

Sorry. The question was about discards.

We agree that discards are a waste and a threat to the potential of the stocks. I do not think that there is much disagreement about that. However, the issue of how to get rid of them or reduce them is complex. We can return to the detail later, but there are lots of measures that can be taken to mitigate the problem, some of which Scotland has trialled and which other countries have been involved with.

The question why the system that Mike Rumbles mention works for Norway and not for elsewhere is interesting. The committee's paper on the subject reflects our experience that it is difficult to pin down how successful the discard ban is in reducing the catching of the fish and removing them from the capture process. There is uncertainty about the quality of that form of management even in Norway. When we carry out scientific assessments, we make allowance for the landings component and the discards component. It is interesting that we receive no information from Norway on the quantities that Mike Rumbles talked about being landed for which the fishermen get no financial return. That implies that there is either uncertainty about those quantities or unwillingness to declare them.

You guys are the scientists and this is a technical issue. As you have just accepted, everybody is agreed that the current situation regarding discards is not good. It is wasteful—some people say obscenely so. We see pictures of fishermen pouring fish—up to 60 per cent of their catch, in some instances—over the sides of their boats, but Norway has a system in which fishermen receive 20 per cent of the value of undersized fish for landing them so that they can be used. What is the point of putting dead fish back in the sea? Why has not more work been done on what Norway has done or has not done? You have just said that you do not know about it.

I will allow Coby Needle to answer, as he has more experience of the incidence and problem of discards. We do not disagree with you from the scientific perspective. We can introduce measures to mitigate and reduce discarding, and we can suggest such measures as discard bans; however, the issue is more political and managerial than scientific.

It is political, but nobody is in favour of discards.

The claim is frequently made that it is almost impossible to prevent discards, despite the general view that people would like discarding to disappear. When the question is put to elements of the industry, they will say that it is almost impossible to have a discard ban, especially in fisheries that have a greater mix of species than many of the fisheries in which the Norwegians operate.

I hand over to Coby Needle, to give some more background.

Nick Bailey has said most of what I was going to say. As scientists, we are of the same opinion as people in wider society. We must try to understand why discarding occurs and suggest ways to avoid it.

Discarding occurs for many reasons, especially in the North Sea, which is a complicated mixed fishery in which a wide variety of fleets prosecute a wide variety of species. Discards may occur because there is no quota and therefore no market for the species that have been caught. The skipper might happen to get poor prices on a particular day, which makes it not worth his while to land the fish that he has caught. He might want to save his available quota for later in the year—that is a form of high grading—or he might be catching non-target or non-commercial species. The fact that there is a large year class of a particular fish can retard the growth of those fish, with the result that small fish that are quite old are caught but cannot be landed because they are below the minimum landing size. Discarding takes place for a number of reasons. I do not think that fishermen are ever happy to discard fish—it is not something they want to do.

In theory, a ban on discards would be possible, but it would be extremely difficult to make it work in the current regulatory framework, which involves a mixture of effort regulations and different quotas for different species. Boats would soon have to tie up if there was a ban on discards.

In many ways, the Norwegians have a different fishery, especially in the Arctic areas and the Barents Sea, where the ecosystem is much simpler. In such areas, it is possible to legislate for the fact that boats go fishing for particular species. Vessels can target haddock, for example, and be fairly confident of catching just haddock. In the North Sea it is much more difficult to achieve such separation between species. That said, I was at a symposium last month at which the results were presented from discard observing trips in the Norwegian haddock fishery in the Barents Sea. Discard levels of 20 to 30 per cent by weight were obtained, which is similar to or more than the levels in the North Sea. It is a common misconception that because the Norwegians have banned discarding as a legislative tool it never occurs; it certainly does.

I am not saying that it does not occur. I am saying that, as with any business model, we need to give fishermen a monetary reward for landing discards instead of dumping them back into the sea. That way, you would know exactly how many fish were being taken, so your scientific advice would be more accurate, and there would be less waste.

We might need to change tack slightly. What you have said implies that it is okay to catch all those fish. I do not know whether you realise the quantities of unwanted material that would arrive in our harbours if we were simply to implement a discard ban. Our approach, which is based on the laboratory work that our gear research team has been engaged in for many years, relies on the idea of improving the selectivity of fishing nets, to the extent that undersized fish in particular, and species that are unwanted for conservation reasons or catches of which might become limited during the year because of a TAC constraint, can be avoided. I have brought pamphlets that describe some of that work, which I can leave with the committee.

We might come back to selectivity. A raft of work is being done to address the issue of what is caught. I appreciate that with the Norwegian system the theory is that because of the discard ban, fishermen will naturally move to a more selective process. Perhaps such a movement would occur here if a ban on discards were implemented, but it is important to recognise that we want to avoid catching the fish in the first place. That has been the tack that we have taken in the UK, in particular.

I want to track back to the questions about the scientific measurement of fish stocks. Will you put on the record how you calculate discard levels? How is that calculation wrapped into the figures that you derive for total fish stocks? How robust are your estimates in comparison with the actual level of discards? It strikes me that the potential exists for your figures to contain a big error factor if you do not know what is going over the side of boats.

We have been running an observer sampling programme from FRS in Aberdeen since 1978. We do on average 90 observer trips per year, which are split roughly between the North Sea and the west of Scotland. It is the longest running and most comprehensive discard observer sampling programme in Europe, if not the world.

Under the conditions of the European data collection regulation, to which all member countries are meant to have signed up, countries are meant to be observing discard rates, as we are, and reporting them to the relevant groups—assessment groups in ICES and elsewhere. However, I chaired an assessment working group in ICES for the past three years and found that we received reports on discard rates from only Scotland and Germany.

As scientists we cannot ignore the fact that discards in the fishery are usually a large proportion of the total catch—the figure varies by species. We cannot ignore that information, so we have to extrapolate figures from the Scottish and, to a lesser extent, German sampling to the rest of the North Sea. That makes for large uncertainties, particularly in areas such as the whiting fishery in the southern North Sea. We apply the Scottish discard proportion rates, which are taken from vessels fishing in the northern North Sea with large or 120mm mesh, to vessels fishing with much smaller mesh sizes of 80mm in the southern North Sea. The discarding practice of the vessels in the southern North Sea will be different from the practice of those in the northern North Sea. However, the relevant countries do not supply us with information to enable us to estimate the discards, so we have to extrapolate from the Scottish figures.

Are you saying that even the English fishing industry is not subject to such discard monitoring?

The English industry is, but perhaps I should not get into—

I just seek clarification. In effect, you are saying that the Scottish discard measurements are the most robust in Europe, although the Germans also submit such figures.

Yes.

That suggests that, even within the UK, there are systems for measuring discards that are nowhere near as robust as the Scottish system.

In my experience, the English samples provide us with estimates of the length of fish that are discarded, but over the past few years they have not been able to provide us with estimates of the age of those fish. The English will suggest that we apply age sampling to their estimates of length, but we do not feel comfortable doing that because those are two quite different pieces of information. The other issue is that certain countries will not provide us with information for one reason or another.

Right. We should take up that issue in separate quarters. It must be a European Union issue.

You should be aware of another process that is associated with the EU data collection regulation. The scientific, technical and economic committee for fisheries co-ordinates an additional data set that has arisen following a call from the European Commission for information on landings and discards. Surprising though it might seem, more information is provided to that process than is provided to the ICES process. Although that is perhaps inconceivable, I am afraid that it is the reality.

There is a whole set of issues there that we do not have time to unpack. We will want to return to them at a later date.

I want to explore further a particular dimension of the relationship between total allowable catch and discards. I note that on page 6 of your submission you say, in relation to cod stocks, that there has been an "insufficiently cautionary" approach in the past. What is emerging in the run-up to the negotiations in December is that the UK is going to argue for a modest increase in the total allowable catch for cod. On the basis of your experience and your insight, what do you think would happen if the TAC were to increase modestly without the accompanying technical measures that you have begun to outline, such as measures in relation to net sizes and the provision of more observers and more closed areas? What would be likely to happen if the TAC—which is only one side of the equation—were to increase without being accompanied by a package of technical measures?

The advice on that is quite clear. It has been elaborated by the Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries, which has evaluated the impact of a 15 per cent increase. The advice clearly indicates that, unless the increase is accompanied by a reduction in the fishing mortality rate—the rate at which fish are removed—in the order of 40 to 50 per cent, the net effect will be an increase in discards of unwanted fish. That is significant. It is correct to observe that a modest increase in TAC would be accompanied by an increase in discards unless there are accompanying measures.

As I understand it, you have been involved in trials of 120mm square-mesh panels and, in another part of the fisheries, separator panels—I think that you said that you have a report on that to leave with us. What is your assessment of the success of those experiments? What has been the uptake of those measures in the industry, given the success that I hope you will tell me you have had with them?

The most recent trials of 120mm square-mesh panels were carried out to address a problem in the smaller-mesh fisheries of the North Sea. In our case, that relates mainly to the nephrops fisheries. Panels of 120mm square mesh were inserted into basic gear with a mesh size of less than 100mm and it was demonstrated that, if those panels were located fairly near the cod end of the net—the place where the fish congregate before they are brought on board the boat—it was possible to see escapes of cod. That is quite unusual in most selectivity work—perhaps we will come back to that in due course—and it is projected that it could increase the biomass by about 15 per cent.

The STECF reviewed that measure last year and agreed that it was a useful one to put in place. It figured in the council outcomes last year but, disappointingly, the uptake of that derogation has been extremely small. The STECF has evaluated the uptake of many of the derogations that were introduced in its technical regulations and the general picture is that few of them have been taken up even though they are available.

The work on separator panels has been much more innovative and speculative. At the moment, there is no legislation or derogation to enable their use within the EU framework. The experience of using separator panels has been mixed. They work well for some species, such as hake. The French have demonstrated that the hake separate nicely into the top part of the net and their other main fishery—the nephrops or, as we now call it, the Scottish langoustine—goes into the bottom part.

The sad and difficult thing that we have to deal with is the fact that cod have a habit of diving downwards once they encounter a fishing net. Unlike many other species of fish, they do not rise up in the net and allow decent separation.

Outrageous!

It is terrible. Regrettably, wherever cod are associated with flatfish, angler fish or nephrops fisheries, the complexity of achieving separation is greatly increased. That does not mean that we stop trying. There are various approaches to trying to move that forward—one of the papers that I can leave gives some examples—but it is a complex matter.

I have a quick caveat to the use of those measures. They require a lot of rigging within the fishing net and therefore require a willingness on the part of a boat's skipper and operators to use them as they are intended. There is great scope for fiddling about with them, so one would have to ensure that they worked and that there were sufficient incentives and a real wish to use them.

That takes me on to my next point. Perhaps it is not for you to answer, but I would be interested in your thoughts anyway. You are saying that there is more work to be done on separator panels but that there are some promising signs and you have positive results on the use of 120mm square-mesh panels. You have the technical answers to reduce discards, but the industry is not adopting them even though it has a problem with discards, and you have observers on boats who see what goes on. Why is the industry not adopting the technical measures that would solve much of the problem?

My previous answer was partial; I will now give you the rest of the story. Over and above the savings in cod, there are additional losses of commercial-sized haddock and whiting. There is a commercial balance to be struck. There is also a fear among some fishermen—although this is more debatable—that they will lose some of the nephrops catch. It is almost certainly the case that they will lose some commercial-sized haddock and whiting. The trouble with many measures is that they deliver a solution but often come with a cost.

My first question leads on directly from your previous comment and relates to whiting. Would it be such a bad thing if some whiting were lost, given that whiting is almost endangered?

Secondly, are global warming and climate change having an effect on prolificacy and movement of fish stocks?

I will comment after Coby Needle has responded.

The state of whiting is dependent on where people are fishing. In the northern North Sea, the Scottish fleet has used 120mm mesh since 2000 or thereabouts. Whiting catches in the area declined dramatically, as the bulk of the fish in the stock were quite small. Now the Scottish fleet in the north is getting better catches of larger whiting. A major political difficulty in trying to implement selectivity measures for whiting would arise in the southern North Sea, especially in the English and French fisheries, which depend on whiting much more than the Scottish fleets do. Whiting is no longer a particular target for the Scottish fleets, but it is a target further south.

The member asked about climate change, which is an area of big debate. I will use cod as an example, as that has often figured in the media. The current consensus on the science surrounding the issue is that there have been environmental changes. We have seen them in our plankton sampling and in climate monitoring and so on. The change is undeniable—there has been an increase in sea water temperatures in most of our waters. The upshot of that appears to be that the potential and productivity of cod can be expected to be lower for a number of years. Cod does not do quite so well in the current climate regime as it did in the regime that prevailed in the 1970s and 1980s, when cod and many other gadoid species—whiting, haddock and others—underwent a population explosion and had very large populations.

The fact that a change is taking place does not preclude the possibility of a recovery of cod stock to levels that are considered to be much more satisfactory. At the moment, there appears to be no real constraint on its recovery, subject to our getting fishing mortality down to a long-term sustainable level and getting a few decent recruitments. We need young fish to come into the population for a few years. The 2005 year class alone is not the answer to our problems. We need to get the population on a firmer footing.

My first question is about the technical measures. You mentioned that some innovative research is under way at the moment. Have you plans to do anything else on selection? It appears that having selective gear that works for cod would be an appropriate way forward.

My second question relates to the use of observers and how that could be extended in the Scottish fleet or further afield. Is there a need to change the programme to provide more robust evidence that fishing habits are changing—and changing not only when observers happen to be on board boats?

I will start on those questions, but colleagues should feel free to come in.

On gear, we have a commitment to continue with research and we have an on-going and active programme on that. Through the Scottish industry-science partnership that was started this year, a group of representatives from the industry, from our organisation and from non-governmental organisations comes together to discuss what pieces of scientific research should be carried out. Work on technical measures figures highly in those discussions. In a number of the projects that we have carried out in recent years—with either European funding or Scottish funding—we have involved a committee of industry representatives to ensure both that our discussions and ideas draw on industry experience and that the proposed solutions are workable in real situations.

I do not know whether that answers the question, but we have a commitment to move forward and to keep looking for best practice. We consider new designs from other parts of the world to see how appropriate those are for our waters.

Should the Scottish Government be doing anything specific that it is not already doing to support and advance that work?

It is always tempting for a scientist to say, "Oh yes, we would love some more money to carry out more work." However, I think that there is already a commitment to that research. With the Scottish industry-science partnership, some good foundations are in place to ensure that the work goes ahead. However, I am not sure that that would be my particular priority—there are other things.

What would those be?

You should not have added that rider.

We have recently been involved in a joint industry-science initiative to survey angler fish. The design of that survey again draws on industry experience in considering what type of nets could be used. That was born out of the realisation that some standard ICES surveys that use standard gear are not necessarily optimised and do not always give good results for the range of species that are now being exploited. There is a case for considering whether that work might be extended, but that would come at a cost. It is not my place to talk today about the balance of the science, but I think that we should look at such areas.

One of my colleagues might answer the question about observers.

I can say a little bit about that.

Our observer sampling programme is working pretty much at full capacity. That is a scientific sampling programme, so it is carried out on the basis of skippers inviting our samplers on board. We have built up a good relationship between the industry and our people, who take samples regularly. Such sampling has a clearly defined function, which is mostly about estimating the level of discards.

Observers are also used for other purposes, such as monitoring real-time closures and carrying out other regulatory tasks, but that is a different issue that I will pass over to one of my colleagues.

The question was about the accuracy of the data and about bias. To a large extent, the data are pretty representative. From the comparisons that have been done, landings from vessels on which an observer was present and landings from vessels without any observers are pretty much the same. That suggests that practices do not differ when we put an observer on board. That may be partly because the programme has been running for so long that everybody is now used to it and people are not suspicious of it. Perhaps the small minority of individuals who will not accept observers—the process is voluntary—have different practices, but they are very much a minority.

You mentioned that the use of observers to monitor real-time closures is a different matter—

We are running out of time, so we need to speed up a little.

I will answer that quickly. We need to distinguish between scientific observers, who try to measure objectively what is happening across the fleet as a whole, and other observers, who, for example, check whether measures are being implemented and monitor real-time closures. We draw on different observers for those purposes. Essentially, the Scottish Government funds additional observers to undertake that work. They are provided not by our marine lab but by the Marine Resources Assessment Group, which is an outside contracting agency that has wide experience of observing fisheries across the world.

I will let the session run for a maximum of another five minutes, as we have other items to get through before 11 o'clock. That is not an invitation to Des McNulty to take up the whole five minutes.

Does John Simmonds have any comments on the WWF Scotland mid-term review paper that is before us, which discusses the extent to which the Commission has heeded scientific advice and the operation of the TAC system? As a scientist, what is your view on that?

The paper is a fairly accurate representation of the way in which WWF Scotland has looked at the information, but I am not sure that it conveys well an impression of what is really happening. WWF Scotland has lumped together a large number of stocks—we have poor information on some of them and good information on others—and treated them in one bucket. It has looked at the relationship in one year between what has been set and what has been advised, and at the process of moving from advice through to regulation. The paper suggests that the two compare poorly, but in relation to substantial stocks the differences are often small. When TACs are set above the level that has been advised, they may exceed that level by only a small percentage. Over a long period of 10 or 12 years, the two figures deviate from each other only a little—they are much more in line than the paper suggests.

The paper gives a slightly rosier picture of the science than I would give, as it suggests that the science is in no way implicated in the problem. That is not true. As we said earlier, the information that we are able to provide is revised from year to year, so the process is dependent partly on the quality of the advice that we are able to give, given the quality of the information that we have. Although the paper identifies a policy issue between science advice and the setting of TACs as the cause of the problem, there is responsibility and there are difficulties at all stages. We cannot find a single culprit quite so easily. We should share the blame around a little more than the paper does.

I have not yet read the full Sissenwine and Symes paper that has been made available to the committee, but in their conclusions its authors argue that there is a gap between the science and the decision-making process. Basically, they argue that we need to move towards an ecosystems-based approach. Is that in line with what would be robust scientifically?

At the moment we are moving towards what we see as better management policies overall. It is a slow, complicated process that is difficult to implement quickly, but we are moving from a situation in which people take ad hoc decisions annually, TAC by TAC and based on that year's advice, to a management plan-based approach that links long-term objectives to short-term decisions. Over the past four or five years, the exploitation of haddock, herring and mackerel has been subject to management plans. The outcomes for those species have been much more sensible in terms of exploitation rates and much more useful in maintaining the fishery and the stock. That does not mean that outcomes have not fluctuated or changed—they have, and there have been increases and reductions in TACs for those species. However, the process is moving in a better way.

You mentioned an ecosystems-based approach. Although the process that I have described does not produce such an approach, it moves each stock into a much more sensibly managed process that gives us a better overall view of the fisheries and allows for a much better overall outcome. That movement—perhaps one stock being added per year and a couple of measures being introduced that link into Scottish stocks—is a beneficial but slow process towards the right outcome. Things are moving slowly and steadily in the direction in which they should be going.

Thank you very much. There are probably a number of issues that we would like to explore further. If the committee agrees, I may write to you with some of those further questions.

The Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment will be before us on 5 December to give evidence on fisheries. The committee feels that, rather than take the fisheries evidence at this late stage in the year, it should bring the matter forward next year and consider it before the summer recess. Therefore, it is entirely likely that you will get a further invitation in the not-terribly-distant future. Do not be surprised at that. We are trying to bring the process forward so that we do not try to do everything at the time of greatest stress for the industry.

I am sure that we would welcome that. Next year's advice from the advisory committee on fishery management is expected to come out in June, so you could think about your timings in light of that. I leave that with you.

Will that be early or late June?

Early June.

Well—

Do you think that there will be slippage?

ICES is in flux. It is being asked to reorganise and produce more of the advice earlier in the year. If I had to bet on when the advice will come out, I would say late June, but no date has been fixed yet.

That might create some difficulties.

Thank you very much for your evidence. As I said, you may get a follow-up letter from me asking you to elaborate on some of the issues on which we have not had all the time that we might have wanted. I look forward to seeing you again at a future committee meeting.