Decommissioning of Fishing Vessels Scheme 2007

I am most grateful for the response and I shall do my best to answer the detailed questions. The central issue is the long-term plan, on which the noble Earl has just finished speaking. The noble Baroness raised that issue, too. Approval is expected at the April session of the Fisheries Council. It has been informally approved; in other words, it has been agreed by the Commission of member states, so there is every expectation that it will be in place. All the vessels are English-registered vessels. I cannot say who owns them, but they are English registered. The noble Baroness asked a question that was almost answered by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. Some 60 vessels are engaged, so the figure of 12 is out of that total. I said that up to 12 vessels would be engaged. We cannot be precise about this. We expect the number to be somewhat less than 12, because we have had considerable discussions with the industry, so there will probably be only about eight or nine. These vessels work out of Plymouth and Brixham, the two ports that are centrally affected. Noble Lords referred to what has happened in the past. There have been general decommissioning schemes, but our evidence is that they have not quite delivered. Indeed, sometimes they have delivered almost the opposite of what was intended. That cannot be good for fish stocks or for public money. As for some of the details, there must be a way of ranking. We have agreed with the Commission to pay more than the current EU maximum to reflect market values. We will accept bids of up to £3,500 a tonne. Based on the average tonnage of vessels in this sector—93 tonnes—a successful bid of £3,500 would generate an average cost of £325,000. The top vessel in the fleet is 373 tonnes, so if a successful bid involved such vessels, it would generate more than £1.3 million, which is a large percentage of the money available. There is a requirement on this, as I mentioned earlier. The vessels must have been there for a particular number of days for the past two periods of 12 months. The intention is that we get better value for money than from a general decommissioning scheme, because if we did not aim for the recovery of the stock, it would not be effective. By using a vessel-ranking system that takes into account the value of the bid per tonne of capacity to be removed, the fishing effort and the amount of sole caught in area VIIe during the reference period, we believe that we can remove from the fleet those vessels that have a greater impact on sole stocks in area VIIe, therefore supporting the new long-term management plan for the area. I fully accept that there is a considerable number of vessels under 10 metres that fish. We simply do not have knowledge and information about those, and we would be spending money on vessels that spend only a very limited amount of time at sea. The noble Earl raised the issue of illegal fishing. I do not have chapter and verse on this, but I understand that there has been a big improvement in enforcement with regard to illegal fishing. It is believed that one consequence of that is the hardening of fish prices, which has been of considerable assistance to the industry. Apparently, people have seen a direct connection between improvements in enforcement and a hardening of fish prices, which has to be good for those who are operating legally. The long-term management plan is being carried out in conjunction with the Commission and, of course, France. It has been negotiated for a while; we want a sustainable fishing industry in this part of the channel. The plan envisages a six-year period in which to bring the stocks back to a sustainable level, which should allow vessels remaining in the fishery a sustainable future. The quota would remain, so that when the stocks return to their levels, the quota is still available, having removed that capacity in the mean time. One does not want to chuck the baby out with the bathwater. On option 4, the system ranking the bids will take into account the tonnage, the catch of sole and the effort in the fishing. A formula that calculates a ranking position will be made available to applicants. This will not be done in secret; they will know beforehand what they are doing. The formula puts a weighting on each of the criteria: 50 per cent on the tonnage and 25 per cent each on the catch and the effort. The figure arising from the calculation is then divided by the bid per tonne of the vessel, which gives a final ranking figure that could be made available to Members of the Committee. The whole point about this is that the person making the bid has to know whether to make an economic, family or business decision to leave fishing, so they have to know what money is going to come back. This is therefore not a question of someone putting in a blind, sealed bid and then asking for the money; the person making the bid must know whether it is a viable business decision. After our discussions with the industry, we have said that the measure would involve up to 12 out of the 60 vessels, but our expectation is that it will be about eight or nine of the vessels. Because I do not have that information, I cannot give details of whether those vessels will be predominantly larger, more medium-sized or smaller, but if the average tonnage is 93 and there is a vessel of 373 tonnes, by definition there will be some smaller ones. That is a business decision for the fishing fleet to take.