Quota fears over ‘slipper skippers’

Urgent changes are needed to the system of managing and allocating quotas to the English fishing fleet to preserve the livelihoods of fishermen, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee inquiry into domestic fisheries management said.

The committee said it was “shocked” to find the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) did not monitor the individual holding of quota in England.

Under the current system, fishing quota may be held by “slipper skippers” – inactive or retired fishermen, or organisations who have little or no connection to the fishing industry and who merely trade it as a commodity.

Tory MP Anne McIntosh, who chairs the committee, said: “We are very concerned by the apparent turning of quota into a commodity at the expense of working fishermen, and we have called upon Defra to justify its position.

“Our report recommends that quota should only be held by working fishermen unless the holding of quota by outside interests can be shown to be of clear benefit to fishing communities.”

The committee recommended smaller fishing boats should have more opportunities to acquire fishing quota.

It also urged greater action by Defra on the “unsustainable practice” of fish discards, where unwanted dead fish are thrown back into the sea, a cause championed by the celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

However, the chief executive of the York-based National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations, Barrie Deas, criticised MPs “for going off at a tangent” and producing a “superficial” report, which had not dug deep or offered any solutions.

He said: “I don’t think this is an issue, a very small amount of quota is not attached directly to vessels – the last time I looked it at was about nine per cent – and most of that was for owners who were building new vessels and need somewhere to hold their quota.

“The committee are saying that Defra don’t have the information.

“If that’s what they’ve been told by Defra there’s a problem because the information is there within the Government, within the Marina Management Organisation, which is an agency under Defra based in Newcastle.

“Maybe the committee should have explored the splitting of policy from delivery and whether that’s the right thing to do.”

Mr Deas said despite the criticism of discards in the English fleet there was a positive story to tell: “What they could have said if they had dug a little deeper was over the last decade the absolute level of discharge has reduced by 50 per cent – partly that’s because of the reduction in the size of the fishing fleet and other projects.

“What we need to do is keep the progress going rather than going headline-grabbing.”

The European Commission has already signalled it wants to end the waste, proposing a ban under EU fisheries policy reforms.

The leader of the UK Independence Party, Euro-MP Nigel Farage, said the UK needed to regain control of its territorial waters.

He said: “For years politicians have watched as our fishing industry dies, knowing full well that it’s the Common Fisheries Policy that has caused it.

“Yet all they do is beg Brussels for a larger allocation of our own fish and write another report.

“Of course fishermen need more freedom to fish, but the freedom they need is not from Whitehall but from the EU.”

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