For cod's sake, let's stop the destruction now

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

After French fishermen blocked the port of Calais in protest over tougher EU fishing quotas, the conservationist David Bellamy calls for the scrapping of the EU Common Fisheries Policy before Britain's fish stocks are wiped out

Fish – they may not be glamorous or headline grabbing, but they are incredibly important. Many of the world's 25,000-plus species of fish are important sources of essential fatty acids, and as well as forming a crucial part of the human diet, they are also a key part of the marine environment.

Given that fish are so important to us and to the ecology of the seas, it is worrying that their stocks are becoming so depleted. While cod are headed for the endangered list, as a result so is the humble chippy. As fish stocks decline, prices rise and fishermen and other workers in dependent industries lose their jobs.

So why is this an issue for public servants? Well, because fisheries are under bureaucratic and political control. It's not fishermen or ecologists who decide how many fish should be caught, or how the fish stocks should be managed, but officials at the European Commission. For more than 30 years now we have been a member of the EU's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) – and it has been a disaster.

Many regulatory systems have their victims. It is possible to imagine a set of fishing regulations that excessively protected fish from being caught, but harmed the livelihoods of fishermen and pushed up prices for consumers. On the other hand, it is perfectly possible to envision a system which allowed an unmitigated free-for-all which devastated fish stocks once and for all. Neither situation would be desirable, but under the CFP we have managed to combine the worst features of each scenario.

New research from the TaxPayers' Alliance shows that the CFP has done a huge amount of harm to consumers, the fishing industry and fish themselves.

Due to this absurd system, fish stocks have been devastated while hundreds of thousands of tonnes of fish are caught, killed and then have to be dumped – dead – into the sea every year because they are illegal under the quota system. Quotas intended to protect against overfishing have instead led to fishermen being forced into the inexact science of scouring the seas for the correct kind of fish, killing and dumping any "wrong" fish they find on the way. As fish populations dwindle, other animals, such as seabirds, also suffer.

The declining stocks and the burden of regulation are not just killing fish in the sea, they are destroying jobs on land. Judging from the government's own statistics, almost 100,000 jobs have been lost in fishing and dependent industries since the advent of the CFP.

With a shrinking fishing industry suffering rising costs, fewer fish are available to buy in the shops, so consumers lose out too. People have to pay £4.7bn a year more for their fish than they otherwise would – a huge £186 per year, per family.

Those same families lose out through their tax bill and lost economic growth as well as at the supermarket till. The cost of administering the CFP, subsidising the scrapping of fishing boats, red tape, wasted resources, higher unemployment and missed trading opportunities is a further £2.8bn a year. That typical family are thus made another £111 poorer each year.

The EU's control of our fisheries has been an unmitigated disaster. It is a masterclass in how not to regulate either an industry or an ecological resource. What, then, should we do? First we need proper accountability and true democratic control of our fisheries. It is absurd that we have only equal power to decide the fate of this marvellous natural resource of ours as landlocked Austria does. Not only does that reduce the pressure for a better system (it is not Austrian jobs being lost), it makes it far harder to secure the urgent change that we need.

It would be a disgrace if our fish stocks were allowed to dwindle away because they had become a chip in a game of international horse-trading.

The EU has clearly demonstrated its inability to competently regulate the fishing industry. While our fish stocks have died off and our fishermen have lost their jobs, other countries free of the CFP have managed to sustain healthy fish reserves and avoid the long-term unemployment that blights so many British former fishing communities. Sustainable fisheries can be achieved.

The control of fisheries in Brussels is a continuing barrier to desperately needed changes to the way we fish. We can and must do a better job of managing our fisheries than the EU has – let's face it, we could hardly do worse.