The Scottish Government

Forum 2: Question and Answer - Session 3

David Dunkley: Before I start, perhaps what I should do is introduce the members of the Steering Committee that we have here and who they represent. David Howell from SNH; Peter Maitland from the Fish Conservation Centre; Alastair Stephen from the Institute of Fisheries Management; Ron Woods from the Scottish Federation for Coarse Angling; George Holdsworth from the Association of Scottish Still Waters Fisheries; Ronny Picken from SANA; Seymour Munro from the Atlantic Salmon Trust; Andrew Wallace as you know from the Association of District Salmon Fishery Boards; Roger Brook from the River and Fisheries Trust Scotland; Derek Keith from the Scottish Campaign for Public Angling; Callum Sinclair from SEPA; and Willie Miller representing the Consultative Committee who advise Scottish Ministers on protection order applications.

First question, Drew.

Drew Jamieson, ex-Consultative Committee:

We have one example of a Board if you like which has responsibility for all species in the Tweed and I wondered if anybody could tell us how the Tweed manages to perform its responsibilities for all species and to fund it.

David Dunkley: We could ask Nick Yonge who is the Clerk to the River Tweed Council.

Bert Johnston, Chairman of the Liaison Committee and Vice Chairman of the Tweed Commissioners:

My experience is limited to the Tweed. It is a unitary body and is entirely self-funding and runs an extensive research organisation as well although that can attract grant funding. Particularly in the trout fishing part of it there is a huge voluntary element, if in fact there was something like a rod licence which partly must be funding a bureaucracy wouldn't that in the opinion of the Committee dilute the huge voluntary element that's there already which would in fact lead to increases in the rod funding? Did I not say that very clearly?

Andrew Wallace: If I may attempt to answer that. I think the Tweed is an extremely interesting model. It is subject to entirely different legislation to all the other fishery boards which confers on it responsibilities for other species. It also has the benefit of being probably one of the best salmon rivers in the world and it has a very, very, firm financial base from which to operate which allows a considerable amount of genuine sort of cross-subsidy to the management of the habitat and other species. That is great, but there aren't that many Tweed's around in Scotland and in many areas I think you would find that there is neither the statutory responsibility nor the luxury of extra money to do that. So whilst, yes, your case is well made for the Tweed but it doesn't actually solve the problem everywhere else.

Alastair Stephen: One of the downsides in the SWAT analysis to producing the rod licence was we had identified it as is this going to potentially damage the amount of support and funding that is already coming in and that was one of the things that had been identified. We are not saying that we know all the answers, it's just that we had taken that on board as one of the potential downsides.

Cameron Durie, Environment Agency:

I'll prefix my question by saying that I do work for the Environment Agency but I'm not here today to act as a primary advocate for an agency system. But my question relates to the management options which you put together for us today Andrew. And effectively 6 of the 7 management options that you put forward were for fisheries only organisations, and although you throw the Environment Agency model in effectively probably as far as most people in this room know maybe as a fisheries only type of organisation, but clearly that's not the case because the Environment Agency is a much wider environmental regulator within which fisheries sits. There are points for and there are points against that approach. I just wondered what thinking the Steering Group had gone through to effectively go almost wholeheartedly down the fishery only view of how you should get more holistic in your approach but draw the boundary at anything with a wider environmental remit?

Andrew Wallace: Fair point. I think we should have been clearer about that. We were really referring to the fisheries management function within the Environment Agency. But to address your point, of course the problem with managing fish and fisheries in isolation is that you are only dealing with part of the problem but of course we have other public sector bodies up here responsible for management of the natural heritage, etc, SEPA and SNH obviously being principle ones. So I suppose really we felt that rather than tackle reform of SNH and SEPA much as many of us might have had ambitions in that department, that we probably ought to stick just with the fisheries remit and concentrate on that.

David Howell: If I could just really support what Andrew said there. I think from the SNH perspective having looked at this increasingly over the last 10-15 years, what's being discussed today is already a huge challenge, a vast challenge, and its springing out of a history of there not being a co-ordinated national approach, but an evolutionary local approach so we're trying to build from that towards a system which has some national consistency but need not necessarily be a national agency.

Callum Sinclair: I guess I would just chime along with everyone else here I mean I think that the big thing for me having been involved in fisheries and now being involved with SEPA is that the proposals that seem to be coming forward require significant support from the angling sector for them to be at all successful, and let's not kid ourselves I don't suspect SEPA is best of pals with all the angling sector so I think first and foremost we need a situation which is going to work and that means I think that growing something from a position which is working or working better increasingly is maybe better than trying to throw all of that away, or risk throwing all of that away and invest it solely in SEPA or SNH or A N Other. I guess ultimately the Executive will decide where this might go but I think we as SEPA and I think SNH were very conscious that fisheries deserve a system that works and deserve a system that support it and I think that's where we have tried to as a Steering Group go with this, not throw good things away but actually try and build them into something which will be supported by you and others hopefully.

Sandy Bennet, Upper Spey:

You've thrown into the equation here rod licence which is a time bomb on its own, but you say what you are wanting to raise but you haven't said how much per head you are willing to charge for it, and you haven't said also would the permits be over and above that which I am sure it is but could you clarify that please.

Alastair Stephen: The answer is we haven't actually thought about how much. I think it would be helpful actually if perhaps Cameron gave us an indication of what the licence costs are south of the border, so there is more work to do on that and I think this is why we believed as a Committee that probably this is the time for some professional help with this to do a really thorough analysis of what the costs and benefits of this sort of system are. So I think there is a lot more work to go on it but I come back to the point, all we were trying to do is find the money from somewhere to do the job that I think we all agree needs doing, OK you may be right in thinking that anglers are the naturally sort of soft target in this but we looked at it in the round and we really couldn't come up with any other solution so the only way to go.

[Background chatter: you mentioned a figure of £1.5m and 2.5m]

George Holdsworth: We had an amount of money, I think £1½-2½m up on the screen and that was priced out, and it was very much a figure plucked out of the air which was between £20-30 a year, but obviously if you were selling rod licences, and it is a big if, if you were selling rod licences then you would have weekly rod licences and day rod licences as in England. In England if I remember correctly it's £23-£24 a year for trout and coarse fishing and it's £60-65 roughly a year for salmon fishing. We felt it was in a pricing that we did that it would be ridiculous to try with the Scottish angler to have the two levels because everyone is very geographically mobile and does salmon fishing one day, trout fishing the next sort of thing. But we want to stress that the £20-30 that we used to get this figure was purely just a guesstimation figure we thought was not a ridiculous figure as in £200 a year or something, but on the other hand it wasn't a completely low figure of say £1 a year where it would obviously cost you far more to raise the money than you would be getting in if that answers for you.

Paul Knight, Salmon and Trout Association: Again bringing up the English example, it is very interesting that the Conservative Party round about the time of the game fare put out a consultation paper and said should we scrap, they actually wanted to scrap, the rod licence in England. And you would have thought the anglers would have said yes, great, we'll get behind that and in fact overwhelmingly we didn't because essentially we felt that by paying a licence it gave us a stake, we were genuine stakeholders in the environment, in the fisheries effort, and it gave us a sort of moral high ground not only in the management of the resource on which our sport relies, but also you know in the years ahead let's not beat about the bush we are going to have PETA activists and whoever else to counter in the future and we felt that that moral high ground was extremely important, that we had an environmental part to play as well as a sport part to play, we might not actually get our feet wet, but some of us do, but we were actually paying for it. We pay £18.5m gross to the Environment Agency each year, I think I'm probably right Cameron, about £1.5m to collect it. So that there is about £16-£16.5m net that goes into the Environment Agency budget of about £28m on fisheries, and as I say that gives us a really serious stakeholder interest in the whole thing. So I'll just put that into you we have gone through a consultation process, we've actually got the Conservative Party to change their point of view on this and in their election manifesto they will not be wanting to ban the licence in England.

Mark Bilsby, Western Isles Fisheries Trust:

You seem to be coming at this from the amount of money you can raise, but as you've mentioned there is a strain in funding on fisheries within Scotland and in working for a Fisheries Trust I am very aware of that. Have you calculated how much it will cost to adequately fund fisheries management in Scotland , and to work probably from that way round and work back the way to see where the money will be from.

Alastair Stephen: Thanks Mark. We haven't adequately done that job because we haven't got all the information that is required. We've done as best we can and we've come up with a figure of between £8 and £10m to do the job better, and as we are only raising £3-3.5m through the private sector, through the salmon levies and funding for the Trusts, that leaves a large gap, and all we have come up with is a way of looking at trying to get everybody to pay a bit more. I personally and others here have been asking for public sector funding for this for the last decade and I am very disappointed personally that we are not getting anything in the immediate future. But that doesn't mean to say we are not going to get something in the medium and long-term future. My personal feeling is that we will stand a much better chance of making a case to the public sector if the private sector and all the stakeholders at the end of the day, the anglers, are seen to be contributing.

Andrew Wallace: Could I just add to that because I think Mark was probably asking about not just how much money one might raise but what it would be spent on, how would these structures, what would they look like. And we have done this again back at the envelope calculation but we were working on the basis of probably roughly speaking around about 22-24 area fisheries boards in Scotland. The map might not look very dissimilar to the map of the Fisheries Trusts network that you've seen there and there are all sorts of issues associated with getting to that position. So a area fisheries board with responsibility for all species that was properly funded and that would mean a proper administration to deal with fish movement licences and maybe assuming perhaps responsibilities for some of the protection order administration, or son of the protection order administration, plus collecting revenues. All those sort of general responsibilities so you would need a functional administration and a proper board, possibly even considering paying people to sit on these boards so that you actually get some really good quality people into the thing and then alongside that the Fisheries Trusts need to be adequately funded as well and that requires funding, you'll be grateful to hear, people like yourself and all the support staff that you need. And then there's the whole area of you know fisheries promotion and development you know which I know in the Western Isles that you are now embarking on. So it was that sort of package. There are 22-24 areas with that sort of set of arrangements and actually we have agreed as a Group to go away and do some further thinking about that and try and sort of tease out some better information about what those structures might look like, how many people they would need, what sort of direct responsibilities they would have and what sort of budgets they might require and that's work that we actually intended to do between our last meeting before Christmas and now but Christmas got in the way.

Callum Sinclair: Just a sort of observation really as someone who is no longer directly involved in it but I think Mark's point was well how big the job and do you need to raise the total amount to do the job. An observation would be that you are never going to get enough and it doesn't matter what way you cut it I think the debate at the minute is where does the money come from, where are the income streams as opposed to what are the big headline numbers because I guess every organisation, every agency, every arm of Government will say we aint got enough money to do everything we want to do and that's just the harsh cold reality of how we prioritise things. So I think that the steps the Group have done thus far have been where is the money going to come from and then there is going to have to be a prioritisation as to what you then do with whatever the finite amount is that you get in. I have difficulty in seeing how you could actually cost out what the fishery management job in totality would be before you actually get the structures in place and get the income streams agreed and I think that's you know the debate, there were some nods and there were some shakes when the word rod licence comes to bear and I think that you know without even having those principles agreed it's difficult to see how you can fund the job.

David Dunkley: I think that as a representative here of the Scottish Executive because there's been several references to there being a need for public funding on this. This is not an official Executive line. This is just my observations, random thoughts I suppose. What we have to bear in mind is that the Government, if we would call the Executive the Government, the First Minister did so I suppose that's good enough for me, doesn't actually have any money. It has your money. And it has to decide on how to spend your money in the light of the programme that it has put forward. As Andrew pointed out there has just been a comprehensive spending review and the next comprehensive spending review doesn't come until 2006. If we are going to get money available, there is very often mismatches between these things, if we are going to get monies available for whatever we're proposing to do then cases have to be made in the next comprehensive spending review. However, the important thing I think there to bear in mind is that the case has to be made. We can't expect the Executive I don't think to put aside a whole set of funds and say here's our answer away and find a question for it. What they will want is they will want some idea of what it is that is proposed to be set up, what it's going to look like, who's going to be on it, what it's going to do and how much it's going to cost. Then they can decide what proportion if any of that they can fund. But I don't think its going to be very easy for arguments among Ministers if there isn't a pretty good plan. And it's one of these things that we continually get into these chicken and egg questions that we can't have the management without the funding but by the same token we can't actually reasonably get funding unless we know how the funds are going to be spent. Now the Steering Group in my view has done a tremendous amount of work so far and fleshed out quite a lot of the issues and I think there is a general consensus subject to what comes out here today of what the sort of philosophical approach will be. This unitary structure. But we need a little bit more flesh on those bones I think to cost it out properly so that submissions can be put to Ministers to say well this is what the people of Scotland realise, or this is their aspiration for fisheries management in Scotland, this is what it will do and this is our best guesstimate of what it will cost. And I think we are working towards that so there is a little bit of work to go yet but you know we've got to take a reality check. We are up against health and education and all sorts of other things so we are going to have to actually present a very good, well thought out and well costed case.

Slight change of tack Chairman if I may James Thomas from River Spey Anglers. Agreeing with the fact that everybody who uses the rivers should have equal access and be treated with respect, we have differences on the Spey as do other people with some other river users. Now 90% of it is very cordial but where in this equation does the canoer and the white water rafter and other river users come. And should perhaps they not even be represented so that at the end of the day we have a solution that would be happily acceptable to all the users, salmon fishers, trout fishers and canoeists alike.

Alastair Stephen: You are absolutely right. Whilst most of the people in this room are here because they are angling or because they own the rights to fish or they represent people with those interests, there are plenty of other calls on the use of the water and the waters edge and the Executive and the Parliament in the first few years since the devolution settlement decided to put through the Land Reform Act which introduced rights of access to the countryside which didn't touch the question of rights in relation to angling in terms of the property rights and how those relate to the rights to access the river or the loch edge or whatever for other purposes. So whatever proposals come forward through this package that we are discussing today as they relate to access must be linked to the evolution of the access to the countryside legislation.

James Thomas: So the Forum would take that on board and they would be our champion as it were in making sure that it wasn't forgotten.

Alastair Stephen: We would take the law of the land in Scotland as it is now and look at whatever proposals for angling access emerge from our discussions and try to marry those together.

James Thomas: Could I also add that I think that if one had a unitary authority which was enshrined in law and would probably be perceived to have greater authority and more widespread support than perhaps the Boards do at the moment, that they would be able to deal with just the sorts of things that you are talking about with greater authority and greater credibility than the present organisation is able to.

Iain Macdonald, River Spey Anglers Association:

In your address about the unitary authorities you mentioned accountability and that's a matter that concerns me greatly. The body will be set up by statute, be governed by statute and experience under the present system shows that the only redress where a Board may do something foolish or come off the rails, the anglers' only possibility of getting them back on the rails is judicial review and unless you happen to have £20 or £30,000 in your back pocket that's not possible. Fishery Boards are not accountable or reviewable to the Parliamentary Ombudsman. Could I ask you to give me some assurance or give it your most serious consideration than any new unitary authority that you are proposing would be accountable to the Parliamentary Ombudsman?

Andrew Wallace: I think that's precisely what I said in my presentation. We recognise that criticism, I think it's well-founded in some cases perhaps less well-founded in others and it needs to be addressed so when I use the word accountable I meant accountable and we'd have to set up a structure that you know stood the test of time and was a modern structure. And I have a feeling that if this sort of proposal went before Parliament that it would be very unlikely that it wouldn't be accountable because it would be scrutinised through all the Parliamentary processes and subject to interventions I am sure from people like yourself.

Alastair Stephen: Can I just add to that. I mean one of the things that Andrew didn't mention and we did discuss, because I take on board exactly what you are saying, we had thought that maybe an overarching committee would be established, and I know that's another committee, but to administer if there was public sector funding for example there would be a stick and carrot approach so that if you produced an audited 5 year plan and you stuck to what you were meant to be doing and you did things to the right standards and everybody was trained to the right standards then you would be eligible for public sector funding. If you didn't do that you didn't get the money, so there would be a process of getting people to a level where fisheries management was done properly.

Drew Jamieson again. I just wanted to go back to the Chairman's last comments. His final comment. The moment may have passed but he suggested that fisheries were having to compete with health and with education. I would like to suggest that we don't need to compete with health and education. We should be a part of health, we should be a part of education, we should be a part of social work, so I think if we set ourselves up as an independent group if you like as opposed to part of the great unwashed which we are, we contribute to society, or fisheries do, and I think we have to integrate with society and stop gazing up our navels and look at the bigger picture.

David Dunkley: Thank you.

Peter Reith, Federation of Border Angling Associations: Obviously coming at this from a disadvantage in that I am from a system that seems to be working without any problems. Two points really. Firstly relating to the management boards. I am a bit concerned in fact as the Chairman's commented that we have moved straight from the idea of a management board to how do we fund it without explaining what it is that it is going to do, how it is going to make anything any better than what we've got at the moment. And secondly in respect of the rod licence, having already as secretary been on the receiving end of all the correspondence that's been generated by the Border Esk rod licence issue, so far it's generated more hot air than the poll tax and that's just a very small aspect that doesn't even affect the Tweed. So I think you could expect to see a lot of opposition from the angling clubs and associations.

Ron Woods: Could I say something. When we started to look at this I tried to boil it down into what I think are a serious of very simple questions. And the first starting question is do we all believe that everything in the garden is rosy at the moment as regards fisheries management in Scotland. And everything I've heard over 5 or 6 years of being involved suggests that not everybody does. Whilst there is some diversity of view as to what is actually wrong most people think it's under-funded, most people think there are flaws, gaps, etc, etc, etc. So the question is what are you going to do about that. I think if we are sitting here in 2005 thinking all we do is jump up, make a lot of noise, say we're healthy and expect the Government to fund it then forget it folks. So we've got to find some way of making it work better and that means (a) putting in some money, or getting some money from somewhere, and (b) having a mechanism to actually do the doing. Now we've spent a lot of time over many years trying to work out what's the best way to get the money and what Andrew has said we have come up with rod licences as the least worst option. Now (a) the term rod licences is kind of closely associated with the system in England and Wales and with no disrespect to Cameron I think everybody that I know that fishes in England and Wales thinks there are flaws in the system there. But the concept of a universal levy on anglers for the privilege of being an angler is the best of a bad bunch of options. Similarly we've talked endlessly, there are only so many ways you can skin the cat as far as management structures are concerned. We've had 4 or 5 years of debates as to the pros and cons of the various options and the unitary body has surfaced as probably the most favourable. I recognise that if everybody here hasn't had the benefit, if that's the right word, of being involved in all those discussions all the time. I think most of us up at this particular side have and we are showing the careworn results of it because apart from Derek's accusation we are actually all under 40 it's just that we don't look it! The fact of the matter is you know this is not something that's plucked out because we like bureaucracy or we like taxing anglers it seems to be the only way forward. If people start from the premise that there needs to be more money into fisheries and I am very sorry I didn't catch the gentleman's name, but I mean the point that was made there that if anglers actually want to be taken seriously as stakeholders then being seen to produce that financial contribution, and I'm not belittling all the other ways in which anglers and angling contribute, being seen to make that financial contribution, being able to wave something in the Parliament's face in terms of anglers pay X amount of money in whatever you want to call your rod licence, is a price beyond perils and will leverage us a lot more than simply standing back and saying we're actually a good bunch of folk and we do good things for the Scottish economy and we do a lot of hard work of our own. I wish it was otherwise but I don't think it is.

Michael Smith, Lower Tay: I would agree with those words in as much as when you are dealing with the Scottish Executive, I wouldn't lavish too much praise on them Andrew. I am from the Lower Tay and on a busy day we might have 100 canoes, 40 rafts, and they effectively have disenfranchised my salmon anglers, my trout anglers and indeed the coarse anglers. So when you are dealing with the Scottish Executive, I would remind them that the Land Reform Bill has meant there are a lot more water users with a lot more "rights" therefore they should possibly be contributing towards the maintenance of the river, the river banks, seats, fences, stiles, etc. And as an aside I would say to SEPA that the angling interests are probably the best eyes and ears they have for water quality in this country. Thank you.

John Gibb, River Lochy Association. Apart from wholeheartedly supporting the view that has just been expressed from the other side of the room, I would like to just quickly highlight what I see to be a slight or potential inconsistency with your presentation Andrew and some of the suggestions, or one in particular. There's been a general sort of view which I personally from a management point of view wholeheartedly support, there should be a holistic approach to fishery management, and that all sorts of general feeling if you like that there should be a fairness, I am sure Orwell might have said all fish are equal. On that basis I would query what seems to be an inconsistency in the way that some of the private funding might be sought in that you are suggesting that 60% of the private funding that might go into this potential unitary body would come from a very small number of salmon fishing proprietors. Now, that's fair enough but would you also, or have you indeed, discussed or give those salmon proprietors the assurance that that money and the matched funding against that money would go towards salmon issues because it seems to me that if that doesn't happen then the only loser, of course its going to be winners and losers in this I think we've already said, but the only real loser is going to be our most economically important fish species.

Andrew Wallace: It's a good point and it has been discussed within the Committee and we have talked about basically ring-fencing that money and I guess you make a further point about ring-fencing any matched funding which is raised against that. I think probably there is agreement within this Group and people will correct me if I am wrong in that, that, and I did say it in my presentation, that the current salmon system which raises I think just under £3m per year, and that's just through the Boards, that's for getting proprietors own investments into various aspects which is considered to maybe multiply that figure up by a further factor of 3, or 3 times, that that system only just about covers what you salmon managers actually need to do. So I think in the previous presentation in June - I'm not sure if you were here - I did make a point of saying that we musn't throw the baby out with the bath water. The reason why I've suggested that we retain the current system of levies on salmon proprietors is quite simply because we can't really think of anything better to put in its place. But the whole issue of how that money is ring-fenced, how it is spent, and who is involved in that expenditure I'd agree with you absolutely needs further consideration.

Edward Mountain: Very quickly, from past experience taking the Queen's shilling usually comes with some restraints that are placed on you afterwards. So I think we want to be careful as an angling community going down the route of looking purely for the Queen's shilling. I think we can justify taking it where we are delivering in the public good and I think there's a case for that. The point I would make, or the question I would like to ask the Panel, is with the introduction of legislation like the Water Framework Directive surely we are going to be driven to a unitary structure for managing rivers and the development of catchment management plans and similar plans that are going on around the country are going to drive us to that anyway, so surely that's the way we should be going because it's going to be to all of our benefits for all river users.

Callum Sinclair: I, SEPA's there for the Water Framework Directive. Firstly, I wouldn't disagree with too much that you say there. Firstly that if the angling community decides that they wish to proceed for a range of different funding sources then certainly I would imagine that public funds by whatever route they come, direct from the Executive or funnelled/laundered even through an agency, will have requirements of it and there will be expectations as to what that money does in terms of structures or the sort of approaches that the management groups would take so I wouldn't disagree with that, and I certainly think that as a sector you know you should think about those issues. In terms of WFD, I wouldn't disagree with too much you said there either. In Scotland we are looking at a network of area advisory groups to help produce the river basin management plan. There is no specific requirement in the Water Framework Directive for catchment management plans. None. There is a requirement for sub-basin plans which is anything smaller than the whole area. So that means there may well be plans on catchments, there may well be plans on individual lochs, there may well be plans on individual bits of coast. So I think the key thing for me though thinking about Water Framework Directive and fisheries is who's door do you knock on to get an answer to a fisheries question at the minute in Scotland? I think there is rather a lot of doors to knock on and you know I think one of the key advantages to this sort of proposal is that there is one or two doors that you go to and you get a fisheries answer to a fisheries question, and that answer is not just driven by a salmon interest or a conservation species interest or a pike issue interest, it is a fisheries answer and I think that to me is one of the key advantages of this sort of approach that is being discussed today, that when you consider all things together then other people who may need to access you as a sector and a body of knowledge know where to go. At the minute I don't think too many people know where to go for fisheries advice on a consolidated framework so I think that is one of the key advantages for me in this sort of approach.

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