Transferable quotas are seen within the industry as the issue which is likely to cause the most problems when CFP reform negotiations get under way later this year, certainly far more than discards.
Now the National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations has warned that extreme positions and incendiary language are being adopted. "The question of how quotas have become tradable legal rights in the UK, and whether this is a good or bad thing is being conducted, in heated terms, between those who see tradable concessions as a panacea for the failures of fisheries policy and those who see it as a type of crime," it says.
"This debate is important because it touches the current discussion on the way forward for the under-10m fisheries within domestic fisheries policy but also the direction of CFP reform."
The NFFO said that on the one side of the argument are the European Commission, Defra and parts of the environmental lobby, which see the allocation of fishing rights, or “fishing concessions”, as a way of achieving sustainable fisheries and breaking free from the “tragedy of the commons”. Their core argument is that allocating fishing rights gives the fishing vessel operators who receive them a vested interest in thinking long term and fishing in ways that preserves or increases their share of the resource, which in effect have become one of their assets.
"The counter-view, sometimes expressed in vigorous language by a mix of journalists, lawyers and single issue fishing groups, is that the introduction of this form of rights-based management amounts to the stealth privatisation of a public resource. 'The biggest property grab since the Norman invasion” according to one over-excited legal commentator'."
For its part, The NFFO said it held no ideological position on rights-based management.
"We are interested in what works for the fishing industry as a whole. The evidence of the last two decades suggests that the development of a system of rights-based management has helped the UK industry to move beyond the anarchy of the era of black-fish, when under-reporting, misreporting and over-reporting undermined the viability and reputation of the whitefish sector, along with the scientific assessments on which quotas are ultimately based. It has helped to achieve a high level of compliance and an industry that looks to the future in collaboration with fisheries managers and fisheries scientists."
This was not to say that a rights-based system of allocations was automatically the best option in all circumstances or some magic wands, the Federation insisted.
The NFFO concludes: "This balanced, proportionate and cautious view is in stark contrast to both the advocates of rights-based management who see it as the solution to everything, and those who see it as a massive and stealthy conspiracy to privatise and monopolise a public resource. In order to draw some semblance of proportion into a debate, that threatens to spin into ever wilder claim and counter claim, we have described below some of the salient features of the current quota management system in the UK that should be taken into account for those interested in arriving at an informed judgement."
