Agenda and draft minutes

Contact: Helen Prendergast  Democratic Advisor

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Items
No. Item

6.

Appointment of Chair and Vice Chair

The Committee will be asked to appoint a Chair and Vice Chair for this meeting.

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Committee agreed that Councillor Morris is appointed as Chair and Councillor Fletcher is appointed Vice Chair for this particular meeting.

7.

Declarations of Interest

Members will be asked to make any declarations of interest in respect of items on this agenda.

Additional documents:

Minutes:

In accordance with the code of conduct the following declarations of interest were made by Councillors as follows –

 

Name

Minute Number and Item

Reason

Interest

Councillor Churchill

Minute 9

He knew Mr Peter Macconnell (witness)

Personal

Councillor Buchan

Minute 9

Member of the Devon and Severn IFCA and the Tamar  Estuaries Consultative Forum

Personal

Councillor Mrs  Aspinall

Minute 9

Member of the South West Ports Welfare Committee

Personal

 

 

8.

Chair's Urgent Business

To receive reports on business, which in the opinion of the Chair, should be brought forward for urgent consideration.

Additional documents:

Minutes:

There were no items of Chair’s urgent business.

9.

Fishing and Fisheries pdf icon PDF 4 MB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Head of Economy, Enterprise and Employment (Amanda Ratsey) presented the Fishing and Fisheries report which highlighted the following key points –

                       

(a)

when Britain joined the European Union in 1973, it became bound by the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP); under the CFP member states’ share of the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) was laid down using a formula known as ‘relative stability’ which was based on historic catch records, most of which pre-dated the CFP and were drawn up at the time that a significant proportion of UK fishing was undertaken in Iceland;

 

 

(b)

following Brexit, the UK would become an independent coastal state whose relationship with the EU and its member states would be  bound by the UN Convention on the Law off the Sea (UNCLOS) and 1995 United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement; under UNCLOS the UK wold have the right to determine the extent to which  it exploited  all fish stocks in its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ);

 

when the UK left the EU, relative stability would no longer apply; an alternative approach was zonal attachment whereby a TAC was shared according to the spatial distribution of a stock for each species over time; this was the system used by Iceland and Norway and many other countries across the world;

 

 

(c)

the total net gain to the UK of zonal attachment had been estimated at £420m a year; over the five year period from 2011 to 2015, non UK EU fishing boats landed almost eight times more fish and shellfish (by weight) from the UK Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) than the UK did from other areas of the European Union’s EEZ, or almost five times more value;

 

 

(d)

as a first step towards the UK reverting to independent control of its fisheries, the UK Government gave notice in July 2017 of its intention to withdraw from the London  Fisheries Convention; the Convention allowed vessels from five European countries to fish within six to 12 nautical miles of the UK coastline; their rights of access would cease in July 2019; an estimated 10,000 tonnes of fish including mackerel and herring had been caught by fishing vessels from France, Belguim, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands in 2015;

 

 

(e)

on the south coast of the UK, Plymouth was the clear leader in capacity (GT, a measure of size and capacity of fishing fleet, including the average size of vessels which in turn were assumed to approximate to the pressure on marine fish resources and the environment);

 

 

(f)

in an average year, Plymouth Trawler Agents dealt with 350 vessels of which 80% were under 10m boats; gross sales through the Plymouth Trawler Agents electronic auction in 2016 was £17.2m;

 

 

(g)

Plymouth Trawler Agents (PTA) sold catches landed by boats in Plymouth, as well as collecting or arranging transport from a large number of ports that had limited fish selling facilities; the long list of such ports included Cowes, Dartmouth, Lowestoft, Portsmouth, Southampton, Weymouth and Whitehaven;

 

 

(h)

it was hoped that the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 9.

10.

Recommendations

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Committee agreed that the following recommendations are submitted to Cabinet for consideration –

 

(1)

to produce a plan for sustainable fishing to secure the industry’s future in the City by September 2019;

 

 

(2)

to agree the consultation responses to the Fisheries White Paper: Sustainable Fisheries for Future Generations (as attached as appendix 1);

 

 

(3)

to increase resources and expertise supporting the sector by employing a Fishing Development Officer which will enable the Council to deliver recommendation 1 above;

 

 

(4)

Plymouth works with the Local Government Association in order to create a network of key port cities;

 

 

(5)

recreational angling should be considered as part of the whole approach to sustainable fisheries.