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A fisherman who flouted European laws by refusing to throw back tonnes
of dead fish has been "let off" with a conditional discharge
- in a move that could throw Government plans for an enforcement clampdown
into disarray.
Welsh fisherman Haydn Jones, pictured above, openly broke European quota
restrictions last year, saying his tight cod quota forced him to throw
back nine out of every ten fish he caught - even though they were dead.
Mr Jones, 67, told the court his quota of 100kg of cod per month did
not allow him to make a living and bore no relation to the state of stocks.
In two consecutive months last year he openly caught and sold more than
a tonne of cod - ten times his quota - in protest at the rules.
"I have to break the law to make a living," he told Mold Crown
Court, before adding: "It does not help stocks recover by dumping
dead fish back into the sea."
Mr Jones said his actions, which he made no efforts to conceal, were
"similar to the suffragettes who broke the law because the law was
wrong."
The Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which brought
the prosecution, urged the judge to impose the maximum fine of £50,000.
But although Mr Jones, of Anglesey, had no legal defence to the charges,
Judge Geoffrey Kilfoil gave him a conditional discharge. When told that
over quota fish had to be thrown back dead, Judge Kilfoil asked: "Well
what's the sense in that?"
The punishment was deemed so light Defra broke with normal procedure
and did not issue a press release on the case despite securing a conviction.
The sympathetic judgment will add to the mounting controversy over so-called
"discards" of over-quota fish. It could also scupper Government
plans to tighten up enforcement of the controversial law.
The judgment comes at a critical time for the Government, which is facing
the threat of prosecution itself from the European Commission, which claims
that the UK is too lax in enforcing fishing laws. Among the criticisms
levelled by the Commission was the low level of fines meted out to fishermen
breaking the rules.
The law, enshrined in the Common Fisheries Policy, forces skippers to
throw back fish for which they have no quota, even though the fish are
usually dead or dying.
Neil Parish, a South West Euro-MP and Conservative fisheries spokesman
in the European Parliament, said the Haydn Jones case would increase pressure
for the CFP to be reformed or abandoned. Mr Parish said: "We cannot
condone people breaking the law, but judges are quite rightly asking where
the logic is in all this. Throwing back dead fish makes a nonsense of
the idea of conservation and it has got to be changed. Of all the problems
with the CFP this is the one that offends the public the most.
"Judgments of this kind will put pressure on the Government and
the European Commission to bring about changes. Judges are saying it is
a nonsense. The law is wrong and it needs to be changed."
In a landmark report on fisheries enforcement last year the National
Audit Office warned that the discards policy was in danger of bringing
the entire system into disrepute. The NAO urged ministers to press for
reforms in Europe that would allow over-quota fish to be landed and sold
to fund further fisheries research.
Paul Trebilcock, Chief Executive of the Cornish Fish Producers Association,
said the discard policy fuelled great resentment among both fishermen
and the public. Last year Cornish fishermen were even refused permission
to sell off over quota fish for charity. Mr Trebilcock said: "A single
beam trawler in Newlyn today is likely to have thrown back two tonnes
in live weight of monkfish in the last seven to eight day fishing trip.
Multiply that by 30 boats - the Newlyn beam trawler fleet - and it gives
a stark figure of 60 tonnes of perfectly good, valuable fish now rotting
upon the seabed."
But David Muirhead, a solicitor and fishermen's leader, warned Westcountry
skippers that they could not necessarily rely on a sympathetic hearing
if they tried to emulate Mr Jones. "In courts down here you may get
a very different response from the magistrates or judge," he said.
A spokeswoman for Defra also insisted that prosecutions would continue.
She said that in other cases judges had imposed substantial fines.
She added: "We remind the judges how much they can fine, but it
is up to the court how much people are fined.
"We have to work within the quotas we are set. The law is there
and we have to enforce it".
article copyright © WESTERN MORNING NEWS
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