news/editorial

9 August 2015 News/Editorial

With, so far as one can tell, almost 100% opposition from the Tweed to the Scottish Government’s salmon kill licensing, quotas and tagging proposals, to come in as soon as 2016, the inevitable question is “How will we all deal with a law, with which we fundamentally disagree and for which there is no proven case, if the Government does not listen and brings it in anyway?”

It would seem that the Government will only accept killing licence applications from fishery owners, which puts owners in the invidious position of acting as proxy for the anglers to whom, for the most part, they let their fishing.

In other words, it is not the owners who will be killing salmon, but their tenants.

This gives two immediate problems, because, firstly, the owner may have a very different take on all this as compared to the tenants, and, secondly, the tenants may not speak with one voice either (some may want to kill some salmon and others may not).

So what are the owners to do? Do they canvass opinion amongst their tenants (of which there could be 100s on any one beat over the course of a year) or do they simply assume that their tenants will want to kill as many salmon for which he/she can get a successful application? And who is going to pay for all this; is the owner going to pay and effectively include the cost in the rent (not popular with those tenants who either catch nothing or do not want to kill anything) or do the owners take the extra cost on the chin, even though they may be non-fishers and will kill nothing themselves?

It is all very awkward and, of course, wholly unnecessary.

And where do the Tweed Commissioners (RTC) stand in all this? Legally, one imagines, the kill licence will have to allow salmon to be killed after 1st April (before that it is illegal to kill a salmon anywhere in Scotland) although the RTC has a voluntary code that no salmon is killed until 1st July….so what will the kill licence say? If it says 1st April, that will be in direct conflict with the RTC, and the Government would be allowing the killing of Tweed springers after 1st April against the advice of the RTC. Can that be going to happen?

And will the RTC have any say in the accumulated total of kill licence applications when it would seem that any contract will be between the fishery owners and the Government, with no place for the RTC. How absurd is that?

It is a shambles; we know nothing of the cost either of licence applications or of tags, there has been no answer as to how owners can let their fishing for 2016, which they normally do at least 6 months in advance, when they will not know how many tags they will get or what the cost will be (eg much Summer/Autumn 2016 fishing will be let in December 2015/January 2016, it would seem well before any decisions on licence applications which have to be in, it is thought, by 31/12/15).

And we have not even got to how beats, syndicates and associations can possibly allocate tags between their numerous and diverse anglers/tenants? What happens to tags which are unused? What happens to tags which are (inevitably) lost? Do owners/syndicates/associations have to keep a log/register of who has what tags and what (killed) fish has which/whose specifically numbered tag attached to it?

Owners will have a lot of thinking to do, bad enough if you agree with the whole thing, but as all owners, so far as we know, fundamentally disagree with it here on the Tweed, one wonders how they will react?

I was always taught that good law has the general support and understanding of the people who it affects, even if they do not especially like it.

This one will have neither support nor understanding.

My guess, therefore, is that it will not work……..maybe because it will prove un-policeable and everyone will ignore it?

The moral; don’t bring in laws which have neither provable purpose, nor public support.

But they will, won’t they, because they hear, but they do not listen?

And, of course, because they can.

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One of my kind Tayside readers tweeted last week that I had got it wrong by saying Scottish fishing had had no money from Government; I was, of course, referring to the Scottish Government and must apologise if that was not clear. He correctly pointed out that DEFRA, a department of the UK, not the Scottish, Government, had put up £1.5 million to assist with the 2003 reduction in the North East Drift Net Fishery.