I am grateful for the opportunity to comment on the regulations. The only unfamiliar thing about being back at the committee is that I am on the wrong side of the table—but it is good to see you all again.
The instrument relates to salmon fishing by all methods. As members will be well aware, there are many anglers in my constituency, and there is also a significant salmon netting operation. Members will also have seen that there has been a great deal of correspondence about the instrument. I want to pick out what I think is the most important issue addressed in that correspondence, and I think that it can be reduced to a small number of words.
In so far as close time affects those who fish, it seems to me that there is a slight difference between the netsmen and those who have an angling interest. During close time, there is an opportunity for anglers to carry on fishing and to put the fish back into the water, so there is some economic activity and benefit within the angling community. On the other hand, if netsmen are not allowed to take a fish out of the water, they can do precisely nothing. There is an economic opportunity for those with an angling interest, but there is zero economic opportunity for those with a netting interest; all that they have is their costs.
There is also a proportionality issue. If anglers can take fish and then put them back, there is a recognition that some of those fish will die because they have been injured or simply exhausted in the process. I do not know what the mortality rate is. I have seen a figure of 18 per cent, but I have no idea how robust that number is. Nonetheless, some fish will be lost. There is some inequity in that the netsmen, who admittedly kill every fish they take, can take precisely none, whereas the angling community can necessarily kill some. There is an equity issue in that.
All that I want to put to the committee is that, in its response to the Government, at some point I would like you to make those points and to make the consequent point that for the netsmen—wherever they may be, and they are not all in my constituency—there is no income whatsoever to be derived when they cannot catch, although there are fixed costs, as there are in every business. Indeed, in most businesses, all costs are fixed for a short period of time, and that is what we are talking about.
That takes us straight to the issue of compensation. I think that there is a recognition that no compensation need legally be paid to the businessmen in my community. I am not sure whether that is the position, but it seems to be the implication. On behalf of those businesses, I simply want to ask the committee to bring to the Government’s attention the fact that some compensation might well be entirely appropriate. The quantum of that is not easy to come by, but it looks as if a figure of about £10,000 a month is consistent with what has happened before in compensation from the Esk District Salmon Fishery Board to the netsmen. That appears to be the right kind of number, but I am sure that the accountants can talk about that.
That is really what I wanted to bring to the committee. Please could you take to the Government the points about equity and the appropriateness of compensation?