A week after the Tories announced that they would scrap the £ 22.50 rod licence there is scarcely any support for their position amongst the national governing bodies for angling and leading angling politicians. Prior to the announcement senior figures in the sport warned the Tories against simply looking for a populist gimmick without examining the facts or the consequences.

Parliamentary Spokesman for Angling Martin Salter MP said:-

“This is a cheap political gimmick by the Tories who are simply grubbing around for a few votes and a couple of headlines. They have already been told that scrapping the rod licence would strip between £ 15-16m out of the total fisheries budget for the Environment Agency of £ 24m. This would represent a 66% cut in funding and totally restrict the ability of the EA to fight pollution, to re-stock our fisheries or to promote angling participation projects like Mick Watson’s fantastic Get Hooked on Fishing scheme in County Durham.”

He added:-

“This hopelessly uncosted policy is little more than a licence to pollute and would put angling back into the Dark Ages. Virtually every European country has a system of rod licences to fund fisheries work and angling needs every penny it can get to protect and enhance the waterside environment. The Tories are refusing to say where the £ 16m shortfall will come from and are also pledged to cut 20% from public expenditure as a whole so there is little prospect of the EA being able to continue its fisheries work. In fact the last time we had a Tory government the yearly grant-in-aid for EA fisheries work was cut from £ 14.5 m to £ 7.4 m between 1994 and 1996.”

Countryside Alliance spokesman Tim Bonner said:-

“We believe there is a justification for fishing licences and we are not in agreement about removing them. The money goes straight into water quality issues and river conservation, so there is a very important point to it. Also, fishermen have a seat at the table when expenditure of that money is discussed. Canoeists, by comparison, don’t pay a fee so their voice is far less loud.”

Nature Conservation and Fisheries Minister Ben Bradshaw MP made it clear that the government will oppose the Tory plans saying:-

“The Government is committed to angling, a mass-participation sport, but it would make no sense scrapping angling licences. These pay for essential work undertaken by the Environment Agency in cleaning, re-stocking and preserving waterways. I welcome the fact that the Countryside Alliance recognise, and many anglers would agree, that the work being done by the Environment Agency is to the benefit of the whole sport and the wider environment. Without that £ 15m of revenue a year, there would be severe pressure on the Environment Agency in providing its current level of services. As the Alliance says, the fee also gives anglers an important voice which is heard clearly in Government.”

Mr Salter recently visited the Get Hooked on Fishing Project to see how they have benefited from financial support from the Environment Agency.

Mick Watson, Executive Director of Get Hooked on Fishing said:-

“Without the support and funding from the Environment Agency Get Hooked would never have got off the ground benefiting over 300 young people so far with many more to come. Any policy like this which would remove resources from the EA’s valuable fishery work would be a disaster for angling as a whole. The rod licence must be retained.”

The Tories have got it into their heads that the licence costs as much to enforce and collect as it produces in revenue – this is nonsense. Collection costs are around £ 1.2 million the bulk of which goes to the Post Office network which needs all the support it can get, particularly in rural areas. Enforcement costs are less than £ 1m p.a. and most anglers welcome seeing an EA bailiff on the bank side checking that all is well.

The recent Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Review which reported in 2000 unanimously concluded that the rod licence was an important part of the funding for fisheries work. This is the view of all the mainstream national angling bodies. The Tories said nothing to contradict this conclusion at the time – so why are they making a fuss now?

Paul Knight – Director of the Salmon and Trout Association threw his weight behind those opposing the rod licence ban saying:

“The licence fee contributes £ 15m net to an annual EA Fisheries budget of some £ 24m, and so is vital to the continued efficiency of that service. If the licence fee were abolished, we do not believe that the Treasury of any Government, present or future, would be prepared to make this up with extra GIA. Indeed, angling and fisheries have been asking for increased GIA support for the EA so that their fisheries budget is expanded, not reduced. Paying a licence fee gives angling a voice at the ‘top table’ where angling and fisheries issues are decided – specifically Government departments and agencies

Paying a licence fee and producing funding towards the maintenance, improvement and development of fisheries, upon which, of course, angling depends, gives the sport a certain moral status when negotiating such issues as access. That is not to say angling should be necessarily closed to shared access agreements, but at least our starting position is one of strength, as we already pay for our sport and are regulated in our use of water”

Martin Salter concluded:-

“Iain Duncan Smith has miscalculated badly and his crackpot scheme has bombed spectacularly. He is now faced with a stark choice – either rip up his economic policy by committing to find the extra £ 15million that will be lost in rod licence revenue by increasing public expenditure or face the charge of becoming the polluters friend and damaging Britain’s most popular participant sport enjoyed by over 3 million people.”

Rod Licence – The Facts

  • The licence is a charge not a tax. It brings in around £ 15 million net of collection and enforcement costs.
  • The £ 15 million net income is used to pay for environmental and fishing protection and fishing improvements. It is all spent to benefit fisheries and licence payers.
  • It is not true to say that the licence is deeply unpopular, at least with the majority of anglers. In recent years, independent surveys have consistently demonstrated that between 70 and 80% of anglers think that the fisheries service we provided with the licence money is either “fairly” or “very” good.
  • The Agency checks around 150,000 licences, and measured evasion is less than 5% of checks.
  • The licence is easily obtained. In addition to the 17,000 Post Office outlets, it can be bought by Internet or by telephone. The latter two methods issue a “virtual licence” – a code number – and you can be legally fishing in 10 minutes. We also sold nearly 100,000 licences by Direct Debit this year.
  • The licence costs only £ 3 for a day licence for an occasional angler. Under 12’s are exempt, and up to the age of 17, a junior licence can be bought for £ 5. Anglers over 65 years old and many disabled anglers get the licence for £ 11.
  • The recent Salmon and Freshwater Fishing Review, established on an independent cross-party basis, reported in 2000. It unanimously concluded that the Rod licence was an important part of future funding for fisheries work, which was underfunded. This was supported by all the mainstream National Angling bodies, including the National Federation of Anglers and the Salmon and Trout Association.
  • Over the last six years, when we have widely advertised increases in the price of a rod licence, we have never received more than 20 objections, despite selling more than 1 Million licences each year.
  • The service provided from rod licence income is illustrated in Annex 1. More detailed examples, including more specific examples, can be accessed by looking at fish-e on the Agency’s website.

Examples of what Rod licence income is spent on.

Fishery Protection

  1. Regulation and enforcement to prevent damaging introductions of non-native species and introduction and spread of diseases. Process circa. 8,000 fish movements per year (involves 400 health checks). Also provide in depth investigation of circa 150 fish mortalities per annum. EA 1
  2. Regulation of fishing and fisheries, including controls on catches that protect the resource for all to enjoy.
  3. Response to 700 fish mortalities per year and undertake roughly 150 fish rescues.
  4. Anti-poaching enforcement covering salmon, sea trout and eels. Rod licence enforcement, which includes checking that anglers are fishing legally (e.g. within the fishing season).
  5. Development control – input of fisheries issues into authorisations relating to abstraction, water quality and flood defence (approximately 100,000 per year)

Fishery Development and Participation

  1. Two coarse and five salmonid fish farms, stocking some 2 million fish per annum to restore stocks and fisheries damaged by pollution or other factors.
  2. Fishery creation and restoration, creating angling opportunities in places where few or none existed before. Fishery habitat improvements which usually benefit the wider aquatic environment as well as fisheries. Bonus licence income for 2002/03 provided funding for 47 coarse and trout projects. This year funding has been allocated for a further 100 projects with more expected.EA 2
  3. Provision of advice and best practice to fishery owners and managers to provide the best opportunities to anglers. Production of advisory literature of local and national relevance.EA 3EA 4
  4. Promotion of angling participation, increasing the number of anglers taking up the sport and safeguarding its future. Well on the way to reaching our target of providing 100k coached angling sessions over a 3-year period. There is a focus on reaching disadvantaged groups, in particular, youngsters, disabled people and people in areas showing high levels of deprivation.EA 5 (type ‘app’ into search).

Monitoring and Research

Funding of research and development, much of which results in a better understanding of fish, fishing and fisheries and hence better management of fisheries.

Survey and monitoring work, establishing the presence or absence of fish species and stock levels throughout England and Wales, providing valuable information for the management of these waterways. Between 2,500 and 3,000 surveys carried out each year supported by circa. 52,000 fish age determinations that assist with understanding population dynamics.

Radio 4 PM Programme
1755 Monday 25 August 2003

Speakers: Presenter and Dave Clarke – head of fisheries at the Environment Agency.

Presenter: Iain Duncan Smith thinks he’s on to a vote winner. The Conservative leader wants to abolish the rod license that all anglers have to pay each year. Twenty-two pounds fifty is the price, the money going towards officially maintaining the river banks. But Mr Duncan Smith believes much of the money raised goes on bureaucracy. Good idea? Dave Clarke is head of fisheries at the Environment Agency.

Dave Clarke: From where we sit it seems quite a surprising idea. The rod licence raises something like sixteen million pounds a year in net income, which is used for a wide range of environmental and fishery protection and fishery improvement work. So if that were to be done away with it would cause serious problems for the work that is actually done for fisheries on the ground.

Pres: Conservatives argue that much of the money is wasted on bureaucracy. That of course is on checking that everyone has a licence.

DC: I find that hard to fathom. The actual cost of selling the licence is around one to 1.2 million pounds a year. And the actual cost of enforcement I think is less than a million. So basically around two million pounds goes on the actual cost of providing and enforcing the licence but that still leaves a large sum of money which is for positive work.

Pres: The other idea is that a lot of people are put off fishing [inaudible] because licences are hard to get hold of, on a Sunday, on a bank holiday.

DC: Again I don’t accept that; basically you can buy a licence through any one of 17,000 Post Office outlets. You can also buy it on the internet on the Agency website and you can buy it by telephone on 0870 166 2662. Essentially both the later methods enable you to go fishing immediately because you are then issued with a simple reference number and you can go straightaway. You can be out fishing within five minutes.

Pres: You can see how this idea though would be popular with everyone who fishes, it would save them money.

DC: Again, I don’t accept that. We undertake independent market research to look at how both the fishery service is perceived, and how anglers actually view the licence. And in fact for a number of years now what that has shown is that nearly 80 per cent of anglers think that the fisheries service gives good value for the money that they pay. So in that sense I think that appears to be out of tune with what we get back from our market research with the angling community.

Pres: There is an idea that there is quite a level of evasion, though obviously it’s hard to put numbers on that, might these proposals make you take another look at [inaudible].

DC: Well firstly, it’s not hard to put numbers on level of evasion because we check in excess of 200,000 licences a year and from those checks we know precisely what proportion of people actually do evade; the people basically who we do actually catch on the banks without a licence. And the proportion of evasion is something over five per cent so it’s quite a low evasion rate, which reflects the fact that the majority, the vast majority of anglers recognise that rod licence is a necessary and positive thing.

Pres: Dave Clarke is head of fisheries at the Environment Agency.

NOTE FROM FISHINGmagic
FISHINGmagic offers equal space to any Opposition MP or spokesman who would like to reply.

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