Land Farms and Sea "Farms"?

 This week the Ferret has published figures which should shock everyone, about the massive increase in fish farm pollutants and the use of pesticides and antibiotics in recent years. The figures would be incredible, but result from reporting by the aquaculture companies themselves and are taken from Scottish Government and SEPA databases.

“The latest official pollution inventory reveals that discharges of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and zinc from salmon cages rose by more than 4,000 tonnes between 2019 and 2020. Overall emissions of pesticides used to kill sea lice also increased by 45 kilograms.”

In response to my tweet about this an industry apologist posted a graph showing the use of chemicals in land agriculture, for “context” in what he no doubt assumed was a gotcha, but he has only underlined once again the total difference between landbased and seabased activities. Of course, it’s by no means a given that practices in agriculture are 100% environmentally friendly. I’ll leave the argument about that to others.

I’ll also leave it for another day to discuss the fact that if farmers routinely saw up to 82% of their stock of mature cows dying off due to disease, the resultant piles of rotting corpses at the sides of fields would surely provoke public outcry. With aquaculture the facts only come to light occasionally, for example late last year when several hundred tonnes of dead salmon were taken off Gigha for ensiling, resulting in the ferry terminal being seriously affected by stink and mess, an event that would have gone unnoticed in official circles had not the dedicated Corin Smith been on hand with his drone.

https://www.facebook.com/issf.org.uk/videos/931620917461828

My main issue with the land/sea comparison is simply that farms are invariably owned by someone, whereas the seabed is owned, in terms of title, by the Crown, but held in trust for all of us, the public. The difference is more that purely conceptual; in the case of a conventional farm there is always an owner, be it the farmer or a landlord, with a vested interest to ensure that an asset that may have belonged to, or held under a secure tenancy for generations, will remain productive and/or marketable for those to come along in future. Those who are currently exploiting our public seabed have no such interest whatsoever. Let’s look briefly at a couple of them.

The largest operator in Scotland is MOWI, until recently named Marine Harvest until it was renamed following adverse publicity. The name reflects the name of the original founder, Mr Mowinkel, although one hears that he may not have been completely delighted. The main owner is understood to be Mr Jon Fredriksen, about whom I’ll say no more (google him!).

Then, the owner until recently of “Scottish” Salmon Company Limited was Yuri Lopatinsky, about whom more has recently been in the Press.

Bluntly, can anyone imagine the private owner of a farm in Scotland giving a foreign oligarch the freedom to cover the fields with rotting faeces and unwanted feeding stuffs, rendering what was once fertile soil utterly anoxic and useless for cultivation for several lifetimes? That’s exactly what the Scottish Government, on our behalf, allows fish farm companies to do to the seabed.

Next up, the pesticides. Research commissioned by SEPA several years ago confirmed that one component, Emamectin Benzoate, which kills all crustaceans, was still active on the seabed four and a half years after a fish farm had ceased operations on the site in question. That’s become a benchmark; perhaps they’ll send the biologists back to do some more tests after what would now be ten years. This is important, because sealice, lobsters and crabs are all crustaceans, so what price traditional creeling?

Due to very a very lax (non) inspection system plus no checks whatever during lockdown and regulations actually relaxed due to it, the farms have been doing what they want.

Yes, 45 Kilos of deadly poison is an awful lot to dump on someone else’s property!

@FerretScot @HI_Voices

Now for Goliath versus David!

Towards the end of last year there were brief reports in the Press about the case that has been raised in Oban Sheriff Court by the Norwegian MOWI fish farming giant against the environmental activist Don Staniford. To describe the case as a modern day Goliath versus David would be an understatement. It’s likely that battle will be joined sometime later this year and this post is just a quick update on what I’ve heard.

MOWI are one of the largest operators of industrial battery farming salmon units in the World, largely owned by Jon Fredriksen, described on Wikipedia as “a Norwegian-born Cypriot oil tanker and shipping billionaire businessman based in London.” By contrast Don Staniford is well known as a lone operator, who relies on practical and occasional financial support from concerned individuals, who appreciate his efforts in exposing the dark side of fish farming.

While the MOWI public relations machine tries to portray Don and the few others doing the same work as mini Greenpeace operations the precise opposite is true. Despite the claim made by industry spokesman and former LibDem MSP Tavish Scott that he is in the pay of anonymous foreign evildoers there is no evidence that he is anything other than what he says he is, a man who from a background of studying marine biology has dedicated his life to the environment, at great personal cost.

I admit to being a friend of Don, whom I met shortly after he returned to Scotland from spells in Canada and Norway and subsequently on various occasions when his activities have brought him to mid Argyll. I have been impressed at the depth of his research, his dedication and the care he takes with important matters such as, when gathering data, the safety of himself and others, the avoidance of causing distress and any cross transmission of infection. In particular his custom is not to go near sites when fish farm staff are already on them.

I do not have access to the papers lodged by MOWI in court and would be prohibited by law from reporting anything if I had been. However, it is clear that, bluntly put, MOWI are seeking to place extensive “exclusion zones” around each and every one of their over one hundred installations on the open waters of our West coast.

While you may not agree with what Don and his fellow activists are doing, I would ask you to reflect on the utter enormity of this for all of us as citizens. It is well established as a matter of our constitutional law that the seabed is held in trust under the Crown for all of us and that as members of the public we have certain rights, the principal of which are of free passage over the open sea, to fish and to use our coastal waters for leisure and recreation. Operators of fish farms are allowed to place the cage anchors in position on the seabed only in terms of leases which expressly reserve these rights to all of us.

The case raises issues of major constitutional importance regarding the safeguarding of one of Scotland’s greatest assets, our extensive seabed and in particular the inshore waters of what is now often referred to as the aquaculture coast.

Please take a minute or two to reflect on the implications for everyone. There is no way that fish farm staff can tell if someone is out fishing, rowing, wild swimming, in a canoe enjoying the Mid Argyll Kayak Trail, or a deadly “eco warrior” intent on exposing an instance of animal abuse or the misuse of toxic chemicals.

In defending our freedoms ideas and publicity are as important as financial backing. Anyone wanting to discuss things further should feel free to contact me by direct message.

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Scotland's very own David versus Goliath

 William Louis Winans was a pretty disgusting fellow, the son of one of the first of America’s railroad multimillionaires, who from around 1860 lived mainly in Britain, with occasional trips to the rest of Europe, including Russia. He didn’t like people very much; on taking the lease of an expensive townhouse in London he took the one next door as well, to avoid having neighbours. He had a habit of booking all the seats at a performance, so that he and a couple of friends could watch the show without being troubled by the ordinary people.

We learned about him when studying international law, as after his death there was an argument about his domicile, to decide which country got the death duties. In support of the idea that he had kept his American domicile his family argued that despite having never returned it was only his fear of sea sickness that had kept him in, by this time, Scotland. They produced as evidence details of his cigar ship, which was supposed to take him back safely.

The posthumous litigation wasn't his only brush with Scots law, however. In 1882 he started renting shooting estates and by 1887 he had accumulated a total of over 220,000 acres, extending more or less across Scotland. On one of them, Morvich in Glen Shiel, lived a poor cottar and shoemaker, Murdoch Macrae, with his wife and family. One day he found a badly injured lamb, about three weeks old, and took it home where his wife nursed it back to health. For a time it stayed in the house, but eventually it became strong enough to venture out.

One day Mr Winans found the lamb on his land, which had no fences to keep straying animals out. He immediately sued Mr Macrae for an interdict, which, after an initial interim one was granted, went to debate before the local Sheriff. He refused it, on the basis that the lamb had caused no discernable damage.

Winans was of course enraged by this and had the interdict granted on appeal. One is tempted to wonder if perhaps the compliant Sheriff Principal, a senior QC, might have been thinking about a shooting holiday. Many were disgusted by this development, including Winans’ landlord, Mr Mackenzie of Kintail, who said that hadn’t believed the story when he first heard it.

It may surprise people that in those Victorian days, long before civil legal aid came in, lawyers saw it as their professional duty to devote time working for the poor with no expectation of payment. In fact this was still part of the tradition when I joined the profession in 1970 and remained until advertising came in and “pro bono” work became only a way of drumming up trade. Mind you, there are still some decent, ethical exceptions! Cottars were the poorest sector of society, owning nothing and doing what they could to survive. William Winans must have got a shock when his adversary was duly represented in Scotland’s highest court and again when Murdoch Macrae won the appeal.

Lord Young is one of my all time favourite judges, known for fairness and independence of mind. You can identify him in the famous group portrait in Parliament House, as he’s the only one without a huge cross on his robes. Essentially, the court ruled that there was no remedy in the absence of damage, “de minimis non curat lex”.

Winans v Macrae 1885, 22 SLR 692

Fresh water lochs suffer in the cause of aquaculture

There's a current application to legitimise the smolt growing facility at Loch Tralaig, under reference 21/02612/CLAWU. I have written to our politicians as follows:

Good Morning, MSPs and Councillors

This message concerns a current planning application in respect of Loch Tralaig, a small fresh water loch in mid Argyll near to Kilmelford, where I live, but it raises issues that should concern all of us with an interest in the environment.

In 1991 Kames Fish Farming Limited, then a fairly new company, obtained planning consent to operate smolt growing facilities in three lochs, Tralaig, Losgain Mor and Avich. A copy of the consent for Loch Tralaig is annexed and you will see that it was limited to a period of six years, after which it was envisaged that a further consent might be granted, after an environmental assessment had been made. The same condition appeared in the other consents.

Officials at Argyll & Bute Council failed to notice the expiry of the period in 1997, nor did Kames bring it to their attention. The result was that smolt growing has continued in the three lochs, more or less continuously, for the period to date, thirtyone years. There are indications that cages may even have been in position prior to 1991.

For confirmation of the error I quote from an email I received from the Council in 2020:

“In eventuality, and for reasons I have not been able to establish – all of the involved persons having long left the employment of Argyll and Bute Council – this planning condition was not acted upon when it was first breached in November 1997. In fact, this breach did not come to light until at some point in late 2019 by which time the operations had likely gained ‘immunity’ from any planning enforcement action the Council may have wished to take. Nevertheless, the planning authority took this matter up with the operator of the fish farm as soon as the breach of condition was realised. The subsequent application was made in order to support a claim by Kames Fish Farming Limited that their operations were, by that point in time, lawful.”

Having operated on the three sites for more than ten years Kames had applied in 2020 for a certificate of lawful use in respect of Loch na Losgain Mor. Being fully aware of the position the Council found itself in, basically that in law they had no option but to grant the certificate, I wrote to them asking them to request Kames to agree to carry out the environmental test that they had, after all, agreed to in 1991. The Argyll & Bute planners did not agree to make this simple request and went ahead to grant the consent.

Thus a provision that was designed to enable householders to legitimise things like garden sheds was used to avoid an environmental assessment.

To those of us who know and love these lochs this was a troubling development. I do not fish, but understand anecdotally that none of the three lochs now supports the range and numbers of wild fish that formerly grew there. That would of course have become clear had there been an assessment.

Worse by far was the possibility that in three decades of the constant dropping of fish faeces and uneaten food the loch beds may have become irrecoverably polluted by waste. Two of the lochs, Losgain Mor and Tralaig, feature hydro electric schemes. The former is now privately owned by the landowner, who lives in Cornwall, and is still in use, providing him with no doubt welcome income. I believe the one at Loch Tralaig is, along with part of the alveus and adjoining land, owned by SSE. It is no longer in use, but the dam is still in position, seriously restricting flushing.

Accordingly, in April of last year some concerned friends and I decided to visit Loch Tralaig and carry out an inspection using an underwater camera. The resulting film can be viewed here:

A dead loch

This was filmed near to the edge of one of the cages. You will see that the bed is covered in what appears to be inert, anoxic waste to some depth.

A separate environmental issue is the considerable use of Formaldehyde in recent years. Formaldehyde is a highly toxic chemical with a history of use in disinfection and serious industrial cleaning. It is a carcinogen and industry guidance for its use requires operatives to wear protective clothing. In recent years operators of fish farms have been experimenting with its use in dealing with saprolegnia, a fungal condition which typically affects fish kept in fresh water, such as aquariums and in their case cages in our fresh water lochs, where salmon smolts are grown for eventual transmission into open cages in the sea.

No doubt as a result of industry lobbying the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency decided to allow its use, with companies having an obligation to disclose how much they were using. The figures reported by the various companies operating in Scotland owned up to a total of 22.4 tonnes of poison being poured into ten Scottish fresh water lochs between April and December 2019. I am unable to get detailed, recent figures due to the collapse of the SEPA database but no doubt the applicants will be able to inform you of the quantities used.

In May The Ferret drew attention to the issue in a clear, hard hitting article that can be accessed here:

Formaldehyde in fresh water lochs

My purpose in writing is to ask you to write to Argyll & Bute Council quoting reference 21/02612/CLAWU, asking that they consider asking Kames to comply with what they agreed to in 1991, not out of legal obligation, but simply out of the concern that everyone of us should have for our natural environment.

Marine Scotland Consultation on Marine Litter

 

The link to the Consultation is here:

https://www.gov.scot/.../marine-litter-strategy-scotland.../

My response:

In general it is difficult to disagree with the aspirations outlined in the section entitled Planned New Actions up to 2027. My concern is that the timescales identified are simply too long. There are some issues that can, I suggest, be easily dealt with now, without waiting for the results of monitoring and, no doubt, further consultations on specific aspects.

I annex for reference the text of the response I received to my FOI request FO190551 in June 2019. The first section shows that instead of things starting in 2022 and ending with ideas by 2027 the governmental ambition was to have plans in place by 2016 and to have things under control by 2020. The last twenty years have seen a massive increase in all types of pollution and the environment cannot wait any longer.

This response is confined to three specific types of marine waste, (a) large, easily identifiable items, such as pieces of fishing equipment, net, creels, bottom gear and components of fish farm cages and supporting equipment, (b) microplastics, specifically from aquaculture and (c) items which by their nature cannot be identified, such as sections of plastic rope and twine.

Large Items

From coastal excursions over the years I can confirm that our remote island beaches are littered with large fish farm components. I annex a photograph taken on Luing a few years ago as an illustration. In August 2019 I saw, on the shore at the Westmost end of Ulva, a section of pipe about twenty metres long, utterly impossible to remove without mechanical help and/or a suitable vessel. As we all know, such items once beached become the responsibility of the local landowner to remove, a completely unjustifiable burden when the source is invariably one of the hugely profitable foreign companies who are allowed into our coastal waters.

The very obvious solution to this is for there to be a requirement that all such items have an identifier attached, perhaps in the nature of a barcode, so that the cost of removal can be met by the polluter. The industry itself accepts this in respect of the retail products in our supermarkets. The requirement would not require to wait for legislation, as, for example, it could easily be made a condition of planning consent or a SEPA CAR licence.

Microplastics

These are the most insidious of all, as we are constantly and credibly informed by the media that they are everywhere. The use of plastic feeding pipes started only quite recently. Fish farm workers were still seen feeding fish manually from sacks of pellets in the early years of saveseilsound, when we were gathering evidence for our campaign.

We are all, the Scottish public, Marine Scotland and SEPA included, being treated with extreme cynicism by the aquaculture industry, who know that the standard process adopted to replace workers on site inevitably puts microplastic into the water column, not to speak of the salmon they are rearing. This practice is entirely deliberate and in principle no different from the fly tipping, which your report rightly treats very seriously. Fish farm companies should be told to stop forthwith under threat of prosecution.

Other waste

For centuries the fishing industry has dumped waste deliberately, in the form for example of small offcuts of rope or accidentally when fishing gear has been lost, but until very recently that materials were more or less biodegradable. This has only become a pressing issue in the recent past, when it has migrated totally to the use of plastics. Particularly insidious is the practice of using cheap inferior quality plastic line for such purposes as temporary ties. I can affirm that in a short walk along the shore here one will see dozens of such scraps.

The most obvious solution to this is to ban the use of plastics as much as possible, just as land based industries are being encouraged or forced to do. I appreciate that this will require further consultation and eventually, legislation. It will no doubt be met with the standard response that our “indigenous” fishermen know best, despite their choice of materials being anything but.

Conclusion

In relation to two of these categories of waste Marine Scotland can and should act now. Please do so!

Annex:

SEPA FOI dated 18 June 2019 ref: F0190551 - Information regarding the dumping of plastics and microplastics on our West coast.

Question 1 Many of our coastal inlets and skerries are becoming littered with debris from fish farms, for example discarded black plastic feeding tubes and fish cage components, some as large as 80 metres in length, image of an example from Mull annexed. Does SEPA have any responsibility for pollution of this sort, as opposed to pollution from microplastics, which I assume are central to your functions?

Under the terms of Regulation 9 of the EIRs, SEPA has a duty to provide advice and assistance. We advise the larger items of waste referred to fall to the local authority to regulate, as part of planning applications process, the applicant would be required to submit a waste/litter minimisation and management plan to ensure the safe disposal of waste material and debris associated with the operation of the development.

In relation to fish farms the introduction of the technical standard for Scottish finfish aquaculture will have helped to reduce the amount of equipment that is lost to sea. Though primarily designed to prevent escapes of finfish due to technical failure, the secondary effect is that there is also a reduction in the loss of equipment during storm events. This is due to the Standard covering the design, construction, materials, manufacture, installation, maintenance and size of equipment; taking into account the site specific environmental conditions e.g. wave height, wind and current speeds.

However, once lost from a site it is often difficult to attribute an item to a particular site or company, and the item would essentially become ‘marine litter’. Marine litter is one of the descriptors of ‘good environmental status’ (GES) under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), which requires all member states to have put in place a programme of measures by 2016 to ensure that ‘properties and quantities of marine litter do not cause harm to the coastal and marine environment’ by 2020. Concerns such as marine litter have become more broadly recognised and will be addressed through the operational response to the MSFD. Marine Scotland has published a Marine Litter Strategy as part of its overall approach to marine planning and management which provides guidance on managing the adverse impacts of marine litter. In supporting the Scottish Government’s commitment to achieve GES as part of the MSFD, regional marine plans should raise awareness of the problems associated with marine litter and encourage marine users and developers to dispose of litter in ways which do not harm the marine environment.

Though not directly within our remit, SEPA does have a direct involvement in ensuring that these wastes are stored, transported and disposed of appropriately.

SEPA will on occasions refer cases where marine litter from fish farms has become apparent to companies operating in the vicinity of the litter and this frequently results in the waste being uplifted from the shore and properly disposed. We may also advise the Crown Estate or Local Authority of such incidents.

Regarding micro-plastics, these are now known to be present everywhere in the water environment where water comes into contact with plastic. We currently do not regulate the discharge of micro-plastics however, we recognise the concerns around micro-plastics, and we are in discussions at UK and EU level to develop our understanding of any impact, and how they can be most appropriately regulated.

Question 2 In recent years, in order to reduce their labour force, fish farms have replaced the feeding of stock manually with systems involved the pumping of fish pellets through plastic tubes similar to the one in the annexed image. Doing this necessarily abrades the insides of the tubes and creates microfibres, which enter the marine environment either directly or after being consumed by the salmon in the cages. The companies concerned know that this happens, monitor the thickness of the tube walls and replace them when they are too thin. Research in Norway has recently suggested that in their industry this causes about 325 tonnes of microplastic waste to enter the water column each year, see

https://www.fishybusiness.co.uk/blog.

If we assume that the Norwegian industry is about 5 times the size of the Scottish one it would appear that perhaps 65 tonnes is entering our environment. Is SEPA aware of this source of pollution? And If so, what action is SEPA taking? As referred to in response to question 1 we currently do not regulate the discharge of micro-plastics however, we recognise the concerns around micro-plastics, and we are in discussions at UK and EU level to develop our understanding of any impact, and how they can be most appropriately regulated.

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Who owns the Kirkella?

I had not intended not to write further on the vexed subject of fish quota, mainly because I felt that the subject had been talked to death and that rather than engaging in arguments with hard line Brexiters it would be better just to wait for the alleged “benefits” to start kicking in. Quota isn’t mainly a West coast issue, but my interest had been fired up some years ago, following a conversation with a fellow who had been on one of the supertrawlers and told me, to my astonishment, that the ship had caught her entire year's share of quota in just three lucky weeks. He assured me that the ship spent the rest of the year out of action, something I found hard to believe. Surely, with an investment of millions, you would simply sail off to another corner of the World?

The piece that appeared on the BBC website the other day changed my mind, so here goes with my last contribution of 2021. The story starts:

“The owners of the UK's biggest trawler have described a new government deal to win back fishing rights following Brexit as "too little, too late".

Hull-based Kirkella has been mothballed since December 2020 after the UK lost the right to fish in Norwegian waters.

UK Fisheries said they were "absolutely devastated for the crew" as the new quotas offered just one week's work.

The government said the deal, announced earlier, struck a "strong balance" for the UK and Norwegian fleets.

The fishing access will see fleets from both countries be able to fish up to 30,000 tonnes of cod, haddock and hake in respective waters in the North Sea, the government stated.

Kirkella has been moored for a year at Hull Docks with the crew unable to work while post-Brexit negotiations have been ongoing.”

Comment: Those with reasonable memories will remember Liz Truss a year or so ago expressing her great joy that she had concluded a deal with Norway. I spent some time looking unsuccessfully online for the text, rather than mere puff. I then contacted Mike Russell, who informed me that the Scottish Government had not been involved and did not have a copy. The BBC piece confirms that one important point had not been agreed, the actual quantities that UK vessels would be allowed to catch in Norway’s (nonEU) waters! Before Brexit, of course, the UK was covered by what the EU, with the massive muscle of a giant trading bloc, had negotiated with Norway on our behalf.

The piece continues:

“The self-employed, 30-strong crew of the 81m (266ft) freezer trawler were paid per trip and have been ‘sold down the road’, according to first mate Charlie Waddy.

‘I feel for the men,’ he said. ‘Their lives have been fishing since they left school. All they wanted to do was come fishing. They loved the job.’

Mr Waddy said he felt the government had encouraged fishermen to back Brexit, but he was now worried for the future of the industry.”

Comment: That the crew are/were all self employed is utterly scandalous in the modern world. This means that they presumably have no entitlement whatever to any of the normal employee protections that our law, to date in line with the EU, provides, things like sick pay, redundancy and pensions. It’s a traditional model that worked fine in small fishing communities, but should have no place whatever in an industry that is otherwise very modern and industrialised.

The article then finishes:

“Jane Sandell from UK Fisheries, which claimed Kirkella supplied between 8-12% of all fish sold in UK fish and chip shops, said the latest deal had left the company ‘more than disappointed’.

She believed the new fishing deal offered just one week's work for the Hull-based crew.

‘We're absolutely devastated for the crew. The government was fully aware of what we need to operate a viable business and frankly these kind words were just platitudes.’

The government said the deal would see UK fishing vessels be allowed to fish more than 7,000 tonnes of cod in the arctic - an increase of 1,500 tonnes compared with 2021.

Fisheries Minister Victoria Prentis said the arrangements ensured a strong balance, that would benefit the fishing industry and ‘the protection of the marine environment’.”

I have in the past researched the ownership structures of some of the principal vessels involved in what is described as the UK fishing fleet. Frequently the results show only the most marginal connection. The Kirkella seems to be no exception, despite the message painted on her bow

The Kirkella is the property of her own dedicated limited company, Kirkella Limited, registered in England and Wales and based at the Orangery in West Yorkshire. The company is financed by a Dutch bank. The directors of the company are:

Diederik Parveliet (“ Mr P”), a Dutchman.

Jane Sandell (“Ms S”) an Englishwoman.

Balvin Thorsteinsson (“Mr T”) an Icelander.

Jan Cornelis Van Der Plas )”Mr VdP”) a Dutchman.

But who owns Kirkella Limited?

The sole shareholder is J Marr Fishing Limited, another English company. Its directors are Mr P, Ms S, Mr T and Mr VdP.

And who owns J Marr Fishing Limited?

The sole shareholder is UK Fisheries Limited, another English company. Its directors are, surprise, surprise, Mr P, Ms S, Mr T and Mr VdP.

So, who owns UK Fisheries Limited?

The shareholders are Onward Fishing Company Limited, 50% and

B V Tory, 50%

You can search until the fish come home, or Brexit delivers a bonus, before you will find anything more about B V Tory, although one suspects it may be a Dutch registered entity, because from now on Mr VdP drops out of the story.

Re Onward Fishing Company Limited, the directors are Mr T plus a new Icelander, Gustav Baldvinsson.

This company belongs entirely to Samherji HF, which looks suspiciously like an Icelandic registered entity. Again, finding which actual people are the ultimate beneficiaries is impossible.

To conclude on a not very happy note, Liz Truss and Victoria Prentis have been fighting the corner on behalf of a gigantic supertrawler that ultimately belongs to what appear to be Dutch and Icelandic entities, fishes UK quota and uses the services of a crew who, if they are British residents, are presumably currently being looked after by UK taxpayers while their services are not required.

Images from the BBC website.