Gove vow to take back control of fishing from EU
BREXITEER Michael Gove yesterday admitted being disappointed with the EU transition deal over fishing rights but has vowed that Britain will take back control of its waters in 2021.
The Environment Secretary’s pledge came as the Tories’ 13 Scottish MPs threatened a rebellion, making it clear that without such guarantees they will vote down a final deal.
With senior Tory backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg and coastal MPs joining a Fishing For Leave protest in a boat on the River Thames to Parliament today, the Government is coming under severe pressure to honour its promise to end EU access to Britain’s waters.
The controversy over fishing is one of several issues causing concerns on the Tory backbenches, including an agreement to allow free movement to continue until December 31, 2020.
The Scottish Tory MPs – who sent a delegation led by Borders MP John Lamont to Downing Street yesterday – have signed a pledge to not accept a deal without full control of Britain’s waters and fishing grounds.
After a tense meeting, Mr Lamont said: “The Government should be clear that they are on notice – no deal for fishermen, and they will have to think again on the terms of our departure.”
In parliament Mr Gove tried to ease fears that the fishing industry had been betrayed.
He told the Commons: “In December 2020, we will be negotiating fishing opportunities as a third country, an independent coastal state deciding who can access our waters and on what terms for the first time in over 40 years.”
But highlighting continued concerns, Moray Tory MP Douglas Ross, who won his seat from the Scottish Nationalists by backing the fishing industry against Brussels, said: “There’s no way I can sell this deal in the transitional period as anything like a success to fishing communities in Moray, Scotland or the UK.”
FOR a man who staked so much of his political credibility on Britain taking back control of its fishing grounds after Brexit, Michael Gove has been done up like a kipper. From Caithness to Cornwall, from the Humber to Holyhead, our fishermen feel betrayed by the deal that has been done in Brussels.
Who can blame them? Only last week Environment Secretary Gove and Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, proudly pumped out a joint statement declaring: “The Prime Minister has been clear, Britain will leave the CFP (Common Fisheries Policy) as of March 2019. We both support her wholeheartedly.”
Shame the feeling wasn’t mutual for it would have saved Gove much embarrassment. Now what’s clear is that the Government has capitulated to the demands of the French and cast our fishing fleets adrift. During the transition period between so-called Brexit Day next March and the actual Brexit Day on December 31, 2020, the EU will continue to have the power to set fishing quotas for British waters.
We will be consulted on which countries can continue to plunder our waters (our boats will be way down the list of course) but we won’t be able to do anything to stop them destroying British livelihoods. Small wonder that Scottish Tory MP Douglas Ross has warned: “It would be easier to get someone to drink a pint of cold sick than to try to sell this as a success.”
TODAY Tory critics of the deal are planning to protest on a boat on the Thames by Parliament, a scaled-down version of the flotilla led by Nigel Farage during the referendum campaign. Let’s hope the water isn’t too choppy or Ross’s graphic words could come back to haunt him.
I think we can safely assume that Gove will not be donning his oilskins and sou’wester to join his fellow MPs because he must be deeply humiliated by the Government’s shocking change of tack.
The Common Fisheries Policy has led to the laying up of most of the British fishing fleet over the past 40 or so years and during the referendum campaign Gove blamed it for destroying his father’s fish processing firm in Aberdeen. As a seafaring nation we used to have a massive and efficient fishing fleet based in every port around our coastline. Unlike most of Europe we are an island surrounded by a rich resource.
But go to these rundown harbours today – especially in Scotland – and you will see the heartbreaking results of years of surrender to the EU: trawlers rust by rotting quaysides, packing plants stand idle, fishermen look wistfully out to the sea where once they plied their dangerous but essential trade.
The transition deal has been sold to us as a benefit: in Downing Street’s words it has “secured specific safeguards on behalf of British fishermen”. The spin is that it will give British industry certainty.
Around the coast the only certainty is that the misery will continue. Any pretence that this deal is good for what’s left of the British fleet was dispelled by the words of the head of the Danish Fishermen’s Association, who said the transition period “is a sensible agreement which gives us time – a couple of years – to work out how we keep our fishing stocks sustainable, how we keep our fisheries sustainable after Brexit”.
The only thing the European fleets are interested in sustaining is their profits from the catches their fleets take from our waters. Now they’ve got a breathing space in which it’s entirely possible they will raise the cap on how much fish they are allowed to take.
They could double it if they wanted to because we will be just one voice against 27 when it comes to a vote at the annual fisheries council meetings in December 2018 and 2019.
The madness of the economics of fishing is illustrated by the fact that under the EU system a single giant Dutchowned vessel could net a quarter of the English quota (which amounts to six per cent of the UK total) while the UK’s quota is in theory shared between more than 6,000 vessels.
For years our fishermen have been forced to throw back into the sea dead fish which could be set on British meal tables but which are deemed to be “unwanted”. Unwanted by whom? By the French, German, Dutch and Spanish fleets which want to sell those same fish to us and can’t stomach the idea of competition.
BUT why should Britain, as a sovereign nation after March 2019, have to continue to kowtow to a European policy which has been an unmitigated disaster for every fisherman in the land? Why can we not be like Iceland, which is allowed 90 per cent of the fish caught in its waters?
More than half the fish and shellfish caught in British waters are currently landed by trawlers from the rest of the EU – around 650,000 tons, worth more than £400million a year. In stark contrast UK fishing boats working elsewhere in EU waters landed on average 90,000 tons worth about £100million.
Now we’ve got to wait until January 1 2020 before we can take full control of our own waters. By then it could be too late. It was inevitable that compromises would have to be reached to secure a Brexit deal. Red lines were bound to be drawn. But leaving our beleaguered fishing industry to rot even further is a betrayal.
There may not be enough boats and men left to make fishing viable. What a sad indictment of a nation surrounded by water. We’ve been taken in hook, line and sinker.
‘An island surrounded by a rich resource’