THERE ARE FISHY GOINGS ON IN THE WATERS AROUND OUR NATIVE ISLE

A CONTACT who lives in a small fishing port on the east coast offers a few more interesting figures. The Irish “backstop” which threatens to break up our kingdom by hiving off Northern Ireland is designed to protect the £3billion of trade traffic that is trucked south-to-north from a “hard border” (customs examination). But the value of what French trawlers rape from British waters under the Common Fisheries Policy is about €179billion a year.

Meanwhile, Dutch trawlers have a habit after the sun sets of switching off their AIS (identification systems) and slipping inshore to gut the sole-rich Gunfleet Sands. Our own boats are moored in port, their own tiny quotas exhausted. Of course we have a Fisheries Protection Vessel… but it is tied up at Brightlingsea with no crew aboard.

The Dutch then use stun nets on the sole, which catch both the mature fish and the babies which would slip through the mesh if they were not stunned. By the time, if ever, that we get our native fishing waters back, our trawlermen look as if they will be scouring what will then be just dead sands. The Dutch boats can be seen clearly from the shore, just two (illegal) miles out. The poached sole go straight to France. We get the coley. Which is why a Dover sole in a London restaurant costs enough to ruin the appetite.

Once again, none of the above is in the synopsis of the Settlement, prepared by bureaucrats for MPs before they vote.