Betrayal! Now foreign firms to keep fishing in UK waters after Brexit
BRITISH fishermen accused ministers of another Brexit betrayal last night after it emerged that large foreign firms were set to keep their lucrative rights to fish in our coastal waters.
A leaked draft of the Fisheries White Paper suggests the existing quota regime may not be significantly reformed after the UK’s departure from the European Union next year.
At present, around 40 per cent of England’s fishing quota is caught by foreignowned vessels – one Dutch firm alone controls two-thirds of the quota for North Sea herring.
The leaked paper suggests this will not change after Brexit, meaning that smallscale British fishermen will be unable to boost their struggling businesses, as they had hoped, with rights to a significantly larger quota.
It follows the Mail’s revelation at the weekend that the Foreign Office has handed £ 75million worth of fishing licences in the South Atlantic to companies from Norway, Chile and New Zealand, while two firms based in the Falkland Islands – a British overseas territory – had their applications rejected.
Critics said it made a mockery of Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson’s pledge to take back control of British waters after we leave the EU. Last night, Tory MP Andrew Rosindell said: ‘Getting back control of our seas and fishing grounds is one of the key reasons for voting to leave the EU and therefore the Common Fisheries Policy. That has to happen. Our fishersystem. men will expect nothing less, and I trust the Prime Minister to deliver it.’
Jerry Percy, from the New Under Ten Fishermen’s Association, the trade body for small fishing boats (classed as under 10m), warned there would be dire consequences if the UK’s quota was not shifted from big to small fishing firms. He said: ‘It’ll be lost jobs, lost boats. It’ll be lost local fishing landings. It’ll be lost culture, lost tradition.’
Hastings fisherman Paul Joy said that leaving the EU was only part of the battle, and what needed to change was the quota ‘We’ve got an industry that’s dying on its feet because what fish there is in the system is already allocated to the wrong sectors,’ he said. ‘More quota needs to go to the small boat sector, without any doubt.
‘ If we win our battle with Brexit, that’s one thing. Then it’s how we share out the quota – sharing out the spoils of war.’
Foreign firms own so much of the quota because, over the years, struggling local fishermen have sold their allocations to make ends meet. Emma Cardwell, researcher at Lancaster University, said: ‘They would buy from fishing boats going out of business or fishing boats looking to make money by selling their right to fish.’
A spokesman for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: ‘The under10m fleet plays an important part in our fishing industry and our coastal communities. Leaving the EU gives us the opportunity to design a new domestic fishing policy – one which is in the best interests of all sections of the fishing fleet and which allows our industry to thrive.’
Under current rules, foreign vessels registered in the UK are able to fish using the UK’s quota if they make at least 50 per cent of their landings in UK ports, have at least 50 per cent of their crew normally resident in UK coastal areas, or spend 50 per cent of their operating expenditure in the UK.
WHEN ministers made clear they would let Brussels carry on setting British fishing quotas during the transition period to full Brexit, this paper expressed deep qualms.
Today, as a leaked draft of the Fisheries White Paper suggests plans for a long-term sell-out, those reservations turn to alarm.
Indeed, the prospect of regaining full control of our territorial waters – and changing the EU-imposed quota system which has laid waste our small-boat fishing industry – was one of the most attractive arguments for Brexit. After Boris Johnson’s promises on the subject, it has also been a vote-winner for the Tories.
Ministers have many bargaining chips in the Brexit talks. They trade away British fishermen’s livelihoods at their peril.