Foreign boats ‘keep rights to UK waters’
FISHERMEN accused ministers of another Brexit betrayal last night after it emerged foreign firms were set to keep 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 the UK’s fishing quota is caught by foreign-owned 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 small-scale British fishermen will be unable to boost their struggling businesses, as they had hoped, with rights to a significantly larger quota.
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.’
Jerry Percy, from the New Under Ten Fishermen’s Association, the trade body for small fishing boats said: ‘It’ll be lost jobs, lost boats. It’ll be lost local fishing landings. It’ll be lost culture, lost tradition.’
Foreign firms own so much of the quota because, over the years, struggling local fishermen have sold their allocations to make ends meet.