Scots fishing f leet backs Boris

SCOTS fishermen have backed Boris Johnson’s controversial approach to Brexit negotiations.

Trade and fisheries talks reached deadlock after the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier demanded that the UK surrender access to its fishing grounds.

Mr Johnson is reported to be insisting that UK fishermen can double the size of their catch from British waters.

Scots fishermen said any failure to agree a deal would mean there would have to be annual negotiations on access.

In a joint statement yesterday, Elspeth Macdonald and Barrie Deas, chief executives of the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation

and National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations, said: ‘For the fishing industry in the UK, leaving the Common Fisheries Policy has always been about redressing a fundamental issue: the woefully unfair allocation of quota shares in our waters, where the EU fleet has an unfettered right of access to the UK’s rich fishing grounds and fish five times more in UK waters than we fish in theirs.

‘The only satisfactory means of ensuring that this is achieved is for the UK, as a sovereign coastal state, to maintain full control over access to our waters.

‘That does not mean denying EU vessels access to fish in the UK Exclusive Economic Zone. Rather, that such access would be negotiated annually – as is the norm for the EU and Norway and other non-EU fishing nations.’

They added: ‘Under international law, this will be the default position if a fisheries agreement cannot be reached.’

They said it would be ‘preferable’ that a deal could be agreed, but if an acceptable agreement cannot be reached, they ‘would prefer these issues to be addressed through the annual negotiations process’.

They said this was ‘in line with the Government’s negotiating position, which we fully support’, and ‘ultimately, it is up to the EU which of the two routes it wishes to take towards the UK becoming a coastal state’.