The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
UK taking back control of its fishing waters
UK quitting deal that allows foreign countries to fish in British seas
The Government is withdrawing the UK from an arrangement that allows foreign countries to fish in British waters, it has announced.
Ministers will trigger withdrawal from the London Fisheries Convention, signed in 1964 before the UK joined the European Union, to start the two-year process to leave the agreement.
The convention allows vessels from France, Belgium, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands to fish within six and 12 nautical miles of the UK’s coastline.
It sits alongside the EU Common Fisheries Policy which allows all European countries access between 12 and 200 nautical miles of the UK and sets quotas for how much fish nations can catch.
Ministers claimed the move would help take back control of fishing access to UK waters, as it will no longer be bound by existing access agreements, and enable the country to become fully responsible for fisheries management.
UK vessels will also lose the right to fish in the waters six to 12 nautical miles offshore of the other countries.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove said: “Leaving the London Fisheries Convention is an important moment as we take back control of our fishing policy.
“It means for the first time in more than 50 years we will be able to decide who can access our waters.”
Barrie Deas, chief executive of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations, said: “This is welcome news and an important part of establishing the UK as an independent coastal state with sovereignty over its own exclusive economic zone.” The UK fishing industry was made up of more than 6,000 vessels in 2015, landing 708,000 tonnes of fish worth £775 million.
Some 10,000 tonnes of fish were caught by other countries under the convention, worth an estimated £17 million.
Scotland’s Fisheries Secretary Fergus Ewing said: “The UK Government’s decision to withdraw from the London Fisheries Convention is a move we have been pressing for some time now.
“Our priority is to protect our fishing industry and allowing unrestricted access to our waters to remain through this convention clearly would not be doing that.
“We cannot rely on the UK Government to do that, having regularly put the interests of fishing communities elsewhere in the UK ahead of those in Scotland.
“It is vital therefore that all powers over policy be repatriated to Scotland and current EU funding for fisheries be matched and transferred to Scotland in full.”