"Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and others like to say that the CFP has “destroyed” the British fishing industry or “halved” the number of British fishermen. In fact, in terms of profits of the big fishing companies, the British industry is one of the most successful in the EU.
If the numbers of fishermen in the UK have fallen sharply since 1973, it is partly the fault of the cod wars. It is also the result of the sale and concentration of quotas into fewer and fewer hands – something that successive British governments have permitted or encouraged.
Thus lucrative Scottish white fish quotas are now dominated by three or four multimillion-pound companies based in north-east Scotland. Worse, 50% of all English quotas and 88% of Welsh quotas are “owned” by British-flagged ships that are really Spanish or Dutch or Icelandic. One Dutch mega-trawler has the right to catch 24% of the total English quota.
Britain's fishing fleet and Brexit promises – key questions answered
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By contrast, the inshore fleet – fishing within 12 miles, using boats mostly shorter than 10 metres, with much lighter ecological impact - is allowed just 4% of the total English quota. None of this has anything to do with the EU, which is why you never hear Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage complain about it. The divvying out of national quotas is purely the responsibility of national government. It is time for it to abandon its misleading rhetoric on fishing policy, and put forward reasonable proposals to Brussels.
There is a case for adjusting the 1983 EU quota pattern in Britain’s favour. There is, above all, a case for small-scale fishing communities to be given a substantial increase in their share of the British catch. That would be a genuine Brexit, and ecological, bonus – even if it has nothing to do with Brexit"
John Lichfield
Editors note:
Industrial fishing has no place in the British Isles. It destroys livelihoods and ruins the environment. The most important thing for the fishing communities and for the seas themselves is for trawlers and super trawlers to be banned from our waters. The seas ca cope with the little boats which traditionally bring home the fish - and in that instance, there is scope to share our seas. But industrial fishing is marine genocide and has to be stopped in its entirety, and until our seas recover it is the morally right thing to do, to ban all outside fishing and to stringently police our own fishing boats.
No to industrial farming, whether on land or water. All food production must be ethical and ecologically sound. SMPBI will accept nothing less than the primacy of the environment in all matters, and completely ethical farming, including the method in which the living creatures are killed to become our food.
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