Monday, 26 November 2007

East Anglian Daily Times - 26th November 2007

Recent revelations about the amount of cod being thrown back into the sea because of EU fishing quota regulations have certainly brought home to everyone what a mess Brussels is making of the management of the North Sea fisheries.

What seems to have eluded our masters at the European Commission is that when fishing nets are cast into the sea, they will scoop up a wide variety of different species.  When the catch is brought aboard it is often found to contain large quantities of the wrong kinds of fish, amounts that would take the fishermen over quota for particular species and as they are not allowed to land these fish, they have to throw them over-board.  In the case of cod, which despite what the experts say, are increasingly plentiful, this can be as much as sixty per cent of the catch.

According to the Seafish Authority, of the 186 million cod caught in British waters last year, 117 million were thrown back into the sea, dead.  The great tragedy of this immoral practice is that most of the discarded fish would have been perfectly edible and saleable but for the ridiculous quota regulations.  This is what happens when you put deskbound, paper-pushing bureaucrats in Brussels in charge of things that are beyond their ken.

This craziness is not confined to the cod fisheries, however, as for many years now, I have been working with the fishermen in the under 10 metre inshore fishery.  I have taken two delegations of them to meet the last fisheries minister, Ben Bradshaw and I also took one to meet with the Fisheries Commissioner, Joe Borg in Brussels.  The meetings have been productive in a limited way.  This year, we managed to get an EU technical regulation, that slipped through unnoticed by DEFRA and which was threatening to bankrupt our fishermen. 

With the introduction of a new fisheries minister, Jonathan Shaw, the fishermen have asked for a further consultation because they fear that their interests are once again being forgotten.  I have been in touch with the minister and arranged the meeting for next month.  One of their biggest issues is that their fleet consists of 95 per cent of the boats but they only have 3 per cent of the quota.  The problem is that quota has gradually slipped out of the hands of genuine British fishermen and passed into the hands of foreign boats or people who do not even own a fishing boat.  It is rumoured that Manchester United Football Club owns cod quota and that one lucky woman received fishing quota as part of her divorce settlement!

The situation is deteriorating rapidly and the under 10 metre boys are really struggling.  In my view, the only long term solution is for Britain to leave the EU and take back the fishing waters it lost when it joined  This would allow us to keep foreign boats out and put an end to the madness of the disgraceful quota system