A new broom sweeps clean, or does it? At Defra, Liz Truss has replaced George Eustace who grew up on a farm with Ranil Jayawardena, a man described by Farmers Weekly as “relatively unknown in agriculture but will now have oversight of farming, environment, water and nature policy” and of course which will also include fishing, an activity not considered important enough by this Tory government to warrant an explicit reference in the nomenclature of its lead department. Mr Jayawardena will therefore need to rely on advice from colleagues and experts including the Board of Defra, so with what expertise does this actually provide him? Apart from Mr Henry Dimbleby MBE who can give advice on cuisine, there is the Defra Chief Scientific Adviser, Dr Gideon Henderson FRS, Google Scholar, and Professor of Earth Sciences at Oxford who describes himself as a geochemist researching climate change and the carbon cycle. Saving the Planet is dandy but from where comes this Tory government’s advice on self-sufficiency in food supply from within our extensive Exclusive Economic Zone?

Whilst our own fishermen are starved of quota under this Tory government, our fish and chip shops are being supplied with ‘Norwegian’ Cod but where does some of this come from? It is being reboxed and rebadged from Russia trawlers, even sometimes caught in our poorly protected fishing grounds.

It is time to end the misery of our fishermen and our coastal communities, which has pertained ever since the Tories dragged us into the EU and allow our own fishermen to harvest our seas which are teaming with fish so that we the consumers can enjoy our fish and chips knowing we are supporting our own fishing communities.

John Gartside

UK Independence Party – Spokesman for Fishing

Pic credit: Charles Haynes from Bangalore, India, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons