Our fishing fleet and our fish processing industry are shadows of the thriving coastal industries we possessed in 1973 before we joined the EU and before they had hastily thrown the Common Fishing policy together as a trap to steal our fish.



At that time this policy hit us from day one.  The Tory party agreed to  phase in greater catching rights for our fishermen slowly on an annual basis after we had left the EU so as to allow our neighbours a period of adjustment.

During the time we were trapped in the EU, Norway an independent coastal state, has continued to build a thriving fishing industry without the need for subsidies of any kind by not only zealously protecting its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) from foreign predators and domestic rule breakers but by ensuring that they have up to the minute information on what is happening in their seas so that areas that have become spawning grounds and nurseries can be immediately closed off and left undisturbed.

This ensures an optimal supply of mature fish for domestic consumption and export. We could do no better than take a leaf out of Norway’s book and that of Iceland as well.

What is certain is that allowing the EU and its inputs from its Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries (STECF) and from the International Conference on the Sea (ICES) to tell us what the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) for different species is and then take the lion’s share for themselves is no longer tolerable if it ever was.

On January 1^st, 2020, we left the EU but agreed to negotiate with the EU on an annual basis concerning our entitlement to fish in our own EEZ up until 2026.  Whilst George Eustace was DEFRA Secretary, he suggested that a major objective of the government at that time would be to wrestle from the EU the exclusive entitlement to catch fish in our own 6-12 nautical mile territorial zone. This is not nearly ambitious enough.

We must tell the EU that we intend in future to go it alone in deciding what fishing is sustainable in our EEZ and apportion it exclusively to ourselves.

They have said they would refuse to buy our fish unless they could catch it for themselves; well, there is a world out there outside the grasp of the EU.

John Gartside

UK Independence Party - Fishing Spokesman