The UK’s leading fishing industry body has accused the government of “bottling it” over the Brexit deal with the EU, after details were published on Boxing Day morning.
Barrie Deas, the chief executive of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations (NFFO), said the deal had secured just “a fraction of what the UK has a right to under international law”, arguing that fishing had been “sacrificed for other national objectives”.
“Lacking legal, moral, or political negotiating leverage on fish, the EU made the whole trade deal contingent on a UK surrender on fisheries,” he said. “In the endgame, the prime minister made the call and caved in on fish, despite the rhetoric and assurances that he would not do what Ted Heath did in 1973.”
Under the deal, new quotas reducing the EU’s share by 25% are due to be phased in over five and a half years, and a quarter of the EU’s catch by value will be “repatriated” to UK-flagged vessels during the same period.
While Deas said the deal “will inevitably be seen by the fishing industry as a defeat”, he said the government had been successful in “having fought off EU’s attempts to tie the UK back into common fisheries policy-like arrangements”. He said this would allow the UK to “develop and apply its own fisheries management systems, tailored to its own fisheries.”
Deas has previously said the EU “benefited disproportionately from free access to fish in UK waters and unbalanced quota shares agreed in 1983”.
The UK Fisheries chief executive, Jane Sandell, said: “We’re pleased that the UK-EU deal will bring some kind of certainty to parts of our industry, although we’re still looking for the ‘prodigious amounts of fish’ we were promised, and for us it changes nothing.
“The government must now urgently turn its attention to striking a good deal with Norway and other third countries if we are to be able to fish in the distant waters from January 1.”
A senior member of the UK’s negotiating team rejected criticism of the fishing arrangements, saying that while both sides had been forced to compromise, the deal would give the UK “full control over our waters”.
“The crucial thing on fisheries policy is that although there is a transition, at the end of the transition it returns to normal arrangements and we have full control over our waters,” the official told PA news agency.
“There’s a transition to that point and ideally we would’ve got out of it a bit faster but where we’ve got to is acceptable and offers gains for the fisheries industry in the short run and a huge right to control everything and work within that after this five-and-a-half-year transition.”
Nicola Sturgeon has also criticised the deal’s treatment of the fishing industry, saying promises made to Scotland’s fishing sector had been broken. The Scottish government has said the Brexit deal could cost Scotland £9bn by 2030.
Writing in the Times, the first minister said Brexit was happening “against the wishes of most people in Scotland”, after the country voted for remain in the 2016 referendum, and said it would “hit jobs and living standards at the worst possible time”.
However, the UK’s Scotland secretary, Alister Jack, insisted the government had struck a “fantastic deal”, as he added that coastal communities would be able to “thrive outside the EU’s unfair common fisheries policy”.
