The organisation representing the majority of English, Welsh and Northern Ireland fishermen, the NFFO, has launched a scathing attack on fisheries minister George Eustice following his decision to transfer 1500 tonnes of quota from the Humberside PO to Scotland.
The move has been branded an effort to appease Scottish nationalists, with the deal done during the Brussels negotiations, and according to the NFFO, with zero consultation or notice.
The minister is claimed to be consulting on a revised concordat between devolved administrations that would transfer virtually the entire English North Sea whitefish fleet to Scotland’s administration, complete with licences and quotas, while the Scottish minister is already announcing that this agreement will be implemented as written.
‘All this is being done behind closed doors, in secret. English fishing interests are being systematically traded away to appease the clamour from Scotland. It stinks,’ said an NFFO spokesman.
‘This is all about high politics – the Westminster government is desperate to avoid creating conditions that would favour a second referendum in Scotland. And the nationalist government is determined to create de facto independence where it can, and also to wring concession after concession out of a government preoccupied with delivering Brexit.’
According to the NFFO, the UK as a whole can be expected to lose out as a result of what it terms a quota grab, as the only European countries licensed to fish in the North East Arctic apart from England, are France, Germany, Portugal and Spain.
‘The Scots would swap it away for lower value species that they catch,’ the NFFO claims.
‘That cod will be landed, processed and consumed in those countries with value added all along the supply chain. Apart from being opportunist, and unprincipled, this transfer makes no economic sense. This ministerial decision has been presented as a way of dealing with chokes that will result from implementation of the landings obligation in 2017 but it has not escaped our notice that no Scottish quota is being tagged for this purpose – only English.’
‘Devolved administrations have their individual ministers to speak up for them but the English industry has no such champion. How else can you explain this policy of appeasement? Our minister needs to find the word “no” in his vocabulary. We have as much to fear from an aggressive nationalist agenda in Scotland and our own supine minister, as we have to gain from a successful Brexit,’ the NFFO states.
‘Scotland’s continual demand is to sit at the table during international negotiations, when this is plainly a reserved responsibility. This shows the level of ambition that there is in Edinburgh but there is no push-back from our own minister. The opposite in fact. We can get no assurances even on this clear-cut matter.’
‘Scottish ministers make much of the tonnage of fish landed into Scotland. But there are more UK fishermen’s livelihoods at stake outside Scotland than in, and a significant proportion of those landings are made by English vessels landing into Peterhead. Politically, fishing carries more weight in Scotland,’ the NFFO spokesman said.
‘We are being sacrificed as part of a wider game but we will not go down without a fight.”
