The UK’s fishing industry has been warned it will have to accept difficult deals over foreign fleets in British waters if the country is to win favourable terms in next year’s Brexit talks.
A House of Lords committee told fishing communities, who campaigned vigorously for a leave vote during the referendum, that they may have unrealistic hopes about the chances of reducing foreign fleets or cutting their catch sizes once the UK leaves the European Union.
The UK’s trawlermen were among the most vocal critics of the EU during the referendum, fuelled by several decades of resentment against increasingly strict controls on fishing quotas, which are blamed on Brussels and the common fisheries policy (CFP), and claims that their interests are too easily traded away.
Their campaign culminated in the famous “battle of the Thames” confrontation between a flotilla of trawlers skippered by pro-leave fishermen and led by Nigel Farage, the then Ukip leader, and a pro-EU flotilla led by Bob Geldof. Farage said this issue typified the need for the UK to take back control of its resources from the EU.
The Lords energy and environment subcommittee said leaving the EU would allow the UK and devolved administrations to directly control access to the UK’s waters – the largest exclusive economic area in the UK – and its rich fishing grounds.
But the fate of those fish stocks was closely linked to the UK’s wider interests, it said. Flexibility during the Brexit negotiations would be essential to protect British trawlers from retaliatory controls on access by its neighbours and also to preserve the UK’s wider trade and political interests in the talks.
The peers told ministers that open and low-tariff access to the single market was essential for UK fisheries, because the industry was so integrated and dependent on European markets.
The UK would also have to urgently negotiate new bilateral fisheries deals with two of Europe’s most powerful and competitive fishing nations, Norway and Iceland, and with the Faroe Islands. They all have substantial interests in mackerel and herring, the two most valuable catches to the UK.
In 2010, a fleet of 50 Scottish boats blocked a Faroese trawler from entering Peterhead in a dispute over sharing out mackerel and herring stocks, after Nordic fleets decided their share was too small. The incident echoed the cod wars of the 1970s, where Royal Navy warships were confronted by Icelandic coastguard vessels when British boats were excluded from Iceland’s coastal waters, and was also a warning of the potential for future conflicts.
“The vote to leave the European Union and, with it, the common fisheries policy has raised expectations for the future of fisheries policy that may be hard to deliver,” peers said.
“In withdrawing from the EU, the UK will be able to develop a domestic fisheries policy and control fishing activity within its exclusive economic zone. However, the majority of commercial fish stocks in UK waters are shared with other states, rendering continued cooperation with the EU and other neighbouring states crucial to the sustainability of those stocks.”
The committee said fish stocks were mobile and crossed international boundaries, which underlined the need to maintain existing management agreements. “The government should therefore pursue new, or interim, agreements as a matter of urgency, building on existing models where possible,” it said.
The subcommittee said even though fisheries made up a tiny fraction of the UK’s GDP – contributing £426m to the economy - ministers had to be aware that they had substantial economic and cultural value to coastal communities.
The UK government should also collaborate with devolved governments on fisheries policy during the Brexit talks, peers said, to present a united front and prevent fisheries fragmenting into competing areas within the UK. The Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish parliaments legally have jurisdiction over fisheries in their waters through devolution settlements, raising the prospects that they could win full control over policy and quotas too after Brexit.
The UK’s fishing industry bodies, who are frequently at odds with each other, signed a joint position statement in November calling on the government to take full control of access by foreign vessels to British waters. They also demanded a full revision of quotas and fisheries management policy, to further distance the UK from the common fisheries policy.
The Lords committee said the UK would still need to base its fisheries policies and catch levels on objective scientific data, agreed and shared with neighbouring countries, and base its quotas on international protocols.
Despite the industry’s attacks on the CFP, peers said recent changes – heavily influenced by the UK – meant it was now far better run. The rest of the EU would continue to operate under the CFP, making it impossible for the UK to ignore.
Bertie Armstrong, the chief executive of the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation, the largest of the industry bodies, said although deals would need to be struck, it was clearly in the UK’s economic interests to greatly tighten up access to British waters.
They are the richest and largest fishing grounds of any in the EU, yet 58% of fish was taken by other national fleets while only 17% of the UK’s overall catch came from other waters.
“Every nation or state has a set of fundamental assets,” Armstrong said. “One of the UK’s fundamental assets are these exceptionally rich waters. It is not an act of aggression to wish to take up your rights and responsibilities [for those waters] under international law. It’s normal.”
