Fishing rights should be redrawn to give a higher quota to smaller vessels after Brexit, the Labour party is to propose in an amendment to the government’s fisheries bill.
The changes would allow small boats to spend more days at sea and land more catch than they do at present, though catches would still be subject to negotiation with the EU on common fishing grounds.
Under current allocations, two-thirds of the UK’s quota of fish under the EU’s common fisheries policy is controlled by three major multinational companies.
Small fishermen – who make up the bulk of the UK’s fleet in terms of jobs and vessels – are squeezed, receiving a smaller quota and constrained by rules on the number of days they can fish and what species they may catch, which can force them to discard edible fish at sea.
The government has always held the power to reallocate quotas under EU rules, but has declined to do so, in part because of the difficulties of negotiating with companies that have bought rights from others. After Brexit, the same companies are expected to continue to dominate the UK’s fishing industry, as the environment secretary, Michael Gove, has admitted that there will be few changes to the current allocation system.
Fishing, which employs 11,000 people in the UK, became a touchstone issue during the EU referendum, with fishermen’s leaders vociferously backing Brexit as a means of regaining control over UK waters. The government’s fisheries bill, the second reading of which is scheduled for Wednesday, promises to restore fishing in UK waters to sustainable levels, under which fishermen are only allowed to take what the stocks can withstand, and end the wasteful practice of discarding.
However, the scope for the UK to control its own waters will be limited, even after leaving the EU, because many of the main fishing grounds – such as the North Sea, the Irish Sea and the Channel – are shared. That will mean that ongoing international negotiations with the EU member states, Norway and Iceland are inevitable.
Crucially, any deal with the EU over shared fishing grounds will have to include the issue of access to markets for the UK’s catch. Fresh fish needs to be transported to market quickly, and with most of the UK’s catch for key species finding its main markets in the EU, any hold-up at customs, or additional tariffs, would spell disaster for fishermen.
That is likely to constrain any future government’s bargaining power when it comes to negotiating the quota with EU member states from shared fishing grounds.
Luke Pollard, the shadow fisheries minister, said the government was ignoring the needs of smaller fleets. “Michael Gove could take action to redistribute fishing quota now if he wanted to, but he is failing by not delivering quota reallocation in the fisheries bill. Fishing reform could usher in a huge regeneration of coastal towns, but not unless ministers drastically improve the fisheries bill.”
The EU’s common fisheries policy came under further fire this week after campaigners slammed a decision reached late on Monday night in Brussels to continue to allow deep sea fishing beyond scientific advice.
Catch limits for more than half of the stocks of deep sea species in the Atlantic were set above scientific recommendations for 2019 and 2020. Some of those species, including the black scabbardfish, roundnose grenadier and greater forkbeard, will be effectively unmanaged, leaving them open to greater exploitation.
Campaigners said the quota agreements reached were in breach of the European commission’s own commitments to end overfishing by 2020.
Lasse Gustavsson, executive director of Oceana Europe, said: “[This agreement] lowers the bar for deep-sea marine life. The law is clear: the EU must stop overfishing and all fish must be caught at sustainable levels by 2020, including the most vulnerable ones.”
Reforms to the common fisheries policy over the past decade were supposed to bring scientific rigour to the EU’s quota allocations, ending the annual “bunfight” discussions among member states over fishing quotas and stocks in favour of multi-year plans based on the maximum sustainable yield, or the amount that scientists calculate can be extracted without harming stocks.
In practice, these reforms have been hard to implement. After Brexit, the UK is expected to face continuing difficulties, because the UK is likely to be excluded from multi-year plans and ministers will have to fight their case over shared fishing grounds annually.
A spokesman for the Conservatives said the government had increased by 13% the quota given to the UK’s fleet of vessels of under 10m in the last six years.
“Just a few months ago, Labour MEPs supported a bid to keep us inside the common fisheries policy permanently, despite decades of damage to the UK fishing industry,” he said. “If Labour really care about UK fishermen and our coastal communities, they will back our landmark fisheries bill to ensure we can take back control of our waters, and decide who may fish there and on what terms.”
