One day there is going to be a terrible reckoning for the Tory party over Brexit. The damage it's doing to the fabric of the nation is already immense and growing all the time, as will become clear very soon. One of the first groups that the party will feel the anger of is that of the fishing communities who voted overwhelmingly for the lie that Brexit would bring a resurgence of this struggling British industry.
Brexit would allow us to become an "independent coastal state" where we would have control of our waters. We have seen this repeatedly in government papers and announcements for three years now and it sounds wonderful in Peterhead or Grimsby or Lowestoft I assume. At least it did.
The fog is beginning to clear so that fleet and ship owners can see what is happening. This article in the Aberdeen Press and Journal shows that having control of the supply is just one part of the problem. You also need a market and for most British fishermen that means the EU.
Seafish is a quango set up in 1981 to improve efficiency and standards in the industry. In the article, Fiona Wright, head of regulatory affairs at Seafish, said:
"The UK should have been inspecting fishing vessels and it wasn’t. That’s what’s causing the problems now. Fishing vessels, the small ones, need to have some kind of evidence that they are producing food in a safe manner. That’s where the problem is. That information isn’t there without some kind of scheme.
"There should have been some kind of local authority system of checks on these fishing vessels."
Ms Wright goes on to say that letters instructing local authorities of the need for this had gone out in “the last couple of days”.
When asked if the industry would be ready to leave, given the exit day is still technically this coming Thursday, Ms Wright said: "We’re at the stage now where businesses are starting to try to prepare".
When we become a third country, with or without a trade deal, the British fishing industry will have to comply with EU rules. We should have been doing it before with local authorities carrying out checks on our vessels. But they didn't and have no system in place. Without an extension to Article 50, when fish reach a Border Inspection Post on Thursday, they will need a certificate to prove the fish have been produced in a safe manner. Don't forget even sending fish to a BIP will be new since as an EU member our fish were treated as EU produce and didn't need to be checked into France or wherever via a BIP.
Separately, each consignment will need an environmental health certificate, the cost of which is estimated to be around £160 per consignment. This assumes we leave the single market and the customs union with or without a trade deal. Some small fishing vessels sell 30Kg consignments which would make those small orders either unprofitable - or unsaleable. They will go to the wall.
More than this, the lady from Seafish seems to be working under the assumption that if we get over these issues we will at least be an "independent coastal state" with control over our waters. Unfortunately, this is very unlikely to happen.
As I noted in September last year and again more recently, the EU's guidelines talk of maintaining the "existing reciprocal access" to British waters in exchange for a zero tariff trade deal, which the UK negotiators have rejected so far. Ms Wright cannot see that her industry is really small with a turnover (2017) of around £980 million employing 13,700 people full and part-time. When push comes to shove and the City of London or the UK car manufacturing industry with £billions in tax revenues and export sales are at risk does she honestly think Johnson - or any British prime minister - wouldn't throw them overboard?
Fishing may find itself in the worst of all possible worlds. Reciprocal access would put them exactly where they are now but as a third country we would have to provide EHC certificates for each consignment (cost £134 million on an industry worth £980 million remember) and abide by rules that we have been able to ignore previously. This is if we get a trade deal. Without one there will be tariffs and possibly quotas too.
Fishing may find itself in the worst of all possible worlds. Reciprocal access would put them exactly where they are now but as a third country we would have to provide EHC certificates for each consignment (cost £134 million on an industry worth £980 million remember) and abide by rules that we have been able to ignore previously. This is if we get a trade deal. Without one there will be tariffs and possibly quotas too.
Don't forget, Johnson has already sold Norther Ireland's 900,000 protestants out by putting a border down the Irish sea.
He wouldn't think twice about wiping out our fishing communities.
He wouldn't think twice about wiping out our fishing communities.
