The fishing community has been left fuming four years on from the UK’s departure from the EU after accusing the UK of signing up to a “sell-out” Brexit deal in capitulation to France.
Britain left the Brussels bloc in January 2020 and would later sign subsequent accords to iron out a number of other policy areas.
The agreement ensured EU vessels would return 25 per cent of the value of fish caught in UK waters.
It was estimated the deal will deliver an additional £145million per year to the British fishing industry by 2026.
Coastal communities were a driving force behind the vote to leave the EU
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London and Brussels also signed up to a five-and-a-half year transition period before annual negotiations over fishing opportunities.
However, GB News has spoken to two people closely connected with the fishing community about the situation four years after the UK officially cut ties with Brussels.
Former Brexit Party MEP June Mummery, who is also the managing director of the Lowestoft-based fish market auctioneers BFP Eastern, said: “We haven’t taken back control of our waters and the resource.
“Fishing, coastal communities were stabbed in the back. The UK fishing is on its knees.
”There are still 1,700 EU vessels plundering, unmonitored, unregulated.
“Eight of which are super trawlers. DEFRA wants the small fishermen gone to make way for wind mills.”
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Boris Johnson did not get everything he wanted from UK-EU talks on fishing
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Paul Lines, who is chairman of the Lowestoft Fish Market Alliance and has been a fisherman in Suffolk for 54 years, labelled the deal a “sell-out” and warned the UK had buckled to pressure from Paris.
He told GB News: “We haven’t got that much quota now we can’t bloody catch it but what I am so disappointed about is the fact that they promised us that we will take back control of control and we will have our EEZ.
“But when you when you analyse the TCA agreement they sold us a pup.”
Lines continued: “When the TCA comes up again in 2025 they’re never going to say that you’re out of our waters and you’re not coming back. They’re never going to do that, let the French down, because of energy.
“We depend on Europe to get all our energy, especially France.
“We will be the only country in the world that doesn’t manage its own economic zone.
“There’s not really been any benefits of Brexit to the fishing community because they’ve made marketing so hard, they’ve made exports nearly impossible and they didn’t do what anyone expected them to. It’s been a sell-out Brexit for us.”
The fishing industry has not received the boost it anticipated
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Addressing why Johnson decided to make concessions on fishing, he claimed: “Right at the last minute of Brexit negotiations they had a trump card to throw the fish in the pond to get what they want.
“I wanted Brexit wholly on the back of that I wanted us to be an independent coastal state and we’ve got to manage our own affairs.
“We even set up a system so that we can start rebuilding, and we even went and got the finance to start rebuilding the fishing fleet, building infrastructure. Instead of the Dutch and the French coming into our waters, catching the fish and sending them back to our supermarkets that we would actually produce that ourselves.
“It turns out that Brexit for fishing was just absolutely catastrophic.”
However, when asked if he would vote the same way if another Brexit referendum were held today, Lines defiantly said: “I would still vote for Brexit because I think the country as a whole has benefitted from Brexit.”
Former Brexit Party MEP June Mummery spoke to GB News about the fishing situation
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Despite concerns from Britain’s coastal communities, the UK Government has previously lauded a number of so-called Brexit benefits.
The UK’s decision to diverge from Brussels-derived rules ensured British fishermen could catch bluefin tuna fish for the first time in decades.
Some 39 tonnes of will be available for a trial commercial fishery, with licences issued to 10 fishermen.
Whitehall insiders claimed at the end of 2022 that the UK’s overall fishing quota surged by 30,000 tonnes in a move worth more than £280million.
A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs said:“Leaving the EU has allowed us negotiate deals and introduce measures that will support our fishing industry towards a more profitable and sustainable future with a new world class system of fisheries management to keep our fish stocks healthy and sustainable.
“We have seized upon our new freedoms, introducing a £100 million UK Seafood Fund, including a £1 million seafood export package to unlock lucrative new markets and boost exports, and have secured up to 120,000 tonnes more quota from 2024 fisheries negotiations than we would have as an EU member state.”