"Sherpa" Frost reveals all - But doesn't!

Yesterday “Sherpa” Frost finally lifted the veil of secrecy that had prevented all those apart from a magic circle of the High and Mighty to see the draft legal texts for the implementation of Brexit. Those deliberately kept in ignorance had included not only the Scottish Government and our friends in Northern Ireland and Wales, but the actual EU member states themselves, whose diplomats the Johnson regime was not prepared to trust to keep a secret.

I’ve been following developments on fishing and trying to understand the issues, with no great confidence that I’ve got things right. Accordingly any informed and referenced comments are most welcome. For the full text on the “Fisheries Framework Agreement” click this link:

Draft Fisheries Framework Agreement

Regarding fisheries the aim has been to have an agreement in place by the end of June, i.e. just under six weeks from now. I’m rather shocked to be able to say that both sides could probably sign up to this paper tomorrow without compromising the interests of either in any material way whatsoever. The reason why is quite simple; what has been advanced isn’t in any meaningful way a draft legal agreement at all. Virtually everything likely to cause dissent has been left out.

In the first year at law school students are taught that an “agreement to agree” will never constitute a binding legal contract. The law reports are full of cases of “contracts” where wishful thinking, woolly phrases and “Heads of Agreement” have enabled people to duck out of points of contention. Scots lawyers and, I think, the Scottish public don’t trust things such as selling our house “subject to contract”. This document is very much like that.

One’s first impression on looking at the fisheries draft is that it’s so short. Out of the eleven pages offered three are blank, the empty schedules. We then turn to the “Disclaimer” page, which at once gives the game away.

“The UK proposes the following legal text to form the basis for discussions with the EU on a Fisheries Framework Agreement.” An agreement to agree? Let’s look further.

Page 2 starts with a header that again gives the game away, this isn’t a draft contract or a treaty, it’s a “DRAFT UK NEGOTIATING DOCUMENT” The rest of this page is pure narrative with no meat in it. There follow twelve “Articles” of which I suggest that no fewer than nine are entirely non-contentious, more or less “boilerplate” text that nobody will seriously take exception to. The remainder are Articles 1, 2 and 12. Within those the bones have a little meat on them but only a tiny amount of gristle.

Article 1 on Page 3, “Definitions”, does what it says, but curiously and no doubt deliberately does not define or even refer to quota, a word I failed to spot at any point in the document.

One definition is very important, in the context of quota and “getting back control”. The definition of a UK or an EU fishing vessel is simple: it’s one flying the flag and licensed by one or the other side. As we all know, you don’t need to show your passport to obtain a flag. Many, perhaps most, fishing vessels, certainly the big ones and the supertrawlers, are owned via companies, the shareholders of which are often other companies, often offshore. Many vessels are acquired with mortgages from UK institutions, including the Royal Bank of Scotland, which we the taxpayers own almost in its entirety.

Those vessels with their complex ownership structures fish on the basis of quota which will have been purchased on the market like any other item of property. This is because there are surely no longer any significant numbers of fishers who got an original grant of quota free and who are still in the trade. A share of quota can cost more than the actual boat and we can assume that owners will not happily see it trashed. Anyone who thinks they won’t still be seeing “foreigners” catching “our fish” after Brexit should stop reading now.

Article 2 provides that “fishing opportunities” will be kept under review and negotiated annually on the basis of the best science. The parties respective permitted “amounts” will be adjusted proportionately. As noted, the word “quota” does not appear and this would have been the place to insert some mechanism for avoiding disputes re quota issues.

Finally, Article 12 is the bombshell. Using a cunning system of double negatives a textual smokescreen has been created to conceal the dates on which anything material might happen. Paragraph one reads:

“Each Party shall notify the other Party in writing through diplomatic channels of the completion of its domestic requirements for entry into force of this Agreement. This Agreement shall enter into force on a date to be mutually agreed and specified in these notifications.”

Paragraphs 2 and 3 list respectively the parts that will come into force on that future date, in fact virtually everything of importance and the parts that take effect on 1 January 2021, basically policing, management and data sharing. Incidentally there seems to be a drafting mistake, because to be effective Paragraph 1, delaying things, should come into effect on the latter as otherwise it all happens now and “we’re all doomed”.

Paragraph 4 allows either party to terminate on two years’ notice, but along with all the material stuff this doesn’t come into effect now.

Paragraph 5 states that the “Agreement” supersedes all previous ones, but of course when read along with Paragraph 1 it simply doesn’t, in practical terms.

Overall the text looks like something worthy of Baldrick, that will enable our illustrious Prime Minister to claim another great victory over Johnnie Foreigner while leaving the mess for someone else to sort out later.

Brexit and Fisheries: an Update

Last Sunday I reported that the UK had at last issued draft legal texts, but on the basis that M Barnier’s team were not allowed to share them with the member States. A week on, that remains the case, but “Sherpa” David Frost has said that they will be made public next week. One assumes that the Scottish Government and the NI and Welsh administrations have not seen them yet either.

Tragically it now seems very probable that 2020 will end with the parties failing to reach any meaningful agreement on the major issues and the UK simply completing the Brexit process by crashing out. This is not the place for a detailed analysis, nor do I have the skill to present that. This has been done expertly throughout the process by Professor Chris Grey of London University and his latest instalment can be found here: Lost in Time and Space

From the start the EU has made it clear that the basic principles and freedoms on which the Union is based were not to be compromised to benefit the interests of a departing state. It appears that the UK, personified by May and now Johnson via his “Sherpa”, have refused to accept this and somehow assumed that M Barnier’s position was a negotiating tactic. Last week shows that it wasn’t and at the same time the UK position has, if anything, intensified.

In legal terms the division between the two sides seems to have roots in different views of fundamental matters such as what a “State” is and what meaning is to be given to the concept of sovereignty.

Historically the UK concept of sovereignty was based on ideas that came uniquely from English, rather than Scottish, legal tradition. Early on there was a view that God had empowered the King, who in turn could grant, or remove, at will, the rights and duties of citizens. Scotland, from earliest times a trading nation, always recognised the need for international amity and regarding the rights of citizens don’t forget the Declaration of Arbroath.

The English view prevailed and survived the arrival of more democratic structures; on the contrary sovereignty was assumed to have been effortlessly transferred to the Crown in Parliament. Thanks to the efforts of Victorian academics such as Professor A V Dicey this became entrenched as the concept of an unlimited Westminster, the idea that no Parliament can ever bind a successor. It dogs political life to this day: a recent example is a provision in the Scotland Act purporting to endow the Scottish Parliament with permanence, which legal academics knew was nonsense and now the rest of us know it too, thanks to the UK Supreme Court ruling on it.

The English approach to sovereignty seems still to assume that it somehow exists prior to and accordingly outwith the legal system. In contrast European legal theorists tend not to speak of sovereignty at all; they regard the legal system as no more nor less than a set of man-made rules created to provide for the smooth running of states and their relations with each other.

When the UK entered the EU this issue wasn’t addressed. Uniquely the UK does not have a written constitution to resolve a pecking order between rules of international and domestic law. Most European constitutions expressly acknowledge the supremacy of the former. Instead of embarking on reform, which would have stirred up all sorts of demands for more democracy, successive UK governments chose to ignore the issue, apart from granting devolution was a welcome by-product. Brexit means that it can’t be ducked any longer.

Regarding rights in the seabed and to catch the fish passing above it the situation becomes intriguing from a legal perspective. For example there is the matter of the boundary between UK and EU waters, itself a matter of international law, which English legal theory regards as subordinate to Westminster law. Let’s assume that it suits the UK for this to remain where it is and swiftly move on to what may be the most serious of the substantive issues, quota rights.

I’ve posted before about how the decisions of governments, more or less neo-liberal, to allow the sale of quota thereby created new rights of property, which are in turn entitled to protection under the European Convention on Human Rights. As we have to remind people, particularly Brexiters, constantly, the ECHR is antecedent to and quite separate from the EU. While the Johnson regime has been extremely critical of it the present position is not clear. The “Future Relationship” document does not expressly refer to the ECHR, but implies that Johnson intends to seek parliamentary approval for withdrawal. I went through it with some care and could only find this:

Notably this appears in the section dealing with criminal law, “humans” as individuals. Has the UK focused on their rights as property owners? Are they here confusing the European Court of Justice (CJEU) with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR)?

And we find, in M Barnier’s statement yesterday:

“The UK refuses to commit, in an agreement with us, to guarantees protecting fundamental rights and individual freedoms resulting from the European Convention on Human Rights, as agreed in the Political Declaration.”

Regarding fishing, he went on to say:

“Why would we seek to give favourable market access conditions to certain British professionals when our European fishermen would be excluded from British waters and risk losing their livelihoods?”

From Sherpa Frost’s statement:

“Although we have had useful discussions on fisheries on the basis of our draft legal text, the EU continues to insist on fisheries arrangements and access to UK fishing waters in a way that is incompatible with our future status as an independent coastal state. We are fully committed to agreeing fishing provisions in line with the Political Declaration, but we cannot agree arrangements that are manifestly unbalanced and against the interests of the UK fishing industry.

It is hard to understand why the EU insists on an ideological approach which makes it more difficult to reach a mutually beneficial agreement.”

As I’ve noted in previous posts, based on information that came out before the Lords Committee earlier this year, 80% of English quota is now foreign owned, as is an unknown but significant percentage of Scottish. Further, we know that many UK registered vessels have part foreign, or anonymous tax haven owners. It’s reasonable to suppose that since other EU countries have been allowing quota sales, some EU quota may have British owners.

It would be surprising to find a Conservative administration, supposedly devoted to support for private property, creating a situation whereby extremely substantial property owners, many no doubt supporters of both Brexit and the party, exercising “sovereignty” to abolish those rights without the compensation they would be due under the Convention. But if they don’t do this won’t “taking back control” look a bit like the status quo and enrage all those other non-quota owners who voted for it?

No doubt all will be revealed when the text is issued next week.

Brexit and Fisheries - Where are we at now?

This coming week, from Tuesday 12th, among the Brexit negotiations there will be a series of video conferences on fishing. By the end of the week there will be just six weeks left before the self-imposed deadline of having fishery matters settled by the end of June.

Until two days ago the United Kingdom had refused to produce a draft of the required legal agreement setting out how it sees a future fisheries agreement working in practice. That means that matters rested on the extremely vague principles set out in a document issued last February and that doesn’t seem to have been changed since.

A triumph of aspiration over detail, that document contained phrases such as:

“The UK is ready to consider an agreement on fisheries that reflects the fact that the UK will be an independent coastal state at the end of 2020.” and

“Overall, the framework agreement on fisheries should provide a clear basis for an on-going relationship with the EU, akin to the EU’s relationship with other coastal states, one that respects the UK’s status as an independent coastal state and the associated rights and obligations that come with this.”

Further, the proposal was

“for annual negotiations on access to the parties’ exclusive economic zones and fishing opportunities (total allowable catch and shares).”

From the start, the position of the EU has been that they are not prepared to deal with issues piecemeal. It has also seemed that, while they denied it, that was precisely the position of the UK team, led by Mr David Frost, the Government’s self described “Sherpa” in charge, incidentally neither a civil servant nor a politician.

Michel Barnier’s Statement of 24 April only confirmed what the EU has been saying from the beginning:

“Finally, we made no progress on fisheries.
On this essential topic, the UK has not put forward a legal text.
We have made no tangible progress despite the Political Declaration stating that we should make our best endeavours to reach an agreement by July. This is necessary to provide sufficient clarity for EU and UK fishermen, and also for all businesses linked to fisheries.
The EU will not agree to any future economic partnership that does not include a balanced, sustainable and long-term solution on fisheries. That should be crystal clear to the UK.”

It seems that last week the UK was, unsurprisingly, the first to blink. In tweets yesterday, David Frost declared

“I would also like to make clear that the EU have from us a full set of draft agreements” including

“A Fisheries Framework Agreement.”

What Mr Frost didn’t make clear was that, astonishingly, although a draft text has been sent to the EU negotiating team they are apparently not permitted to send it out to the EU member States. Also, it seems most unlikely that it has been shared with the Scottish Government or the devolved administrations in Northern Ireland and Wales.

I don’t think any further comment is necessary.

Response to the Wrasse Consultation

Until very recently there was no commercial demand for wrasse, because they have never been seen by the British public as a food species. They are said to be tasteless and bony and have, it seems, traditionally mainly been fished for sport from small boats. Their habitat is close inshore, rocky inlets, harbour mouths etcetera. I live at the head of Loch na Cille in Loch Melfort and was interested to note the arrival of a couple of small fishing boats setting traps around the shore, apparently in the hope of catching them. At that time the possibility of their use as sacrificial cleaner fish in salmon cages was beyond the contemplation of anyone outwith the aquaculture industry.

I am not a scientist, but have over the last forty years or so observed the environment of our coast and researched the changes that have taken place caused mainly by the arrival of aquaculture in mid Argyll, in particular the sealoch system comprising Seil, Shuna and Melfort. The lesson that we should all have learned long ago is that interfering in the balance of the ecology is something that we do at our peril.

Research done by others, notable SIFT, has shown that when commercial fishers moved into wrasse fishing catches were initially high, but quickly tailed off. There are a number of factors peculiar to wrasse that suggest reasons for this. They are extremely slow growing and long lived, also have strange hermaphrodite behaviour, starting out as female and some becoming male when a certain size is reached. This suggests that there should be very strict limits on minimum size of catch and that fishing should take place only outside the normal breeding season, rather than when it suits aquaculture.

I am aware that environmentalists elsewhere, for example in Devon, became extremely concerned some years ago at the arrival of “rogue” fishers in numbers, stripping out wrasse from inshore waters. The latest report suggests that when strictly controlled certain amounts of various species of wrasse can be removed sustainably, but also highlights the problems even one non-conforming fisher can cause. See:

https://www.devonandsevernifca.gov.uk/…/Comprehensive-Revie…

A number of factors suggest that rogue fishers are likely to appear: this is a non-standard type of fishing, using baited traps set from small boats with the capacity to work close inshore, plus the rewards are enormous with ongoing very high wrasse prices. The situation lends itself to new entrants to fishing with concern only to make quick profits.

What this report was unable to assess was the impact of the removal of quantities of cleaner from the environment, which is most unlikely to be beneficial. The report also evidences the need for the wrasse fishery to be looked at on a UK wide basis. Strict regulation in one area would only cause the fisheries to move elsewhere.

Environmental Impact Assessments by law are only required for potentially damaging activities at a particular location. Aquaculture already benefits from this with wellboats, whose use is damaging but unregulated. Wrasse fishing appears to be in the same category. The lesson is that there should be a pause, while a proper comprehensive assessment of all impacts, not only on sustainability of the actual fishery but on the residual effects around the shoreline, before this fishery is allowed.

I have not touched on the aspect of animal cruelty involved in removing a wild species from its habitat to a new life in salmon cages, where they are themsleves the victims of sea lice and disease and where they are eventually killed off at the end of the cycle. In the modern, enlightened Scotland that we all aspire to live up to and that is actively promoted by the First Minister the wrasse fishery has a nasty look.

The Aristocrats versus the Billionaires

A small but interesting illustration of just how far the mainstream media, typified by the Murdoch Press, has sunk can be found in the puff piece that appeared in the London Times on 5 May, over the byline of Ms Jenny Hjul. The full piece can be read below, along with the detailed response sent to the paper by John Aitchison of Friends of the Sound of Jura.

Those of us who have spent years, in some cases decades, trying to protect the environment and the wild fauna and flora of Scotland’s coasts are very used to being accused of self-interest. Ten or so years ago I was constantly the victim of anonymous trolls, one of whom described me as a “tweed clad aristocrat” (my genealogy as a Glaswegian descendent of those whose migration was not entirely voluntary can be supplied on request). Resort to ad hominen slurs is despicable, but also signals the lack of a proper argument. Not as irrelevant is the connection between Ms Hjul and the industry that she purports to be impartially commenting upon; she is the editor of Fish Farmer Magazine!

Ms Hjul may find it difficult to believe, but there are people around who truly care about things like dumping toxic waste on the seabed, allowing unnaturally large populations of sea lice to spread along the mouths of salmon rivers and importing non-native fish stocks, many of which escape each year and breed with local salmon.

Scientists internationally have established beyond any doubt that escaped caged salmon can and do interbreed with wild ones. It is for this reason that Norwegian regulators do not allow their industry to cultivate Scottish stock there. And yet, at a meeting I attended with Marine Scotland in 2018 in response to a direct question from me, one of their senior scientists, under the steely glare of his Civil Service minder, said that “there is no evidence of interbreeding in Scotland”.

Interbreeding is deadly for the survival of wild fish precisely because of the latter’s genetic programming to return to the spawning river. In this one regard Henry Williamson, author of Salar the Salmon, was right; don’t be distracted by his enthusiasm for human eugenics!

Of course all this is of concern to those who own rivers and want to preserve their main asset, the salmon in them. Of course it's they who have stumped up the cash to pay for what was no doubt very expensive research, which, in anticipation of industry whining, they had peer-reviewed. They have been very open about who they are, unlike Ms Hjul.

In his letter John Aitchsion refers to the 2018 parliamentary inquiry, which concluded that the status quo is not an option. Virtually nothing has happened since, while the target of doubling production by 2030, which we now know is government and not industry led, continues.

The decline of wild salmon in Scotland is now so well advanced that our sub-species may be close to extinction. Soon the only reminders of what we once had may be the photographs of salmon leaping in remote Highland waterfalls that the industry habitually uses in advertising.

Alastair McIntosh describes what is happening along our west coast as nothing other than a twentyfirst century land grab. Our seabed and the creatures that live on and above it are one of Scotland’s greatest assets, yet are being auctioned off to foreign owned companies taking advantage of the fact that Scotland’s regulators refuse to act in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence. It can thus be seen that rather than being a class warrier against the aristocracy Ms Hjul is in fact an apologist for, mainly Norwegian, billionaires. The ongoing official dishonesty is intolerable and obscures what is a straightforward choice between monoculture and diversity, between giving away or keeping control of our land. There should be an open, public debate about this, free from attempts to smear the issues with class.

Ms Hjul’s Article

“Scotland’s salmon farming industry has come under attack yet again from its regular detractors in the wild fish lobby. Normally, criticism from this quarter might be shrugged off by salmon farmers, who have long been the target of the angling community, which blames the decline in wild stocks on fish farms.
But both the grounds and the timing of the latest campaign leave a nasty taste. In a new report, the anti-salmon farm group Salmon and Trout Conservation Scotland and the Sustainable Inshore Fisheries Trust demand the government cuts support for the sector because its economic value and the number of people it employs have apparently been exaggerated.
This is quite a claim for a Scottish success story that is worth more than £1 billion a year to the economy, creates thousands of jobs and produces the UK’s biggest food export. The report’s authors base their logic on unchecked statistics (they even contradict their own figures) and the premise that the growth of salmon farming comes at the expense of others, including creel fishermen, recreational fishers and divers, and sea wildlife tourists.
Nowhere do they provide evidence that salmon farm sites — which if placed together would occupy the area of just two 18-hole golf courses on our vast coastline — cannot coexist happily with all other marine users. But it is not only the report’s unfounded assumptions that are so objectionable.
Fish farmers have toiled throughout the coronavirus crisis to maintain a steady supply of salmon to the supermarkets. Their role is vital, as is that of the fish processors, boat crews, hauliers and sales and distribution teams. Undermining all their efforts are wealthy river owners, motivated by their determination to protect their riparian inheritance and too blinkered to see how shameful their defence of privilege looks at a time like this. Their grievances have for years played on environmental concerns but with wild salmon depleted in east coast rivers as well as in England, where there are no farms, they have had to change tack.
A report that pits hard-working food producers against silver spoon sports fishermen is a massive own goal, one that will be remembered the next time the angling lairds take aim from their estates.

Mr Aitchison’s Response

“Jenny Hjul seems to have swallowed the salmon farming industry’s PR line, that only ‘silver spoon lairds’ care about the impact of their fish farms, or about the dodgy economic figures that they and politicians have used to support a doubling of production to 300-400,000 tonnes of farmed salmon by 2030. Doing so will also double their pollution, pesticides, parasites and diseases, which directly impact jobs in coastal communities that depend on the health of the sea. The harm caused by doing this has not be assessed.

All the pollution from Scotland’s 200 plus fish farms is dumped into the sea. People in our communities know that it spreads very far and is toxic to life on the seabed, including the crabs, lobsters and prawns our fishermen depend on. Fish farmers also shoot seals and illegally disturb porpoises and dolphins with deafeningly loud ‘seal scarers’, and their open-net cages release billions of parasitic sea lice, which are deadly to wild salmon and sea trout.
Many of the thousands of people we represent work as fishermen, scallop divers, wildlife guides and in accommodating visitors to our coast. Few are anglers and none are lairds. Every job here matters, and they are threatened just as much by COVID-19 as jobs in fish farming.

Deciding whether to allow this industry to expand should be based on the facts, including a full accounting of the costs, and not just the claimed benefits. This largely foreign-owned industry exports its profits and does not pay to clean up its pollution or the impact of its sea lice. Official statistics show that only about 1200 people work directly on Scotland’s fish farms. The Economic Contribution of Open Cage Salmon Aquaculture to Scotland report shows that inflated figures have been used to justify expansion, exaggerating new jobs by 251% and economic benefits by 124%.

Fishermen are now so concerned about the ‘significant effect on fishing and marine life due to sewage and chemical pollution’ affecting their livelihood that the Clyde Fishermen’s Association is calling for ‘an immediate moratorium on any new marine open cage fish farms and any expansion of existing fish farm sites’ in the Firth of Clyde, ‘as any expansion of the industry will be unsustainable and may result in irreversible damage caused to the environment’. The CFA has 200 members.

According to Fisheries Management Scotland, wild salmon and sea trout are now at crisis point, with populations at an all-time low. Sea lice from farms are not the only problem but they can have a huge impact:
Scottish Natural Heritage agrees: ’we believe there is now significant scientific evidence to conclude that population level impacts are possible’. Marine Scotland adds: ‘Salmon aquaculture can result in elevated numbers of sea lice in open water and hence is likely to increase the infestation potential on wild salmonids. This in turn could have an adverse effect on populations of wild salmonids in some circumstances.’
Its website quotes research that found a ‘reduction in the catches and counts of salmon on the west coast correlating with increased production of farmed salmon’, and ‘showed that rivers with farms had significantly lower abundances of juvenile salmon than those without farms’. It also quotes a study on the River Errif, in Ireland, that ‘estimated that returns of salmon after one year at sea were 50% lower, in years following high sea lice levels on nearby salmon farms during smolt migration.’ The authors considered that ‘the reduction in returning salmon numbers due to sea lice could affect the viability of the salmon population in the long term.’ Other Norwegian and Irish work also ‘indicated that salmon lice can influence the population status of wild salmon’.

Last week an expert group convened by the Scottish Government, including the Scottish Salmon Producers Organisation, published its recommendations to Ministers on the impact of fish faming on wild fish. After years of prevarication, the SSPO has finally acknowledged ‘the potential hazard that farmed salmonid aquaculture presents to wild salmonids’, and that the ‘finfish aquaculture regulatory regime should be reformed to ensure that it is fit for purpose …(and) … should protect wild migratory salmonids’. Perhaps the fish farmers didn’t tell Jenny Hjul.

In 2018 a Scottish Parliamentary Inquiry said that ‘urgent and meaningful action needs to be taken to address regulatory deficiencies as well as fish health and environmental issues before the industry can expand.’
Two years on the expansion is in full swing but little has been done to address the environmental issues.
Thoughtless caricatures like Hjul’s help no-one except this dirty industry, which is clinging to its old-fashioned methods because they are cheaper. Fish farming must be cleaned up before allowing it to double in size.”

Quota and Property Rights

In the early years of this century, when the use of the seabed was still regulated by the Crown Estate, the sea lochs of mid-Argyll were affected by a rash of speculative applications for the installation of mussel farms. The Crown Estate were not then charging fees for scoping applications, with the result that anyone could apply to site anything, anywhere, for free. One of the would-be entrepreneurs who latched on to this was a Scottish sea captain, who whiled away his shipboard time making numerous applications in our immediate area. Had these been granted, several bays that are in constant use by kayakers and boating people would have effectively become out of bounds, with considerable impacts on the local micro-economy, which relies heavily on summer visitors and the leisure industry.

Some of us locally organised a petition and the resultant publicity put a stop to this nonsense, with one exception. A Swiss-owned company called Celtic Sea Limited, owned by Dr Philippe Heiniger and Cornelia Heiniger of Aarau, Switzerland, managed to obtain revival of an old consent to instal a unit near Asknish Bay, curiously and in breach of Crown Estate guidelines without their application being advertised.

The Heinigers obtained financial support from the then Scottish Executive to establish their project. While the latter no doubt felt it laudable to encourage a new enterprise, even when it damaged existing ones, one has to consider the chances of a Scottish entrepreneur getting consent to try something similar on a Swiss lake.

The original lease of the Asknish site had been obtained many years earlier, but the unit there had failed due, it seems, to the prevalence of curious creatures known colloquially as sea squirts. These are disgusting, jelly-like things, that quickly colonise any available ropes and render them uninhabitable by other creatures. This was why the original consent had lapsed. The result is that we now have a single line of unused floats, several hundred metres long, which is left in place to ensure that the statutory consents are not lost. It’s a fact not much remarked upon that in our neo-liberal age any consent, be it a planning permission, a Crown Estate lease, or a fish quota has a commercial value.

Regarding the last of these, when concepts such as Total Allowable Catch and Fixed Quota Allocation were first developed about forty five years ago as part of the European Common Fisheries Policy it was left to individual countries to regulate how these would be administered. Quota was initially distributed, free of charge, on the basis of what the various fishing fleets had been doing historically. It would have been competent, legally, for governments to insist on it being surrendered on leaving fishing, but successive United Kingdom governments have allowed anyone retiring from the industry to sell his quota to a new entrant. Further, it’s not essential for the purchaser actually to own a suitable vessel, or to be in any way local, or to have any intention himself to fish. The result is that 80% of English quota is now owned by other nationals, mainly Dutch or Danish, Scottish less so, but concentrated mainly in five or six North east families. It’s extremely difficult to find out who is ultimately in control, because the larger vessels are invariably owned by companies, with shareholders frequently entities in tax havens.

The effect of this is that if you wish to do some actual fishing and catch a quota species your required permission will cost you more than your boat. As was remarked by a retired fisherman at a meeting I was at, “it’s like cutting two rungs off the bottom of the ladder”.

It seems that most countries have a similar problem; it would be interesting to know if any has insisted on surrender rather than sale. In Canada these non-fishing investors are termed “slipper skippers”. Under the European Convention on Human Rights, much reviled by the Brexiters who supported “getting back control” of fishing, such quota is a right of property, which cannot be taken away without compensation.

Michael Gove is insisting on a deal on fisheries being in place by 30 June, which is eight weeks away. To date the United Kingdom has not yet tabled its proposed solution. Things haven’t moved on at all since the Greenpeace article referred to.

Unearthed- The Millionaires hoarding UK Fishing Rights