Brexit - Where are we now?

 

I’ve haven’t written anything on the longer term implications of Brexit for the fishing industry for some time. There are two reasons for this.

First, in the last six weeks we have seen a great deal of upset, escalating in scale from confusion over paperwork to major delays and disruptions to delivery networks resulting sometimes in the wholesale destruction of valuable product. Fish purchasing companies have in some cases responded by freezing stock, to save it at great cost in terms of marketability; fleets have remained in port. The UK ministers responsible initially blamed Covid 19 and/or “teething problems”, announced a miserable £23 million emergency package, if you could prove you had lost other than due to your own “fault” and finally admitted that many of the problems are here to stay. Yesterday we were told that matters are to be raised with the EU Commission to see if solutions can be found.

Second, I was simply getting a bit tired of being abused on social media by people who would better have spent their time facing up to some problems that should have been apparent for ages and are absolutely intrinsic to the Brexit project. Among other things I was being accused of “praying” for the destruction of the fishing industry. For the avoidance of any possible doubt, as lawyers sometimes say, I regard Schadenfreude as an emotion best kept to the field of personal relations; I am absolutely, truly, horrified and disgusted at what I see as an impending disaster among our coastal communities affecting, among others, friends and neighbours for whom I have great respect. While I have never worked afloat I have enough experience of the sea to be aware of the risks our fishers daily run to keep us fed and would never denigrate them.

I claim no special expertise to write about these matters, only that, as a result of a lifetime working in general legal practice I came across EU regulations on a daily basis, as they covered a huge range of issues in our ordinary lives. In almost all cases they were calculated to safeguard us and to raise standards so that, for example, anyone from one EU country working in another would have the same protection against maltreatment, adverse pay and conditions and risk of injury.

As an example, I learned about this very starkly when a client of mine suffered life changing injuries when the machine he was driving on a building site went out of control and overturned. By the time he was discharged from hospital the machine had been scrapped by the plant hire company who owned it and it was impossible to discover what had gone wrong in sufficient detail to ground a case. We raised an action against his employers based on the old, pre EU obligation on them to provide a safe place of work, lost the case before a single judge, but eventually won an appeal two years later. By that time an EU safe working directive had come into force across the whole of Europe, which would have given him an automatic right to compensation without the horror of spending years in court. Such a protection would of course apply to a deckhand on a fishing boat and is now under threat, if a neoliberal government down South gets its way. For half a century the EU has led the way in raising standards, which we have taken for granted.

Back to fish exporting, the plain, blunt fact is that the problems that have now emerged and are clear to everyone, from vessel owner, fish purchaser, processor, skipper and deckhand are only the inevitable consequences of the third country status that the UK now “enjoys”. If a company sends a fresh, live product for consumption into the EU trading block from outside there are rules regarding place of origin, production method and safety to eat, all of which must be proven by documentation. These rules weren’t enacted after 1 January 2021; specifically in the case of molluscs they were put in place at least twenty years ago and were actively promoted by the UK Government, as in charge of the country from which almost all of the particular product was being sourced. Of course, people who claimed that the EU was protectionist perhaps had something of a point; trading blocks are great if you’re in one, rather nasty if you aren’t.

None of this should have come as a surprise. It’s rather disgusting to see Jimmy Buchan suggesting that anyone aggrieved should be taking it up with the Scottish Government; they were excluded from the negotiations by Lord Frost and his team. The EU Commission has published a helpful explainer that can be accessed here:

EU Guidance

I respectfully suggest that it’s rather easier to follow than anything I’ve seen on the UK Government websites.

It’s perfectly plain that if you want to send bivalve molluscs into the EU, whether you’re in the UK or, for example, China, you’re going to have to get permission, based on showing that you have adequate purification facilities at home. Up until now those facilities could be located nearer to the point of consumption and it was all fine; that’s what a “single market” means!

So, it seems that exporters are now faced with either installing facilities and applying for permissions once they have done so, or seeking other markets. There is a risk that while they are doing this people in other countries will see a gap in the market and step in. This seems to be happening already; on 30 October 2020 eight shellfish companies based, mainly, in Massachusetts applied for permissions, which were granted to them last month.