Why is neither side discussing fishing?

[BritBrit]

Particularly the leave campaign, under international law every country is allowed to control 200 miles off their coast for fishing/oil etc. Being in the EU means we have to open our fishing waters to the entire EU & other nations are given a quota of our fish.

The UK has 70% of all EU fishing stocks but we are only given 13% of the catch by the EU, we are effectively giving away billions of pounds of resources to other EU nations. If we leave the EU we would regain control of our fishing waters, this means we could create thousands of jobs, billions in tax income & create UK industry particularly in UK coastal areas. Iceland, Greenland & Norway refused to join the EU because of the issue of fishing & refused to give their fishing waters away

Of course it's embarrassing to the Leave campaign. Mr Farrage claims to be the champion of the fishing industry yet point blank refuses to even discuss it at European level. He's simply not interested. You have to ask what the point of being on the committee is if not to at least to shape the legislation in some way.

Just an aside. Anecdote not equaling data and all that, but I have several friends who work in Brussells and Farrage is well known there. In the pubs.

Gove's father has also come out and claimed his business wasn't foiled by European law as his son said. Lying little toad news.sky.com/story/1712502/gove-filleted-by-his-father-over-fishy-tale

He appears rather popular, indeed the fishermen who followed him up the Thames we keen to give the remain protesters a good wash ( Geldof was there so likely required) with their hoses.

Oh Mr farage is a keen sea angler too, he certainly has the fishermen's interests at heart even if he thought opposing something that he would be outvoted on 27-1 was a bit pointless.

Just an aside. Anecdote not equaling data and all that, but I have several friends who work in Brussells and Farrage is well known there. In the pubs.

In the absence of anything positive to say - just keep playing the man

Bear in mind that fishermen cannot determine what they are going to catch. As reported by an MP..

"“Even the smallest under 10 metre trawlers
are having to dump about 150 kg of cod and 300 to 400 kg of
whiting per day, regardless of what gear they use. For that, they get as
little as 100 kg of prawns and 100 kg of haddock. The fish that the
fishermen are out to catch are effectively swamped by the fish that they
cannot land and have to discard. They regard discarding as an unethical
practice, damaging to fish stocks and to the housewife who could buy the
fish”

However say their quota is 100kg of prawns and haddock as described above.

Say the small trawler catches 100kg of Haddock but few prawns, it will then carry on fishing for prawns and have to discard all of the haddock as well as the cod and whiting that it catches.

They are banning discards however.... This merely means that the trawler has to return to port to unload it's non quota catch which cannot be sold as anything other than ground up fishmeal for livestock. The fish are still dead, and cannot be sold, the method of dumping is merely different.

The EU's position is simple, namely that by signing up to the EU that your waters and all the fish in them become theirs.

Indeed the CFP was a deliberate resource grab just prior to the UK joining. It was a non negotiable condition of entry which Heath told his mandarins not even to negotiate over.

It is likely the Heath knew exactly what he was doing and the consequences however the same could not be said for later leaders.

John Major for instance complained to other EU leaders about the CFP and was quietly taken aside by Helmut Kohl who suggested that he actually read the treaties. Major had no idea that he had no right to complain, that Heath had signed all of our fish away.

The same for Howard in the noughties, promised all sorts of reforms ( none of which it appears would have been possible under EU law) , which were quietly dropped by Cameron.

Then there is the European courts, most famously with the Factortame judgement.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_(Factortame_Ltd)_v_Secretary_of_State_for_Transport

You might think we were being slightly generous in attempting to limit foreign ownership of a vessel of company at 75%, though the eventual ruling was that we could not discriminate on the basis of EU nationality or location at all.

In other words you have quotas, but your quota can also be used by foreign vessels or firms who don't operate out of or land the fish in the UK.

There is no incentive for our fishermen to return the favour as the vast majority of all fish in the EU are caught in our waters.

We are no longer allowed to keep statistics other than number and sizes of boats as that is an EU competency! However in 1983 our quota was about 37% by weight and 13% by value of our own fishing stocks - which themselves make up over 70% of the EU total.