EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Friday 8th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I say with some regret that the failure of the fisheries negotiations is jaw-dropping. This was one area where Brexit could have made a real improvement to our catch sector, particularly in Scotland and in the south-west, where I live. We seem to have flunked that completely.

Let me go through some of the initial targets and objectives of the Government in these negotiations. The first was to keep market access negotiations separate from the catch and quota issues. That was not achieved. Moving from relative stability to zonal attachment in fish stocks was not achieved. Taking control of our territorial waters, out to 12 miles, was not achieved. Frictionless trade in fish products was not achieved in a big way, with catch certificates and better reinspection above everything else that we have on the goods side. We used to swap quota with our European neighbours, which was essential for seasonality and the discarding ban, but we forgot to ask for it or did not even bother to make sure that we achieved it. In the area of quota hoppers, where European companies own a large proportion of English quota, we have no government proposals whatsoever.

Perhaps worst of all is that we have to play this all again in five years. In 2026, we have to go through these negotiations again, knowing that the EU has the right to stop our tariff-free trade in fisheries—indeed, our trade at all—if we fail to come to agreement then. The leverage will be as equal then as it is now. We have failed the one big opportunity that we had from Brexit and, in the words of fishers in the south-west, we are worse off than we were before.