Meeting of the Parliament 11 December 2018
There is certainly room for more than some ambiguity about that. The wording of the political declaration makes it abundantly clear that a link is being made.
As far as I can see, the UK Government has already agreed that any future agreement will cover access to UK and Scottish waters and shares. There are many unanswered questions about that. It is a significant concession on the UK Government’s part to indicate that access and shares will to some degree be traded away before the annual coastal state negotiations take place.
There is a great deal that is wrong with the EU common fisheries policy. I do not think that many of us would dispute that. However, the worst thing that is wrong with it is that Scotland has had no hand in shaping it because we have left that matter to the UK, whose Governments have consistently mishandled its development to the point where the present UK Government now seems willing to trade away even its own limited influence over it. We should make no mistake—Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement prepares the ground for a betrayal of our fishing communities and interests, and the Tories look likely to sell out our fishing communities.
If I may for a moment direct some of my fire away from the Conservatives, I add that it is of equally little use for anyone to tell fishermen that it will all be sorted out by a future UK Government at an unspecified date in an unspecified way. The Scottish Government has been clear about what we want. For fishing communities as much as for anyone else, other parties now need to start telling us what their policies are for future European relations. All parties must come off the fence about what the options are and which options they are prepared to pursue. As we have seen, empty gestures on that are not enough.
I have now lost count of the number of times that the Secretary of State for Scotland has threatened to resign from his sinecure if the UK does not leave the common fisheries policy by December 2020—something that is not guaranteed by the withdrawal agreement or the political declaration. He also threatened to resign if any agreement introduced different arrangements for Northern Ireland, which the agreement does.
Despite the Tories’ bluster, we can see where fishing features in the UK Government’s priorities. The remarks that leaked from the Tories on 22 November described fishing as a “low priority” for the UK Government in leaving the EU, just as, in 1970, they described it as “expendable” on the way into the EU. Scotland’s fishermen can be assured that the Scottish Government will fight their corner in Europe while the UK Government fights nobody but itself.
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