Joel Relon

their own quantities and so the two key pledges were one to revise those quotas so to reduce the amount of fish that EU boats could catch in UK waters and UK boats could catch more and secondly to take back control of what they call the 12 mile zone which is the waters closest to the shoreline which is not where the big vessels go it's where the small ones go so economically speaking less valuable catching but the majority of British fleets are actually those small vessels which could benefit from having control of that 12 mile zone for themselves.

Yeah, so those are actually two different points.

The throwing fish back speaks to what leavers would see as the absurdity of EU regulation, overly prescriptive.

You can only catch this much fish.

If you take too much, you've literally got to send it back into the sea because the rules say, the computer says, no, you cannot have this back coming to shore.

So highlighting that kind of regulatory issue.

And then there's also the point that, yes, other vessels coming in, taking British fish and UK fishers not catching very much abroad.

In some senses, yes.

Probably more senses, no.

So on a very basic level, well, the UK took back, first of all, saying the UK took back about 25% of the catch share from the EU.

It asked for about 80.

So it was much lower than what it really hoped for.

And then having that greater catch share, there has now been some increase in the volume of fish which British boats are catching.

Up about, I think, 13%, 14%, 15% maybe between 2019 and 2023, which is the latest data that we've been able to look at.

So some increasing catch.

But when you dig down into it, firstly, that's not all coming from UK waters.

About half of it is coming from catches made abroad.

So it's not all to do with Brexit, clearly.

And then secondly, who's catching that fish?

Mostly it is Scottish boats.