Brexit fishing row erupts as Brexiteer claims Boris' deal has left her with 'no fish'
FISHING rights campaigner and Brexiteer June Mummery has said Boris Johnson's trade deal with the EU leaves "no fish" for her company.
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The former Brexit Party MEP is the latest figure in the fishing industry to attack the Prime Minister's deal. Several people in the long-suffering sector have accused him of a "sell-out". Ms Mummery has long campaigned for Britain's coastal communities to be rebuilt post-Brexit.
She said the UK-EU trade deal did not go far enough to help struggling fishermen after years of working under rules stipulated by Brussels.
The ex-MEP, who owns a seafood company, said having to wait five years for fishing quotas to expire is "a long time when you have nothing".
She said the arrangements Mr Johnson had agreed with the Europeans fall short of what is needed to boost the industry.
And in a grim prediction she said many people working in the fishing sector will be left with little choice but to quit.
During an interview with former MEP turned commentator Martin Daubney, she said: "As fishing goes, and if we want to hang on to the industry we have, five years is a long time when you have nothing.
"We're on our knees.
"We've waited 40 years and quite frankly a lot of people will pack up, including myself. I've got no fish!"
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Many fishermen in the UK have said they feel betrayed by the post-Brexit trade deal.
Trawlerman Gavin Addison, who works out of the port of Peterhead in Scotland, is one such example.
He said he and his fellow fishermen have been "shafted" by the Prime Minister.
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He told the Financial Times: “We thought it was going to help the industry, that it was going to put the fishing back into the control of British fishermen.
“We were shafted.”
And skipper Jeremy Hoskins of Newlyn in Cornwall feels much the same way.
He believes Mr Johnson "collapsed" under pressure from the EU to compromised in negotiations as time ran out.
Mr Hoskins said: “The long and the short of it is that we’ve been betrayed again."
Under Mr Johnson's last-minute deal, the UK will return 25 percent of the value of fish caught in its waters to its own fishermen.
Mr Johnson had originally demanded the figure be set at 35 percent but caved in to pressure from Brussels.
The Prime Minister has insisted the UK's fishing industry will be rebuilt by the deal.
While he admitted Britain had given ground on access to fishing waters, he said as a result of the deal the country will be able to “catch and eat quite prodigious quantities of extra fish”.