The organisation says there\u2019s potential for fishing to be sacrificed in what it calls \u201cpost-election horse trading\u201d and has written to all political parties highlighting the \u201cnegative ramifications\u201d of a Scottish Fishing Minister leading the interests of the UK\u2019s 6,415-strong fishing fleet.<\/p>\n
The Scottish National Party (SNP) has made its intention clear to take lead in representing the UK fishing industry in the EU Council of Ministers, despite the \u201cmajor constitutional issues such a move would raise\u201d. With the SNP forming part of the UK government, NFFO says a Scottish Fisheries Minister would only be answerable to the Scottish fishing industry which could potentially \u201cundervalue\u201d the voice of fishermen in the UK favouring the Scottish fleet.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt bottom this is a question of democratic mandate,\u201d said Barrie Deas, chief executive, NFFO. \u201cIf a Scottish Minister was allowed to take the lead in Council under some unseemly back room deal, it would disenfranchise the whole fishing industry outside Scotland. This would be unacceptable at any level.\u201d<\/p>\n
The NFFO says this a matter of \u201cfundamental importance\u201d at a time when the industry is facing its own pivotal changes with the widespread introduction of the discard ban in January 2016.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is vitally important that the fishing industry outside Scotland is not traded away as a sop to the SNP on the spurious basis that more fish is landed in Scotland,\u201d added Mr Deas. \u201cIn fact in terms of numbers of fishermen and economic value of landings, fishing is at least equally as important in England, Wales and Northern Ireland as it is in Scotland.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As the UK prepares to vote in its general election, the National Federation of Fishermen\u2019s Organisation (NFFO) has expressed its concern over the \u201cnegative impact\u201d of having a Scottish Fisheries Minister taking the lead in representing the UK industry at EU level.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-6486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-industry-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6486"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=6486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}