‘We don’t need a fisheries agreement’ insists Scottish Brexit Tory MP

Boris Johnson (left) kisses a wild salmon as he is shown around Billingsgate Fish Market in London with porter Greg Essex. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA. - Credit: PA Archive/PA Images

A pro-Brexit Tory MP has claimed the UK does not need a fisheries agreement with the EU after Brexit, telling the bloc to ‘get real’.

The MP for Banff and Buchan, David Duguid, thinks that because other global free trade agreements (FTAs) are not dependent on fishing rights that Boris Johnson’s governent should not bother with it much either.

Duguid tweeted: ‘UK negotiators stand firm on EU Fisheries. EU need to ‘get real!’ We are out of the EU and out of the #CFP (Common Fisheries Policy).There is NO precedent, anywhere on Earth for an FTA being dependent on guaranteed access to fishing waters.’

Being interviewed in the Buchan Observer, he added that negotiating terms with the EU on fisheries would mean ‘giving up our significant and legitimate right to sovereignty over our own waters’.

He said: ‘There is absolutely no reason that a future fisheries agreement between the UK and the EU should leave us at a disadvantage over Norway, Iceland and Faroe Islands in annual negotiations.

‘I am pleased that the UK negotiating team continues to stand firm on this issue, insisting that it is the EU that must change its position if we are to agree a deal.’

The MP failed to rouse much support. One person tweeted: ‘How can the EU ‘get real’ when the UK haven’t presented any proposals to them? But hey just wait for all these new worldwide deals that will be ready at the end of the year considering the global economic impact of the #coronavirus crisis!’

Duguid previously said he cold not vote for a Brexit deal ‘that doesn’t advance the interests of Scottish fishermen’.

The government will continue to use a quote system designed under the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) quota scheme, despite officially leaving the scheme on January 31.

On Friday, lead EU Brexit negotiator Michel Bariner called progress on trade talks ‘disappointing’ after the UK failed to even to submit a draft fisheries proposal.

He said the UK had failed to agree on several key points including the level playing field and security and justice and that UK negotiators were ‘cherry picking’ EU benefits.