Two faces of Ben Bradshaw
by Christopher Booker

Two contrasting episodes last week highlighted the shambles Britain is making of the EU's common fisheries policy. In Cornwall our fisheries minister, Ben Bradshaw, was so badly caught out by a blunder he had made just before Christmas that, to save his embarrassment, he proposed that Britain should turn a blind eye to the breaking of EC law. Yet in Sussex two Hastings fishermen were prosecuted by Mr Bradshaw's officials and convicted for unwittingly contravening an EC fisheries regulation that no one had ever heard of before.

Cornish fishermen were shocked to learn that for the first three months of this year, under a deal agreed by Mr Bradshaw in December to save cod stocks, they would be barred from their normal fishing grounds off the north Cornish coast, putting their livelihoods at risk. Yet Belgian trawlers had been exempted from the ban.

Mr Bradshaw's initial reply was to say: "You sometimes get details like this which slip through unnoticed." Such was the furore when Padstow fishermen had to stay in port, while Belgian trawlers hauled in huge quantities of fish, including cod, that Mr Bradshaw agreed to meet local MPs and fishermen's representatives.

Although those present at the meeting, including the Lib Dem MPs Paul Tyler and Andrew George, and Labour MP Candy Atherton, were told they must not reveal details of what was discussed, Mr Bradshaw's solution was that the Cornish fishermen should be permitted to continue fishing, while Brussels was asked for "clarification". According to Cornwall's chief fisheries officer, this is an "established strategy" used before, as for instance by France when it refused to lift the EC's ban on British beef exports.

The contrast could not have been greater with the case heard in Lewes Crown Court last week against two Hastings fishermen, Paul Joy and Graeme Bosom. In October 2003 Joy was told by a local ministry official that he had broken his licence conditions by catching more cod in the month of September than was allowed under EC quota rules.

Joy was astonished because the quota rules do not apply to small inshore boats such as those launched off Hastings beach. These have yearly "allocations" from the ministry - and at that time only 53 per cent of the allocation had been caught. But the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs had decided the annual allocation could be subdivided into 12 monthly shares. Without warning, Joy was told that he had broken this new rule.

Last week the judge, Simon Coltart, ruled that Defra was entitled to interpret EC law in this way, and Joy and his colleague were advised by their barristers to plead guilty. I cannot say why the judge came to this conclusion because he barred reporting until he passes sentence this week.

Joy and Bosom face the possibility of fines of up to £50,000. In court they could not say a word in their own defence. That they have been found guilty of breaking EC law is no doubt just as convenient to Defra as Mr Bradshaw's decision that he should allow the law in the seas off Cornwall to be ignored.
The Sunday Telegraph, 23rd January 2005