It Simply Not Fair

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Three British fishermen who overfished their quota repeatedly, stand to lose their livelihood, vessels and even their homes due to a disproportionate sentence.

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Quotas issued to Dutch fishermen were not being used up and the Marine and Fisheries Agency (MFA) should have redistributed the available quotas, but failed to do so. EU quotas that shared out UK fisheries to foreign vessels were denying British fishermen a proper living and being wasted as they were not being taken up.

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As Christopher Booker reports in the Telegraph: Judge Neil McKittrick not only imposed crippling fines totalling £42,500, with costs of £27,646, but also agreed to confiscations of their assets under the Proceeds of Crime Act, to a total of £213,461. Unless this is paid within months they face two years in prison.

The root of the problem for the three men was that their sole quota had been reduced so much that it no longer paid them to fish. They were aware that substantial quantities of UK quota, allocated mainly to Dutch-owned "flag boats", were not being fished for.The Proceeds of Crime Act was brought in to penalise major criminals such as money launderers and drug barons. But it is being applied in this case as a British institution guilty of incompetence, the MFA, turns every mechanism in its armoury against British subjects in order to zealously appease nonsensical European regulations.

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The MFA audited the fishermen's bank statements and demanded that the fishermen must prove that each of thousands of payments was legal. Any payments received that could not be proved to be legal would be deemed to be the "proceeds of crime" and confiscated - without the MFA having to prove the payment was illegal. The burden of proof has been reversed by the state in order to destroy the lives of men who simply wanted to earn a living.