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		Letter to the Editor Nottingham Evening Post - Wednesday 8th September 2004 Dear Sir, Nick Palmer MP shows extraordinary complacency and ignorance about the EU's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), (letters August 24th). The CFP which he commends has been a disaster for the environment and for North Sea Fish stocks. It has been a disaster for the fishing industry, as well as the on-shore processing industry, with thousands of jobs lost. And it is a disaster for the consumer -- just look at the price of cod. Brussels has stolen and destroyed a major British industry. Palmer suggests that British waters might represent 8% of the EU's CFP waters. It is astonishing that an MP should be so ignorant of a key fact about the EU. While exact estimates vary, everyone (except Mr. Palmer) agrees that British waters represent well over half of all CFP waters. That is why the decision to join (regrettably made by a "Conservative" Prime Minister, Edward Heath) was such a gross betrayal of British interests. Palmer makes the silly point that fish don't observe maritime borders. No one said they did. But the fact remains that in shared waters, each party plays beggar-my-neighbour and stocks are decimated. All the evidence from around the world shows that waters under the control of a single country are managed more responsibly than shared fisheries. That is a key reason behind the disaster of the CFP. Palmer's point that British withdrawal from the CFP would require us to make "55 separate bilateral agreements" is even sillier. With only eleven major fishing nations in the EU, the number could not exceed ten. In practice, just two deals -- with Norway and Ireland -- would cover virtually all the fisheries that matter. The sooner we quit the CFP, the better. We should never have joined to start with. Yours faithfully, Roger Helmer MEP