It was the UKIP peer, Lord Willoughby de Broke who referred to fishing as one of the competences this country has lost to the EU over the years, during the Second Reading of the EU Referendum Bill in the House of Lords on January 10.

Many of the powers were given away, as I will tell noble Lords in a minute, without the British people ever being asked whether that was what they wanted. Treaty after treaty—Maastricht, Nice, Amsterdam, Lisbon—drained ever more power away from the British Parliament at Westminster and from the people of this country and channelled it to the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. Very little that matters is now left to the Westminster Parliament, which has nothing at all to say about the economy, immigration, energy, trade, agriculture, fisheries and social policy.

That happens to be the truth. All else is moonshine. That is the position from which we must move forward.