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.

It looks as if HMG is going ahead with the Balance of Competences Review and is, possibly, taking it all more seriously than many of us believed. Of course, the devil will, as ever, be in the detail and one can hardly trust the ministries and departments who are working on the reports.

In a Written Statement on October 23, the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, explained the purpose and gave a timetable:

I wish to inform the House that, further to my oral statement at the launch of the balance of competences review on 12 July 2012, Official Repo rt, column 468, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is today publishing the timetable for the review including departmental responsibility for the reports into each individual area of competence.

The review will complete its work during 2014 and will look at the scope of the EU’s competences (the power to act in particular areas conferred on it by the EU Treaties) as they affect the UK, how they are used, and what that means for Britain and our national interests.

The review will be divided into four semesters, each containing six to 10 reports. This will allow reports on related topics to be grouped together. The reports from each semester will be published at the end of that semester. If necessary, changes to this timetable will be made in order to take account of any events which could impact upon the timing of a report.

Fisheries is some way down the list. It will be Report 22 in Semester 3 that will be put together from autumn 2013 to spring 2014. According to Mr Hague's statement that must mean that the actual report will be published in the spring of 2014. Before that we need to ensure that information about the real situation with fisheries is widely spread and ideas alternative to the CFP are propounded.

This paper was published by the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington DC but, for all of that, its arguments are of enormous interest to fishermen and all who are interested in fisheries policy here as well. We have only just received a copy of Give a Man a Fish and have not been able to analyze it properly. That shall be done but in the meantime our readers might like to read it and form their own conclusions. The notion that the best way forward is greater regard for property rights instead of yet more government regulation is one that needs to be discussed properly. Of course, whether we agree with the conclusions or not, we can do nothing about it while we are in the EU and its monstrous creation, the CFP.