SCOTTISH Tory MPs have said they’d rather back a hard Brexit than remain bound by EU rules for just three months longer.
Yesterday, the UK Government’s Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab confirmed that the Prime Minister was considering extending the transition period in a bid to “solve” the Irish backstop issue.
“It could be time limited, there could be another mechanism,” he told BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show.
The possibility of the implementation period – the time between Brexit day in March next year and the day the UK finally, fully leaves Europe and new arrangements kick in – being delayed has infuriated Tory Brexiteers.
May and the EU had already pencilled in the end of December 2020 as the end of the transition to allow the country time to prepare.
But at last week’s EU summit the UK said they were considering pushing that back.
The prospect of Britain still being bound by EU rules until then could see skippers still restricted by quotas set by the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). However it would mean they had no input in discussions about how those strict limits were allocated.
That could mean Scottish fisherman, who overwhelmingly backed Brexit, being trapped by the CFP, without any say over quotas for three and a half years – right up until the next Holyrood election.
Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday Politics Scotland programme, Moray MP Douglas Ross said: “I was disappointed when the transition period was extended to November 2020,”
He added: “I could not support a deal that would include staying in the Common Fisheries Policy beyond December 2020.”
Ross said an extension of even three months would be too long.
Questioned if there was unanimity among the Scottish Conservative MPs for this view, he said he understood they could not support such a deal and would, if necessary, vote against the Government.
If the party’s 13 MPs vote against the Brexit deal, it would lead to the Government losing its House of Commons majority for the vote.
Ross added: “I think what’s important is that we send out a very strong signal to everyone who is negotiating on behalf of the UK that this is an issue that is extremely important for our Scottish communities that we represent. My view is it will not come to that.
“They will see that there is a very clear, distinct message from the Scottish Conservatives, and indeed Scotland, that we cannot have the CFP.”
SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford told the same programme: “What Douglas Ross and the Conservatives have to recognise is that they are threatening a hard Brexit.”
Earlier last week David Mundell told the BBC he too was unhappy with the possibility of extending the transition period.
“What I want to be quite clear is that we are still leaving the Common Fisheries policy at the end of 2020,” he said. “Leaving the CFP is an essential part of leaving the EU. Many people here in Scotland voted to leave the EU because they wanted to leave the CFP.
“People who were still Remain voters, even they would admit the CFP has been bad for Scotland, bad for the UK, and they want to leave.
“I want to be absolutely clear that we are leaving the CFP on the date that was set out at the end of 2020, and that we are an independent coastal state for the fisheries council in December 2020 and that remains my priority.”
Bertie Armstrong, chief executive of the Scottish Fisherman’s Federation, told the BBC an extended transition is unnecessary and unwanted. “Every day that goes by when we are not part of that process is a day when, frankly in our experience, that the EU will look to bind us into arrangements that don’t suit us at all,” he said.
“We’re glad to see that David Mundell, for instance, is full square behind us, and Michael Gove made a very positive answer when asked, ‘Will we be out of the CFP by the end of 2020?’, and that answer was yes.”
An SNP spokesperson said businesses and key industries needed “stability and a coherent plan to protect their interests.
“What is not helpful is the pathetic political posturing by Scottish Tory MPs who are more interested in putting the interests of their party before the interests of the country. They must back the rational and common-sense step to extend the transition period to avoid a cliff-edge Brexit plunge.”
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