People often blame Brussels and the Common Fisheries Policy for doing-down small fishermen. But NW Liberal Democrat MEP, Chris Davies, reports that it is national governments that decide what share of each country’s fishing opportunities will go to the small scale boats and what to the big boys. This week Chris organised a seminar in the Parliament. He writes: ‘ I had a revelation when I learnt that the EU money available to support fishing is divided up between Member States and each [National] government decides how to use it – with just a very few restrictions on how they do it. I had always thought Brussels was firmly in control but no, it’s national governments’ . ‘I have an Irish colleague who often calls for more money to go to supporting diversification in coastal communities’ added Chris. ‘Next time I will point out that Ireland uses 97% of its ‘fish money’ to subsidise vessel scrapping (compared to 8% in the UK) so there’s nothing left for anything else’ .