Lecture summary: With the EU demand for continued access to the UK's exclusive economic zone for its fishing vessels seemingly the main outstanding condition for a trade agreement with the UK, this presentation first extracts from the eponymous White Paper and Bill [Act] a number of international legal issues that they raise, before moving on to further matters given only sketchy treatment in, or omitted altogether from, those documents, on which a firmer position ought to have been taken. Lastly, a new problem apparent for the first time in the Bill is discussed: navigational freedom of foreign fishing vessels in the UK EEZ, and a missed opportunity to legislate a related evidential presumption that would assist future prosecutions for illegal fishing.

Professor Andrew Serdy is Professor of the Public International Law of the Sea at the University of Southampton.