Michael Gove's Father: The EU did not destroy my fishing business.

[MissZoey]

[QUOTE]Michael Gove’s father has contradicted claims made by his son that the family’s fish processing firm in Aberdeen was destroyed by the European Union’s fisheries policies.

Ernest Gove told the Guardian that he sold the business voluntarily because the fishing industry in Aberdeen was being hit by a range of different factors. These included competition for space in the port from North Sea oil vessels, the Icelandic cod wars, dockworkers’ strikes and new 200-mile limits to control over-fishing.

Michael Gove has said in speeches and television interviews that his father’s firm “went to the wall” because of the EU’s fisheries policies, and that the common fisheries policy “destroyed” it.

Ernest Gove told the Guardian that he did believe the industry in Scotland “more or less collapsed down” after the EU became involved in fisheries policy, but he said he sold his firm voluntarily, as a going concern. “It wasn’t any hardship or things like that. I just decided to call it a day and sold up my business and went on to work with someone else,” he said.

“[I] couldn’t see any future in it, that type of thing, the business that I had, so I wasn’t going to go into all the trouble of having hardship. I just decided to sell up and get a job with someone else. That was all.”

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Awkward for Gove who used this to drum up sympathy for fishermen.

[url]http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/15/michael-gove-father-company-eu-policies-fish-processing-aberdeen[/url]