Whisky, cheese and chocolate producers have suffered the biggest post-Brexit export losses in the food and drink sector, new figures from HMRC have shown.

Analysis of the figures by the Food and Drink Federation (FDF) shows that cheese exports in January plummeted from £45m to £7m year on year, while whisky exports nosedived from £105m to £40m. Chocolate exports went from £41.4m to just £13m, a decline of 68%.

They put the collapse in trade down to a combination of Brexit and weaker demand in Europe, where restaurants, hotels and other hospitality outlets remain closed.

Exports of some other goods such as salmon and beef almost stopped altogether, with declines of 98% and 92% respectively, but by value they were the 7th and 4th biggest losers of the top 10 exports to the EU.

Overall, trade in fish, thanks partly to a complete ban on the exports of certain live shellfish, dropped by 79%.

The figures come hot on the heels of data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showing trade between the UK and EU had been hit hard in January, with overall exports down by 40.7% in January compared to December.

It comes as the House of Lords EU environment subcommittee expressed deep concern over the disruption to trade caused by Brexit. “We’re dismayed that our agri-food sector is facing such high trade frictions, “ said Lord Teverson, the subcommittee chair, in a new report due to be published on Tuesday.

The “end of the seafood industry” on the south coast of England could be caused by post-Brexit export problems, a Dorset fish merchant has said.

Charlie Samways said extra paperwork and IT issues mean perishable seafood exports from West Bay were taking twice as long to reach customers in the EU.

As a third country outside the European Customs Union, UK exports are subject to new customs and veterinary checks.

The government said it was in contact with the industry to address issues.

Mr Samways, whose family has operated in West Bay for 60 years, buys seafood from 150 local fishermen, much of which is exported to customers in France, Spain and Italy.

Supertrawlers spent almost 3,000 hours fishing in UK marine protected areas in 2019, making “a mockery of the word ‘protected’,” according to campaigners.

Supertrawlers are those over 100 metres in length and can catch hundreds of tonnes of fish every day, using nets up to a mile long. A Greenpeace investigation revealed that the 25 supertrawlers included the four biggest in the world and fished in 39 different marine protected areas (MPAs).

The Southern North Sea MPA was one of those fished and was created to safeguard porpoises, which are especially threatened by supertrawlers. More than 1,000 porpoises died in fishing nets around the UK in 2019. The most heavily fished MPA was the Wyville Thomson Ridge, off Shetland, which was intended to protect reefs. All the supertrawler fishing was legal.

Forty per cent of England’s seas are designated as MPAs, but these only ban some of the most damaging activities in some locations. On Monday, an independent review commissioned by the government urged the establishment of highly protected marine areas (HPMAs), where all harmful activities including fishing, dredging and construction are banned. The government’s own assessment in 2019 showed the marine environment is not in a healthy state.

“Our government allowing destructive supertrawlers to fish for thousands of hours every year in MPAs makes a mockery of the word ‘protected’,” said Chris Thorne of Greenpeace UK. “For our government to be taken seriously as a leader in marine protection, it must ban this practice.”

Meet the young fisherman from Northumberland who is making a living from the seas.

Sophy Rose crew members Jordan Richardson and Edward Sinclaire lift more than 300 creels a day from the waters around Holy Island.

Jordan, 24, skippered his first boat aged 17 and now works full time as a fisherman.

Watch more on this story on Inside Out in the North East and Cumbria on BBC One at 19:30 on Monday 2 September or catch up after on the iPlayer.

Britain’s most valuable fish stock has lost its sustainable status after overfishinghas driven mackerel stocks to the brink of collapse.

As of this weekend, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) has warned people against purchasing mackerel caught in the North East Atlantic, which will no longer bear its “blue label”.

The body charged with assessing the health of wild fisheries said its decision came after stocks had crashed due in part to quotas that exceeded the best scientific advice. 

Accounting for around a third of the seafood landed in the UK, the mackerel fishery is worth over £200m.

“This news will be a disappointment for the fishermen as well as for mackerel loving consumers,” said Camiel Derichs, Europe director for the MSC.

“However, factors including declining stocks, quotas set above new scientific advice and poor recruitment have combined to mean that the fisheries no longer meet the MSC’s requirements.”

The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) states that mackerel populations have been in freefall since 2011, dropping from a high of 4.79 million tonnes to 2.75 million tonnes last year.

Council experts advised that current catches must be cut by over two thirds to allow the stock to recover to a sustainable level over the next two years.

Tory Brexiters have demanded that Theresa May reject the transition deal agreed between David Davis, the Brexit secretary, and his EU opposite number, Michel Barnier, in Brussels on Monday.

The 13 Conservative MPs and Sammy Wilson of the DUP – whose 10 MPs give May her working majority in the Commons – have signed a letter condemning the failure of the draft withdrawal agreement to end the common fisheries policy as soon as the UK formally leaves the EU on March 30 2019.

Instead, British fisheries will remain in the CFP – one of the most bitterly resented aspects of EU membership – until the end of the transition period in December 2020. In the final year of the transition agreement the UK will have no say in the policy, although the EU has said quotas will not change and there will be “consultations”.

The letter says: “The effect of ending discards during this period without compensating measures will be a further disaster for the UK’s already shattered fishing fleet, particularly for the inshore fleet, further eroding prosperity in vulnerable coastal communities. These demands are completely unacceptable and would be rejected by the House of Commons.”

The MPs are taking part in a protest on the Thames outside the Palace of Westminster on Wednesday morning. They have been joined by the former Ukip leader Nigel Farage and are throwing fish back into the river to underline their objection to the EU-imposed practice of discarding fish that do not meet quota rules.

This is the first open revolt by the Brexiters since the letter from the European Research Group signed by 62 Conservative MPs setting out their red lines a month ago. Earlier this month, Michael Gove, the environment secretary, went to Scotland to make a common declaration with the Tory leader Ruth Davidson calling for a “fast exit” from the fisheries policy.

Fishing quotas, by limiting the amount of catch, have worked as intended and have brought many fish populations in EU waters back to sustainable levels. The recent certification of North Sea cod as sustainable was a particularly hard-fought journey from a near collapse of the stocks. The value of fish landings is now increasing year-on-year, and profits in the fishing industry are at the highest level recorded.

And yet it is difficult to find signs of these positive trends in many fishing communities. This is partly due to changes in technology and labour markets, resulting in fewer fishing vessels each year (as in other EU and non-EU countries). But it’s also related to how the UK distributes its quota, and not just its total size. The decision on how quota should be distributed (big vessel or small, trawler or handline) has always been up to the UK government. The reality is that most Brexiteers have never engaged with the nuts and bolts of this issue, and we’re looking at two more years without real engagement.

Never mind the pollocks, here’s Michael Gove

All this has of course been lost in the political theatre around fisheries. The totemic nature of fisheries in the UK consciousness has made the industry ripe for photo-ops, but not for serious reform. This is extremely frustrating for struggling fishing communities, but it’s also very dangerous. Just weeks ago, Rees-Mogg was making the case for tariff-free imports of food products, post-Brexit, without a hint of concern that cheap imports would undercut British fishermen.

An industry that has been overlooked and politicians trying to make a name for themselves can make for interesting bedfellows, but not particularly good ones. Fishing communities deserve better.

Fish and chip lovers can now enjoy North Sea cod with a clear conscience, after the fishery was awarded sustainable status by the Marine Stewardship Council on Wednesday.

Stocks of cod in the North Sea were once one of the world’s great fisheries but plummeted by 84% between the early 1970s and 2006. They came perilously close to the total collapse seen in the Grand Banks fishery off Canada in the early 1990s, which has still not recovered.

But action to decommission fishing boats, ban catches in nursery areas and put larger holes in nets to allow young cod to escape has seen the stock rise fourfold since 2006. The MSC, a non-profit certification group, undertook a detailed 18-month study and has now approved the North Sea cod catch of 228 boats in Scotland and England, which represents the vast majority of the white fish fleet.

Sustainable North Sea cod will carry the MSC’s blue label and is expected in supermarkets as early as next week, with Waitrose likely to be among the first to offer the fish. North Sea cod has never been approved by the MSC in the group’s 20-year history and the MSC certification also requires fishers to protect cold water corals from damage by trawlers.

The hopes of British fishermen that the UK can win its “waters back” after Brexit are expected to be dashed by the European parliament, despite the campaign promises of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, a leaked EU document reveals.

MEPs have drafted seven provisions to be included in Britain’s “exit agreement”, including the stipulation that there will be “no increase to the UK’s share of fishing opportunities for jointly fished stocks [maintaining the existing quota distribution in UK and EU waters]”.

The document, obtained by the Guardian, adds that in order for the UK and EU to keep to commitments on sustainable fishing – contained within the United Nations stocks agreement – “it is difficult to see any alternative to the continued application of the common fisheries policy”.

It is estimated that there only about 11,000 people directly employed in fishing in the UK, however the UK’s trawlermen were among the most vocal critics of the EU during the referendum, fuelled by frustration over controls on fishing quotas, which have been blamed on Brussels and the common fisheries policy (CFP).

While calling for control over Britain’s waters, Farage, the then Ukip leader, and the Labour MP Kate Hoey led a small flotilla of fishermen up the Thames days before the EU referendum in June, where they clashed with rival boats led by the singer and political activist Bob Geldof.

Speaking at the time, Farage said: “Today’s flotilla is not a celebration or a party but a full-throttled protest. We want our waters back.”

During the referendum campaign, Johnson, who is now the foreign secretary, described the CFP as “crazy” and claimed the EU had inflicted a “tragedy” on the industry, halving the number of people working within it.

But the leaked report from the European parliament’s committee on fisheries insists that the “granting of access to the EU domestic market to the UK” post-Brexit should be conditional on Britain continuing to respect the rights and obligations in the CFP.

Fishermen across the south coast are facing a “desperate” situation as storms and high seas have grounded boats for almost two months.

Many have been unable to earn any money since before Christmas and as hurricane force winds smash their boats and fishing equipment it is feared that the losses could run into many millions.

Despite their plight they are being ignored by politicians, industry representatives claimed a day after David Cameron pledged that whatever was needed would be spent on the areas hit by flooding.

Along the entire south coast of England and Wales, smaller boats have been completely grounded and even the larger trawlers have only been able to snatch short periods at sea before the weather forces them to return to shore.

Conservative estimates suggest that at least 2,000 boats, around 4,000 fishermen, have been affected.