YOUR correspondent Christian Vassie (Letters, February 11) is right to be concerned about the state of the fishing industry.

But he is wrong when he states that neither I nor other UKIP MEPs bothered to vote on the matter in the EU parliament.

The Common Fisheries Policy is an issue that we have been hotly pursuing for years and we took part in the voting in Strasbourg on February 6.

In fact, UKIP tabled important amendments involving: repatriation of fishing policy back to member states (the Tories voted against); giving each member state the right to 200 nautical mile fishing zone, or median line, as guaranteed in UN law; and removing the end date for the 12 nautical mile exclusive fishing zone.

Sadly, these amendments were defeated and amendment 63 was passed which hands power over the seabed to the EU. Labour voted in favour of this outrage.

For these reasons we could not support the final vote and abstained.

While we are pleased to see the problems of discards being addressed, it does not change the fact that the EU, and more importantly the unelected Commission, will still have complete control over the policy.

Godfrey Bloom, UKIP MEP for Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire.