Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Act 2, scene 1:

Third Fisherman: Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea.

First Fisherman: Why, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones.

William Shakespeare might have been writing about the 21st-century fishing industry. Forget, for a moment, “taking back our waters”. The real scandal in British and European fisheries over the past 35 years has been the relentless hoovering up of catching opportunities by big boats and big companies.

Ukip, Conservative Brexiteers and some fishermen’s leaders would like you to believe that the important battleground in European fishing is Britain versus the rest. It is not.

A more damaging issue, one that transcends national boundaries, is “big” versus “small”. In several EU countries, but most notably in Britain, powerful trawlers and large fishing interests have squeezed out the smaller, more environmentally friendly boats on which local communities depend.

None of this is directly “caused” by the existence of the much-maligned EU fisheries policy. Nor is it certain – despite glittering promises by the UK and Scottish governments – that Brexit will bring much relief to coastal fishermen.

A much-delayed fisheries white paper, now expected this month, will set out the government’s vision of an independent British fishing policy post-Brexit. Drafts circulating within the fishing industry are as slippery as freshly caught mackerel.

On the one hand, the document says, the government is open to “alternative approaches to the future allocation of quota”. On the other hand, it promises to “recognise” the “business model” which has allowed big fishing companies to buy up (from other fishermen) an indecently large share of catching opportunities in Britain. The same pattern can be observed in some, but not all, other EU fishing countries.

Such accumulations run directly contrary to the principles laid down by the common fisheries policy (CPF). Article 17 of the CFP bans “dominant positions” and calls on member states to allocate their fish quotas according, among other things, to “the impact of fishing on the environment” and “the contribution to the local economy”.

Since the creation of the CFP in 1983 these core principles have been systematically ignored by Brussels and several member states, but most egregiously of all by successive UK governments. Small, coastal boats under 10 metres, which make up 77% of the English fleet, currently have the right to catch 3% of the total English catch of quota-controlled fish such as cod, haddock, plaice, sole, herring and mackerel. One super-trawler, British-flagged but ultimately Dutch-owned, has the right to catch 94% of the English herring quota in the Atlantic and North Sea.

A recent investigation by the EU lobby group for coastal fishermen Low Impact Fishers of Europe (Life) uncovered the opaque ownership pattern of the half-dozen fish producer organisations (POs), which possess 97% of English quotas.

The investigation, entitled Fishy Business in the EU, found that one of the English POs belonged, in effect, to a single Dutch company. Another, the Fleetwood PO, is dominated by UK fishing companies controlled by Spanish interests.

In Scotland, foreign companies have been kept at bay but the country’s generous quotas for species such as herring and mackerel have been bought up by a handful of fishing families. Two-fifths of the entire Scottish catch by value, and 65% by tonnage, was landed by 19 powerful super-trawlers in 2016. Small-scale coastal fishermen, who operate 80% of Scottish boats, have to make do with 1% of quotas.

Claims by Ukip and others that the British fishing industry has suffered a calamitous decline “because of the CFP” are misleading. The big British fishing companies and the big boats are doing fine. They are now the most prosperous in Europe, with record revenues in 2017 and operating profits averaging 25%.

It is the small-scale skippers and coastal communities who are struggling with operating profits close to zero. This is due not to competition from European boats (with local exceptions in the Channel) but to the failure of UK governments to challenge the “eating up” of quotas by big fishing interests.

Much the same accumulation of quotas has occurred in Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany and Ireland. There is a healthier balance in France and in non-EU Norway. Paris and Oslo forbid the private “ownership” of quotas, which is not enforced by the EU, as some fishermen’s leaders claim.

Some degree of concentration of the fishing industry is inevitable and desirable. Small scale-fishermen have a limited range; processing factories cannot be built all around the coastline. The present egregious imbalance between big and small interests is unhealthy: it destroys small coastal communities and hands over entire fish stocks to high-impact – ie more destructive – types of fishing.

Coastal fishermen’s complaints have been fobbed off with promises of “hundreds of thousands of tonnes” of new fish for small boats when the UK leaves the EU. Such promises helped to persuade up to 92% of British fishermen, including most coastal skippers and their crews, to vote for Brexit in June 2016.

Until a few months ago, Michael Gove and others were implying – absurdly – that this great new share-out of fish would happen the day after Britain left the EU in March next year. This was always implausible. All the same, coastal fishermen feel betrayed by the government’s decision to delay the alleged quota bonanza until the end of the Brexit transition.

In theory, this will last to December 2020. The Irish border issue and pressures from British industry and agriculture now suggest that transition may last for up to seven years – or indefinitely.

Jerry Percy, chairman of the Coastal Producer Organisation, which was created to acquire more quota for local fishermen in the UK, says the time has come to put aside the Brexit rhetoric. If Michael Gove and others are really concerned about the survival of “iconic” coastal communities, they need to act now and within existing rules, he says.

“Unless something concrete and dramatic is done to help in the immediate future then the ever-more seemingly ephemeral promises of a post-Brexit windfall of quota and access will be meaningless to those small-scale coastal fishermen who have gone out of business,” he said.

What can be done? The government has transferred small amounts of “unused” quota from big interests to small in the past. In 2013, one of the big fisheries producer organisations challenged these transfers in the British courts and lost. The final judgment reluctantly accepted that fish quotas were private property but suggested that the legality of this ownership was “built on sand”.

If the government really cared about small fishermen, it could make emergency transfers of more unused quotas. It could follow the Danish example and move a small proportion of quotas away from private ownership. It could, some experts have suggested, apply a kind of “quantitative easing” to the fishing industry by simply printing more quota allocation licences.

As Percy suggests, it is time for the government to do something to rescue small fishermen rather than treating them as expendable bait on the Brexit hook.

• John Lichfield is a former EU correspondent based in France