How many people fish in the UK? 2 Million? 3 Million? How many fish without a license?
The EA website has license sales in 05/06 of 1,296,865 which raises revenue of £20,292,629. If you use conservative figures for participation without a license of 800,000 you get a loss in revenue of £11 Million per year. This is quite a substantial sum, tax evasion on a massive scale! As the chances of being caught are so small, a large percentage of people do not buy a license, and get away with it , I imagine, year after year. If enforcement by Fishery owners or the understaffed EA is not an option how can you recover this lost revenue? A couple of suggestions
Option 1:
Outsource the License enforcement to a third party company, in a similar way that councils employ 3rd party enforcement companies. There is then a financial incentive to ensure licenses are checked on a regular basis with appropriate fines handed out for any one not in possession of a valid license.
Option 2:
Scrap the License completely and collect the revenue through a small percentile taxation of fishing tackle and bait.