Meeting of the Parliament 19 February 2015
I am pleased to close this important debate for the Scottish Conservatives. We have had some good and positive contributions from many members.
As Alex Fergusson indicated, the Scottish Conservatives, like parties across the chamber, recognise the vital importance of our marine environment to our biodiversity, economy and communities. We can surely all sign up to the vision of the national marine plan for clean, healthy, safe, productive and diverse seas that are managed to meet the long-term needs of nature and people. The challenge is how to achieve that vision while allowing existing sustainable activities—some of which have gone on for centuries—and the jobs and communities that they underpin to be preserved and, indeed, enhanced. It is also to avoid complicated or excessive regulation.
Unfortunately, as members across the chamber have said, we have real concerns that the draft plan simply does not adequately help meet those aims. Therefore, like others, I welcome the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee’s thorough and useful report into the plan, which makes important recommendations for significant improvements. We look to the Government to act on those recommendations. I fully agree with the committee’s statement that the NMP
“should provide a simple framework for decision making and should not unintentionally produce a variety of prescriptive powers which will make operating in the marine environment more difficult.”
On fishing, I flag up the concerns that were expressed by Bertie Armstrong of the SFF, who rightly spoke about the need to recognise the existing and sustainable activities of our fishing fleets. Those activities sustain many remote and island communities in my region on the west; they also help with food security and are valuable to our economy.
The NMP should provide the appropriate level of protection for existing sustainable use in the wild fisheries industry that our fishermen understandably want to see. I echo the committee’s sensible call for the Scottish Government to work with the SFF, other fisheries associations and all other stakeholders to review the fisheries chapter so that we have no contradictions with existing fisheries regulation or confusion in interpretation.
I have argued consistently for the sustainable co-existence of our farmed and wild fish sectors, both of which are important to the economy of my region and the wider Scottish economy. Therefore, although it is right that the NMP supports the development of our aquaculture sector, it is also right that it identifies the need for a risk-based approach to the location of fish farms and the potential impacts on wild fish.
I have called consistently for fish farms to be positioned away from river mouths and further out to sea and I note with interest the committee’s discussions on the current precautionary presumption against aquaculture on the north and east coasts. One leading aquaculture stakeholder suggested to me only yesterday that the presumption was outdated and that, in the not-too-distant future, the industry might have developed the technology that will allow it to develop on the north coast.
At any rate, I support the committee’s recommendation that the Government should review the science and evidence with a view to refining the presumption. The aquaculture industry has had a bad year. A healthy and prosperous industry will do far more for conservation than one that is hard pressed and hanging on by its fingertips.