Meeting of the Parliament 03 May 2023
The difference with the Scottish Government’s approach is that it is not bringing the coastal communities with it. The document is a paper exercise and an online process that has had no consultation with any coastal communities at all. The difference between that and the United Kingdom Government’s approach is that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs consulted coastal communities. The fishermen even agreed on the sites that were proposed.
No one gets this more than fishermen, because without good fish stocks, their businesses would struggle. As the former finance secretary said, if we
“sever the lifeline with fishing, we will undermine the wider economy”—[Official Report, 2 May 2023; c 92.]
of coastal communities. She is right. That is a clear sign of the need to work with fishermen on those issues instead of imposing arbitrary, unevidenced restrictions on their activities. With sustainable fishing practices, our fleet has seen fish stocks rebound over the past 20 years. Plaice, hake and haddock have all seen their populations grow considerably during that time because of sustainable practices, which is down to the hard work of the fishermen who know our seas best, not the result of top-down desktop policies, as we heard during Beatrice Wishart’s members’ business debate on highly protected marine areas.
Our coastal communities have asked the Scottish Government to reconsider these plans. The fishermen in those vulnerable, fragile, rural, coastal communities need to be heard.
Today, the motion presents the Scottish Parliament with a clear choice: we can stand behind these communities, go back to the drawing board and work with them, rather than against them, to protect our seas; or we can press ahead with these unevidenced, unwanted and hugely damaging plans.
We should be under no illusion: these communities are clear that a fishing ban is an existential threat not only to their jobs but to their way of life. We have an opportunity to send them a message that we have listened and we will support them. We have a plan to do that and we want to work with this Government and all parties to ensure that we can protect them and our oceans. I believe that our motion does that, and that the amendments from Labour and the Liberal Democrats show their willingness to do that. I welcome their support and that they are standing up for fishermen, and I am sure that there are others on the back benches who will also stand up for their constituents.
I move,
That the Parliament values the £560 million that fishing contributes to Scotland’s economy and the communities that rely on that industry; recognises fish and shellfish as Scotland’s climate-smart food; further recognises that the fishing industry has worked constructively with the Scottish Government for many years on the network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) covering 37% of Scotland’s seas; notes that the Scottish Government’s plans to arbitrarily designate 10% of Scotland’s waters as Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs) with no scientific basis, or proper analysis of any ecological justification; further notes the significant concerns of the fishing sector as a whole and the coastal communities that rely on it, in relation to the Scottish Government’s HPMA proposals and that those proposals have failed to gain the support of coastal communities and that many local authorities also oppose them; notes the lack of any baseline, reliable methodology or modelling and a lack of suitable indicators for assessing their impact; believes that the HPMA policy is at odds with the Scottish Government’s own established cycle of reviewing the MPA network that has been carefully and rigorously developed, and calls upon the Scottish Government to fundamentally reconsider its HPMA proposals and the timeframe for their introduction.
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