Meeting of the Parliament 20 March 2025 [Draft]
I am pleased to open the debate on behalf of the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee and to speak to the findings of our follow-up inquiry into salmon farming in Scotland.
I begin by thanking all committee members, the clerks and Scottish Parliament information centre staff for their diligent work throughout the inquiry, and in producing what I think is a thoughtful and balanced report on a subject that can often attract very polarised opinions.
We took evidence on our inquiry from June to October last year, hearing from a range of stakeholders who are involved in the industry, as well as from regulators and the Scottish Government. In September, we carried out a fact-finding visit to Oban, where we held a community engagement event, visited a marine research facility and went to see a local fish farm. On behalf of the committee, I thank the many stakeholders who provided evidence, written and in person, to us over the course of our inquiry.
Our main focus was to follow up on the recommendations in the 2018 inquiry report “Salmon Farming in Scotland” by our predecessors in the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee. We aimed to understand whether, seven years on, the Scottish Government has been successful in efforts to place the industry on a more sustainable footing. We assessed progress across four main themes: fish health and welfare, environmental impacts, interactions between farmed and wild salmon, and the location of salmon farms.
Overall, our committee found that, although positive steps have been taken on some of the key findings of the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee report, in most areas, the sector still has a way to go to realise the ambitions that that report set out. It is evident that recommended changes to regulation and enforcement of the industry have not been taken forward with the urgency that was called for in 2018, and we believe that that presents a barrier to securing the long-term viability of the industry. At the end of my contribution, I will set out some of the steps that our committee believes need to be taken, but for now I will touch on a selection of our report’s key findings.
The industry’s record on fish mortality rightly attracted a lot of scrutiny by the committee. We were disappointed that the industry had been unable to significantly reduce its overall mortality rate, which remained roughly the same as it was in 2018, at around 25 per cent. However, I was encouraged by recent figures from Salmon Scotland that suggested that there would be a drop in mortality rate to about 18 per cent this year. The committee will be watching eagerly to see whether that progress can be sustained.
We also heard that the operating conditions for fish farmers have become harder in recent years as a result of the emergence of new environmental challenges, such as micro jellyfish and other harmful impacts of rising sea temperatures from climate change.
The committee suggested three interventions that could help to support a further reduction in farm-fish mortality over the longer term. The first is to commission more research into the environmental causes of mortality to help the industry get ahead of future problems as they emerge. Secondly, we want to achieve greater transparency by enhancing how mortality data is collected and published by the Scottish Government, through the introduction of mandatory reporting requirements. Finally, where farms are consistently failing to control mortality at their sites, the committee believes that the regulations must secure improvements in performance. That is why we have called on the Scottish Government to provide new powers for regulators to limit or halt production at sites that record persistently high mortality rates, and for those criteria to be set out in collaboration with the industry.
It is regrettable that the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Land Reform and Islands did not support the committee’s proposal for mandatory reporting, on the basis that it would be an additional burden on the sector.