Meeting of the Parliament 25 March 2025
I congratulate Stuart McMillan on securing the debate, and I congratulate every member who has spoken. I agree that the proposed fees are far from reasonable, and I hope that a strong, unified message goes from the chamber today that the proposals are unacceptable.
A number of speakers have said that the Clyde belongs to the people of Scotland, and I agree. However, we must accept that the operating model fails to deliver on that statement. The Clyde Port Authority was formed as a public trust by an act of Parliament in 1966; it was then privatised in 1992 and became Clydeport. Clydeport was floated on the stock exchange in 1994, subsequently becoming part of Peel Holdings. Despite the fact that Peel Ports’ assets are strategic national assets, its shareholders are a number of investment groups, and decisions are consistently taken that are not in the public interest. I agree with the speakers who have said that we need to re-examine the model, whether by considering ownership or, perhaps, as a first step, regulation. Internationally, it is highly unusual for a private company to be a port authority; that is only the case in the UK because of the ideological privatisation that we experienced in the 1990s.
As many speakers have said, Peel Ports is proposing to levy a fee on all leisure vessels between 6m and 24m long that use the waters in the Clydeport authority area. The fee is to be introduced very soon—on 1 April 2025—and I hope that there is a way to ensure that that does not happen.
The scale of the Clydeport area is unique in the UK—it is estimated that up to 50 per cent of Scotland’s leisure craft operate there. Many people in our boating communities have been lobbying us and have been very clear that they believe that the unconstrained and weakly justified nature of the fee makes it look like a tax on recreational boating. That imposes an economic detriment on the marine tourism industry, which many coastal businesses depend on and which many of our constituents enjoy.
So far, Peel Ports’ justifications for the fees do not seem to stand up to scrutiny, and it appears increasingly difficult to see how the fee might benefit the community or visitors. The briefings that were given to members before the debate indicate that Peel Ports does not investigate and respond to accidents in the Clyde, except at the request of the owner or operator. The aids to navigation that are maintained by Peel Ports have been installed for the benefit of large vessels carrying cargo rather than that of the leisure or passenger vessels that would be captured by the fee, and there is no evidence that Peel Ports conducts regular environmental surveys or considers environmental protection.