Hansard

I start by agreeing with Graeme Dey’s point about the RNLI’s expertise. I absolutely share that view regarding the expertise in Lerwick and Aith in my constituency.

I agree broadly with the points by Rob Gibson and the cabinet secretary about emergency towing vessels. I am in accord not with the rhetoric but certainly with the principle of the positions that they outlined. I absolutely agree with the cabinet secretary on the Crown Estate as well. My best comment on that is, “Implement Smith,” because Smith has it absolutely right.

I will come at the debate from the perspective of the Government’s food and drink strategy, which I entirely agree with. The industry is worth £13 billion a year to the economy, and Scotland’s seas contribute £2 billion to that overall figure. Fish, including salmon, and mussels and prawns are all consumed at the nation’s dinner tables and exported around the world. A starting point for the marine plan is whether it will help such businesses to achieve the Government’s target of growing our food exports and eating more healthily.

Frankie’s fish and chip shop in Shetland, where the cabinet secretary has eaten, is the best in the UK. It sources fish from Shetland boats that land in the islands. The seafood industry in Shetland is worth £300 million to our local economy, which is far higher than the value of the oil and gas industry to our economy. How will the marine plan help that business and the industry as a whole?

The salmon industry is under huge regulatory pressure, much of which was created here in Scotland, yet it is expected to deliver the 50 per cent growth target that the Government has set. How will the plan help it?

Seabird numbers fluctuate, as Claudia Beamish and others have mentioned. The availability of food sources, sea temperature changes and other pressures all affect one of Scotland’s most glorious images—gannets diving on shoals of fish close to the coastline, which I can see in Bressay Sound out of my window at home. I have also seen that sight on the west coast and in the Firth of Forth. How does the plan deal with the changes in seabird numbers?

The Government’s idea for the renewables industry is the closest thing that it has to an industrial strategy. Offshore wind—Graeme Dey mentioned it—and tidal and wave energy can keep the lights on by producing green power. As Liam McArthur’s members’ business debate yesterday showed, the wave energy sector is under pressure and commercial firms are going bust. How will the plan help those emerging technologies?

That is my point. Governments relish plans, consultations, strategies and the rest of it, but plans have to achieve something—they cannot just be top down. Members should ask Orkney Islands Council about that—it wants a 10-year moratorium on marine designations that the Scottish Government is set to implement. An approach that brings local people, industries, science and environmental bodies together has to be the practical way forward. A one-size-fits-all, top-down, bureaucratic approach simply will not work.

I believe that the cabinet secretary knows that. As has been mentioned, his marine plan includes two areas—the Clyde and Shetland—that already have regional plans. For some areas, the concept of marine planning is new, but that is not true of Shetland. We have had marine planning around the coast since the Zetland County Council Act 1974, which gave the islands control over works licences. Those were the basis for the Sullom Voe oil terminal and the subsequent oil agreements. In 2000, the Scottish Parliament passed an inshore regulating order that devolved local management of inshore fisheries. Shetland produced its first marine spatial plan in 2006. We have more experience of marine planning than any other part of the country has.

Under the Government’s timetable, it will be 2016 before a regional marine plan for Shetland is formally in place. I guess that the process will take a little longer for the Clyde, given the number of local authorities that are involved, so none of this is quick. The lesson from our experience of marine spatial planning is simple: all the people who are affected have to sit around one table and work on the way forward.

Offshore renewables developers like the clarity of the Shetland marine spatial plan and use it. It tells them what they need to know—which areas to avoid—and it saves them time and money. I hope that that approach to regional plans will work around Scotland’s coast. It helps marine planners to integrate terrestrial and marine planning, which is the correct aim of the Government. Even salmon farmers—in our case, the Norwegians—know where an application to increase production is more likely to be agreed to. Those are the positive aspects of having an agreed local marine plan.

The marine plan must be underpinned by good science, data collection, verification and the constant updating of information. I feel a bit for Marine Scotland, because I see from the Government’s budget that Marine Scotland’s budget for the next financial year will be reduced by 3 per cent, yet it is under enormous pressure from all of us who want more effort to be put into marine science.

Marine Scotland can enter into more working partnerships with marine research institutions around Scotland to ensure that regional plans are based solidly on evidence. I suggest that the cabinet secretary should consider increasing the fishing industry science alliance funding from its current level of £150,000 a year and providing three-year funding allocations, as that helps projects to become much more effective than annual projects can be.

In Shetland, North Atlantic Fisheries College staff work with white-fish skippers to monitor landings and records. That keeps the figures and the evidence up to date. A number of colleagues have made the point that the marine plan should change on the basis of real-time evidence. It must be a live working document, not an academic one that gathers dust on a shelf, as Alex Fergusson rightly said.

My plea in supporting the minister’s approach is that we should not listen to the clarion calls for everything to be driven from the top. Frankly, regional plans will be worthless if they are all the same, so of course they will be different, never mind whether the difference is between Shetland and the Clyde or the area around Graeme Dey’s constituency on the east coast. We must also invest in science and evidence in a coherent and long-term manner. Further, I agree with the interesting case made in The Press and Journal today for the Scottish Seafood Association to be on the Scottish food commission. I agree with the minister’s approach to the commission, but I hope that he might have another look at its membership.

I very much agree with the Government’s approach to Scotland’s £13 billion food and drink industry, of which seafood and sea fish are an enormously important part. My test of the marine action plan will be how it helps to develop an industry that can be an increasing part of the overall approach, so that the industry flourishes in the context of sustainable development while supporting the local economy and local people.