Meeting of the Parliament 02 May 2023
I warmly thank Beatrice Wishart for bringing the debate and the opportunity to speak in it to the chamber, and I congratulate her on her excellent contribution. I have enjoyed listening to all members who have spoken thus far.
I have spent 49 years campaigning in various capacities to support and provide succour to our fishermen and fishing communities throughout Scotland. I started off as a schoolboy campaigning for our mother in 1974 when she successfully won the Moray and Nairn seat from Gordon Campbell. She thought that she had the fishing community on her side during the campaign. It was a cold count, so the votes were not counted until the Friday, but she went on the election night programme and was interviewed by the anchor man of the election results in London. At midnight, after the votes had been counted elsewhere but not in Moray, he asked her: “Well, Mrs Ewing, how have you done in Moray and Nairn?” She said: “I won.” When he then said, “How can you possibly know? The votes have not been counted yet”, she said, “Because the boats came in.” At that point, the BBC executive producer was completely mystified; he did not understand. Postal votes were not a thing then, and the fishermen had to come in. They disrupted their fishing effort to cast their vote for Winnie to fight for them, precisely because the fishing community had lost confidence in the Conservatives under Ted Heath. My fear is that it is now losing confidence in the party that I have served for almost 50 years and the party of our Scottish Government.
When I had the privilege of serving as the member of the Scottish Parliament for Lochaber for eight years—it is now in Kate Forbes’s capable hands—I got to know the fishermen in Mallaig and Arisaig. I came to understand and appreciate what they do. They produce food for our table and are hard-working, great characters; many are God-fearing, too, and they make a huge contribution to Scotland.
Over the years, members of our fishing communities have gone on to form the backbone of the merchant navy and, in the 1970s and 1980s, they went to work offshore in our oil and gas industry, because they were already familiar with the perils of working on the cruel sea. They put their lives at risk for us then, and they still do so now. They deserve our respect—they deserve our thanks. However, what have they got in this consultation document? The only mention of fishermen is when it says that what they do is “destructive”. What an incredible act of provocation that is!
I have a list of questions about the consultation document. Some have been asked already. Why did the Government not sit down with fishermen at the beginning and work with them on local management to learn what they do? After all, no one is going to be more interested than fishermen in preserving stocks for the future and for their families coming behind them. No one knows more about it than they do. No one can convince me that an academic working at a university at a typewriter knows more than a fisherman working the sea.
Where do we go from here? I have already urged the minister to do something, and I know that she has rejected me, but this issue will haunt the Scottish Government. It will not go away. The document that I am holding is not a consultation document—it is a notice of execution. Together with the inshore cap and the priority marine features, it is putting the fear of God into our fishermen. The collective impact means that, as Dr Allan has already said, the anger is palpable. In 49 years, I have not come across anything like it.
The minister should withdraw the consultation document and apologise. She should go around the coast to most of the fishing ports, as I have tried to do in my time, and then she should go back to the drawing board and work with the fishing communities.
In the meantime, I have three suggestions about what to do with the consultation document. First, it could be put in the burgeoning recycled policy unit along with the alcohol advertising ban and the deposit return scheme. Secondly, it might be preferable to use it as a firelighter. Thirdly—and in doing this, I think I am summing up the views of the people whom I work for and have valued and cherished for almost 50 years—it should be torn up, as I am now doing. That is what the people of Scotland who have great affection for our fishermen want to happen. It is what should happen and what I believe will happen at one stage or another.
17:38