Meeting of the Parliament 18 November 2025
I thank the member for intervening, because it gives me the opportunity to say this. I am surprised by the argument that Labour makes in its amendment, and I would hope that the Parliament would not attempt to justify cuts by the UK Government on this scale, although I note, with respect, the contortions that the Labour amendment goes through in an attempt to do exactly that.
To pick up on the member’s point, Labour’s position seems to be that the UK Government has withheld money in that way because the Scottish Government should somehow, using constitutional powers that it does not enjoy, have insisted in advance that it did not do it. I am afraid that that is a pretty feeble argument to put forward, and the fishing communities that are affected will not find it very convincing.
That £138 million has now been lost to projects in Scotland that would seek to modernise our fishing fleet, equip vessels with new technology, train new generations of fishers, boost the seafood sector and support the wider local economy of fishing communities. Those, among other things, are what will be missed.
It takes quite a brass neck to suggest—I think that the Labour amendment takes us down this road—that Scotland should now find that money from its own remaining resources, to make up for what the UK Government has denied us. It takes an even brassier neck—if I can use that phrase—to suggest that the UK Government should then be exonerated from all blame for the situation that has arisen. I hope that the Parliament will see through that argument this evening and act accordingly.
All the evidence tells us that the UK has never viewed Scotland’s fishing industry as important—not now, nor at any point since the 1970s, when it described the industry as “expendable”. The £138 million that the UK has now taken from Scotland’s fishing communities is but the latest example of that, and we should have no hesitation in calling it out or in standing up for the communities for which, by any reasonable person’s reckoning, it must surely be intended.
16:08