Meeting of the Parliament 18 December 2025
No, I will not.
Make no mistake: the decision was made in London, and it treats Scotland as an afterthought.
Since the UK Government made its announcement, team Scotland, fishing stakeholders and Scottish ministers have been asking UK ministers to get round the table for a meaningful discussion on a different way forward for the fund that treats our fishing industry with the respect that it deserves. I am sincerely disappointed that, to date, UK ministers have stopped short of committing to that. Instead, they have written to us, explaining their flawed funding methodology. In their letter, UK ministers said that the reason for applying the Barnett formula to the fishing and coastal growth fund is a change in His Majesty’s Treasury’s statement of funding policy, which removed the ring-fenced funding from marine funding and baselined the funding allocation from 2024-25. The UK Government said that the Barnett formula would be applied to future marine funding, claiming that that better respects the devolution settlement. That is nonsense. It is entirely disingenuous, and the UK Government is fully aware that we did not support the change. In fact, it was implemented without any meaningful engagement or consultation with us at all.
We have always been clear that applying a population-based model to fisheries funding fails to recognise Scotland’s greater share of the UK seas and significantly penalises our fishing industry. It also fails to recognise the industry’s significant contribution, through taxation, to the UK Government.