Meeting of the Parliament 27 January 2026 [Draft]
The Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill is absolutely essential for Scotland. Yesterday, I was talking to a climate scientist who told me that, when we consider the relative weighting of climate and nature, nature must be two thirds when it comes to action. He said that we know what we need to do on climate, so it is nature that we must prioritise.
I have brought back just two amendments at stage 3, knowing that this will be a busy debate. One is in this grouping, and I will take a little time to talk about it now. The other is in a much later grouping, and I am grateful for the Scottish Government’s work on it.
Amendment 66 is one of several that have been lodged by Opposition MSPs across the chamber that highlight the Government’s repeated delays and non-delivery of measures to improve our beleaguered inshore ecosystems and inshore economies alike. The Scottish Government’s track record on managing our inshore waters is close to non-existent, and both our marine environment and our fishing industry—especially the low-impact sector—are suffering as a result. The ink had barely dried on stage 2 when the cabinet secretary announced the cancellation of the long-delayed consultation on inshore MPAs and priority marine feature measures during this parliamentary session. That means that, realistically, a new consultation will not materialise any time before 2027, which adds another two years of further degradation to what is already a decade-long delay in implementation.
Those are delays that our inshore waters cannot afford and that break repeated promises by the Government. On 11 November 2020, cabinet secretary Mairi Gougeon stated:
“Over the next 18 months, we will take forward fisheries management measures for a number of inshore MPAs and for 11 priority marine features outside MPAs.”—[Official Report, 11 November 2020; c 14.]
On 22 December 2022, minister Màiri McAllan stated:
“By 2024, we will complete the management measures for those MPAs, and we will work on the priority marine features that are most at risk from bottom trawling.”—[Official Report, 22 December 2022; c 88.]
On 29 June 2023, cabinet secretary Màiri McAllan backtracked and stated:
“Inshore MPAs and priority marine features also require fisheries management measures. However, the complexity of the inshore area and the number of sites have meant that progress has been slower than was hoped—therefore, consultation on inshore measures will take place in 2024.”—[Official Report, 29 June 2023; c 32.]
Now, even that promise has been broken. The problem is broader than that cancelled consultation. Scotland currently has an array of environmental legislation, typically including duties on the Scottish ministers to produce strategies and plans that they could produce without the need for legislation.
In the marine space, it feels as though those strategies and plans are either at cross-purposes or siloed from one another, leading to each one being used as an excuse for inaction in the others. We might hear, for example, “Spatial management can’t be considered here; that’s for the inshore fisheries management improvement programme to look at,” even though the marine directorate has already told my committee that it would not consider it. We might hear, “That’s a matter for the national marine plan 2,” or, “That’s for the implementation of the future catching policy,” and so on.
A series of powerless and underfunded consultative bodies are being used as a smokescreen, from regional inshore fisheries groups to the inshore fisheries management and conservation groups. Those are all covers for the policy position, which is never said explicitly by ministers, that measures to protect our most precious marine environments or to support low-impact fishing will almost always be rejected if it means closing a square kilometre of sea to dredging and trawling.
The following illustrate this Government’s record: the inshore MPA and PMF consultation—delayed. The national marine plan 2—delayed. The inshore fisheries management improvement programme—delayed. The fisheries management plans—delayed. The biodiversity strategy—not delivered. The planned marine and coastal restoration plan—delayed. The Government cannot claim that the bill is a success story, given this backdrop of policy inaction and failures.
The bill makes no mention whatsoever of the marine environment. My impression is that, because 37 per cent of Scotland’s seas are designated for protection, the Government sees the job as done. No matter what proportion it is, that 37 per cent is protected only on paper. It is not good enough just to set targets; it is action that we desperately need for the inshore. So far, this Government is failing our seas, and the Parliament’s job now is to turn that around.