Meeting of the Parliament 18 December 2025
Patience, Mr Kerr.
Tim Eagle said that we were “better off under the Tories”. Well, I can hardly say that that was the case, given the fact that the Tory Government did not have a devolved scheme. I remember clearly when my friend and colleague Richard Lochhead, when he was the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Food and the Environment, which included fisheries at the time, was over in the EU while the discussions about quotas were taking place. The UK Government minister could not make it on time, but Richard Lochhead was there in the room. We have heard about the size of the Scottish fishing fleet and what it brings to the UK, yet the Tory UK Government decided that the best thing to do was to bring an unelected lord over from London to sit in the room and negotiate rather than allow the man who actually knew the details of what Scottish fishing needed to do so. I am sorry, but we are not going to hear any nonsense from the Tories about things being better under them.
Rhoda Grant’s ridiculous attempt to dupe the fisher folk by trying to defend the indefensible is truly heroic but, ultimately, it will be futile, because folk will see it as just another Labour disaster as Labour treats Scotland as nothing more than an afterthought. I tried to talk to Dame Angela Eagle about the matter.