Fisheries Negotiations

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 3 December 2015.

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Photo of Richard Lochhead Richard Lochhead Scottish National Party

I thank all members for their contributions as we prepare to go to our key annual negotiations in Brussels the week after next. I start by referring to Jamie McGrigor. None of us knows whether we will be in our respective seats following May’s election, but Jamie will voluntarily give up his seat. Even though I am afraid that I cannot support his amendment, even though I cannot claim to have his knowledge of prawns and even though we often disagree on some of the big issues of the day, I pay tribute to him, because he always has the fishing industry’s interests at heart and has made many fine contributions to our annual fishing debates over the years since 1999.

I was going to say that Jamie McGrigor was like an old cod back in 1999—he did not have many colleagues, and many of them have been discarded in subsequent years through human intervention. Although it has survived until 2015, I am not sure that his party has had the same kind of recovery as the cod has had. Jamie has survived, though. He is a survivor and, like me, he was part of the 1999 intake. I wish him all the best for the future. I am sure that he will continue to take a close interest in fisheries.

We are content to support the Labour Party’s amendment, lodged by Claudia Beamish. Unfortunately, we cannot support Tavish Scott’s amendment. We support many of his comments but, on securing an uplift in quota allocations for species that are covered by the introduction of the discard ban, we have to pay attention to the science. There will be more discards for some species than there will be for others, so there will be more justification for an uplift. We have to take that into account, which is why we do not support Tavish Scott’s amendment.