North-East MP Seamus Logan has vowed to continue to fight for a fairer allocation for the fishing sector in Scotland from the UK Government’s Fishing and Coastal Growth Fund.
Building on a commitment in the King’s Speech for Westminster ‘to work closely with the devolved governments to deliver for citizens across the whole of the nation’, the Aberdeenshire North and Moray East MP is calling on the Labour Government to reconsider their allocation to Scotland which is dwarfed by that currently being awarded to the fishing sector in England.
Close to the end of the first parliamentary session, the UK Government announced £132 million to support the fishing industry and coastal communities in England from an overall pot of £304 million assigned to England over 12 years from this Fund. The total amount available in the Fishing and Coastal Growth Fund is £360 million, but despite Scotland’s outsize contribution to the sector, with Scottish vessels landing over 60% of the UK’s total catch, only £28 million has been apportioned to Scottish fisheries, which Seamus Logan has described as mere “pocket change”.
Commenting as the SNP’s Westminster Spokesperson for DEFRA, Seamus Logan, said:
“The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ announcement last month on the first £132 million for English fisheries added insult to injury to the Scottish fishing industry, who are already angry and let down by the way that UK Labour has treated them.
“Fishermen in Scotland made it clear that the pitiful 8% offered to Scottish fisheries was not enough to support the industries that are already suffering due to Westminster’s disastrous Brexit. Indeed, this scheme was originally designed to help business and organisations across the industry to build resilience after a series of damaging UK Government policies which have threatened the sector — and nowhere is that needed more than in Scotland.
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“However, when I first raised the unfairness in difference in allocations for Scotland from England, I was told that it was to be subject to the Barnet Formula, rather than the standard distribution method that had previously been in place. Freedom of Information attempts on my part to garner more information behind the decision making on this process have been met with the black pen of redaction and I am none the wiser on Labour’s thinking on changing this method. I am left to assume a level of party politicking as a result which only compounds the injustice to Scottish fisheries and is the very opposite on any pledge ‘to work with devolved nations. Mere pocket change for Scotland is working ‘against’ not ‘with’ devolution.
“If the UK Government are actually serious about working with the devolved nations, then I suggest that a good place to start would be by reconsidering this unfair allocation decision and ensuring that the fishing communities in Scotland are treated with the respect they deserve and the funds they so desperately need in these challenging economic times.”
