Fishing

I sense a macho confrontation coming on fish with some European officials.

After being taken into the Common Fisheries Policy by Tory PM Ted Heath in 1973 and having had many of our fishing rights traded away in the early 90s by John Major, there is common agreement that the CFP has failed. It has failed to protect fish stocks and it has failed communities, like ours, which depend on fish.

So it is with a bitter sense of disappointment that we see a continuing focus on closing our fishing and no sign at all – yet - that officials are prepared to tackle the scandal of industrial fishing.

Our fishermen deliver a healthy food and they support important onshore industries around Scotland’s coasts. The industrial fisheries – mainly Danish – use nets that have a fine mesh that prevents the escape of even the smallest fish. And all to provide pig food and fertiliser.

All of which makes the broadening of the campaign for our fishing communities to cover the whole of Scotland so important. Because it is an industry not well understood by people outside fishing dependent areas.

A debate that engages people in central-belt Scotland is a debate that will go places. And a planned lobby of Parliament by the campaign led by some of our fiesty Fraserburgh ladies will certainly drive the point home.

My party has welcomed the small moves towards returning control of fishing grounds to coastal communities. About time – but too little and probably too late.

But fishing can be higher up the agenda – in some countries.

I had a private meeting with the Norwegian Fisheries Minister, Svein Ludvigsen, when he visited the Scottish Parliament for the 50th meeting of the Nordic Council.

This alliance of five northern European nations is an important forum for coordinating policy on matters of common interest. Like fishing.

And I was interested to hear of the Norwegian Government’s response to a cod crisis in 1989. Not because it tells us what we should do. But because it tells us the priority we must give to fishing communities.

When the Norwegians had to close their cod fishery that meant potential ruin for small towns and villages along Norway’s coast.

Their government decided that it was vital that fishermen and factories should be ready when the fishery reopened. So they made £200 million available to communities hit by the closure. That from a country much smaller than Scotland.

And it worked. The Norwegians still have a white fish fleet and thriving coastal communities.

They also recognise that a ‘right sized’ fleet is the key to long term sustainability and keep tight control on who fishes in their waters.

I was pleased that our own fisheries minister also met Mr Ludvigsen. But I want to hear that he is leaving his desk more often and not just relying on people visiting Scotland. We can only win through alliances of interest.

And the Nordic nations see the future of fishing – and its importance – much as we do. Might we see an invitation for Scotland to join the Nordic Council soon?

Unity of purpose across politicians of all parties in Scotland is important but it can only be sustained if our ministers are out there working for our industry – and are seen to be doing so.

Norway: Lessons for us? Lessons for our government? Certainly!

SlowBand

I have written on broadband communications technology before. This week the Scottish Executive have proudly announced that they have gone out to tender for connections to public facilities in Highlands and the Borders.

This was announced this week. It seems astonishing that it was on 26th September last year – 14 months ago – that the Liberal-Labour government minister informed me of their intention to do nothing until their pilots were complete.

If it takes 14 months merely to issue an invitation to tender how can we have any realistic prospect of getting the technology into use with people any time before it is obsolete.

Losing One’s Memory

In Parliament members, press and staff live in such close and continuous contact that it is difficult to conceal individual idiocyncracies.

For example I can tell you that one government minister was seen recently undertaking an unusual strategy to warm a part of his anatomy after spending some hours in a drafty, cold committee room.

And there is opposition member who has their assistant print out all their emails, then they dictate answers into a tape recorder which their assistant types up and sends.

But this week it is a senior member of the press core who is in the frame. They made a mess of changing the batteries in their electronic organiser and lost all their contact names and addresses. So that’s no more midnight calls from one national paper. Hurray!

For Cod’s Sake

A tiny bit of sense seems to be surfacing in the EU. Franz Fischler is the Fisheries Commisioner and is the man who has swung this way and that on whether the North Sea will be closed to all catching of white fish.

And yet it seems that the Danes and Norwegians, the latter outside the EU but party to the Common Fisheries Policy, were going to be allowed to continue their industrial fisheries.

That sees them catch up to a million tons of sandeels and pout each year. And what do cod, haddocks and so on eat? Sandeels and pout!

But more critically, it simply isn’t possible to catch sandeels and pout without also catching white fish. Some estimates put the ‘by-catch’ of white fish as being greater than our industry’s permitted total catch of cod and haddocks. Some ‘by-catch’!

The influence of the Danes in particular - like Scotland, a nation of some five million people – over European fishing policy has been considerable. Their civil servants, government ministers and industry have worked closely together to progress national aims on fishing. And that has always meant leading the debate, not just trying persuade minds after the terms of discussions have been set by others.

The Scottish White Fish Producers are holding meetings in Fraserburgh and Peterhead this week to brief a very wide range of people in our community on the crisis. A very welcome move.

In Parliament, SNP Shadow Fisheries Minister Richard Lochhead and I have written to the Commissioner asking for an urgent meeting.

The fishing industry are regular visitors to Brussels. So we hope to have the opportunity to add our weight to their arguments.

Is it not ironic that the European Fisheries Commissioner is from Austria, a country with no coastline and no fishing industry.

Would things be as bad if we were EU members in our own right and could appoint our own Commissioner? Perhaps even the Fisheries Commissioner?

It is inconceivable that they would be worse – for sure.

Community Campaigning Wins Again

The very welcome news that there will be a substantial new investment in the Chalmers Hospital in Banff did not happen by accident.

It was just after my election in June 2001 that I was first approached on the subject. The suggestion was made that I lead a campaign to ‘Save Chalmers’.

I took another tack and suggested that community leadership which I would facilititate, advise and work with would work better. And I was delighted to attend and support many meetings and events organised by the campaign that was formed.

The Parliament’s Public Petitions Committee played its role and provided a platform for bringing our concerns to a wider audience.

The advantages of a campaign not aligned to any particular political party are obvious. It enables people of all views, and of none, to feel able to participate without ‘signing up’ to support a particular politician’s politics. And it taps into a new source of energy and imagination to fight the campaign.

After all when you represent the very many interests of some 80,000 people it is difficult to lead all the campaigns yourself.

But I think the biggest long term pay-off with the ‘Chalmers Hospital Campaign’, just as with the ‘Peterhead Prison Campaign’ which arose in the same way, is a demonstration that politics is relevent to people generally and that participation pays dividends.

Well done the ‘Chalmers Hospital’ campaigners!

Taxing Times

It seemed a welcome relief for businesses when Labour Finance Minister Andy Kerr promised in September that he intended to freeze business rates at the current levels. That suggested a saving, against inflation, of some £35 million in real terms.

So it was a very unwelcome surprise to my colleague, Shadow Finance Minister Alastair Morgan, when he read the detail in the Liberal-Labour Executive’s budget and saw a very different story.

It appears that Ministers expect the ‘take’ to rise from £1,570 million this year to £1,909 million in 2005-06. That is a very substantial rise of some 22%.

So unless the Executive knows something about growth in our economy that no professional economist has spotted, businesses will once again be picking up the tab for this government’s failures.

Fuming in Parliament

A well hidden Tory campaign, well at least a Tory leader McLetchie campaign, is for a smoking room in the new Parliament building. Apparently just like the fictional lawyer ‘Rumpole of the Bailey’, this Tory likes a ‘small cigar’ and the new building has no provision for smoking inside.

As a non-smoker, in ‘remission’ for 30 years that is, I welcome the absence of such a room. And the costs associated with one.

Is McLetchie’s campaign a sign that he wants to spend more on the Parliament building? We should be told!