End of Term

After four years of the Scots Parliament the papers are full of end of term reviews. And Parliament is full of retiring members fighting to the front to make their last speeches.

Of course there will be others whose future is less certain. An election is the ultimate appraisal. And like most work appraisals it will not be wholly objective.

As I have written elsewhere, “People are not influenced by what you do, nor by what you think. What matters is what people think you do.”

So the perceptions that people have of Parliamentarians do actually matter.

In four years MSPs have asked 36,377 or so questions about the governance of Scotland. Far more than would have been asked if the Scottish Parliament had never been established. I have asked my fair share – about 550 in two years – while one Labour backbencher has been so incurious about the nation’s progress as to ask ten questions in four years.

Instead of the occasional late night debate on Scottish affairs that we were allowed at Westminster, I have spoken in our Parliament on 76 occasions in only 22 months.

Some parts of the media would paint a very different picture however.

There is genuine concern about the cost of the Parliament building – now eight times what Labour’s Donald Dewar promised – but little recognition that everything that mattered was decided before any of us were elected.

The so-called foxhunting bill attracted disproportionate attention. It actually occupied a relatively modest amount of parliamentary time. And it was a backbench bill. Meatier matters occupied us more.

But the main failure of the media has been in failing to distinguish between Parliament and Executive. Now Westminster saddled us with this confusing nomenclature. Instead of ‘Government’ we got ‘Executive’. Instead of ‘Prime Minister’ we got ‘First Minister’.

And all too often the failures of government (the Executive) have been blamed by some of the press upon Parliament and parliamentarians. Curiously when the Westminster government is faulted it does not lead to blame being heaped on that Parliament as an institution.

In a sense this can been seen as ‘noises off’. Over the next few weeks neither the press nor the politicians will be making the important choices.

In Banff and Buchan we have been fortunate to have many people prepared to join with politicians and campaign on local issues. That is how we kept Peterhead Prison. That is how we wrung the promise of new investment for Banff’s Chalmers Hospital out of reluctant decision-makers.

And that shows that politics does matter to people. And that the choices made on 1st May do matter and can make a difference.

Fishing for Facts

The main difficulty confronting us continues to be the brutal regime imposed upon our fishing industry,

Although it targets our catching sector, it affects others. The processing sector has had to source much more of its fish from foreign catchers. And redirect its efforts away from fish types suffering more limited availability.

Highlighting the increase in imports illustrates the industry’s problem. But it must not be seen as a criticism of processors who support so workers.

The £10 million transitional support scheme for the fishing industry has been published but the EU, as if their Common Fisheries Policy was not a big enough burden for us, are moving at a snail-like pace to approve the scheme. Indeed will the prospective recipients still be around when the money finally arrives?
The prawn catchers are suffering, in part because of the diversion of some white fish boats into catching prawns, from a 20-year low in prices.

In Committee this week we learned of the plans to allow the ‘prawners’ to fish with 95mm nets instead of their current 100mm. Great stuff! This allows them to stay at sea for 25 days each month instead of the 15 that 100mm permits.

One panel of 95mm in a 100mm net makes the whole net 95mm. So it should be a modest upgrade cost for the industry. Thank goodness we have learned something from the French – at last – about how to implement EU regulations. Ignore the intention. Just find the way that suits us.

But does this not just show the whole absurdity of the new restrictions? Nets that catch less allow our fishermen less time at sea. Nets that catch more allow them more time at sea. Very wee nets allow the Danes to sweep up 1.5 millions tonnes of fish from their ‘industrial fishery’ each year.