Coastal Communities

Seamus Logan Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)]

I thank the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone) for securing the debate, and for his excellent speech. My constituency of Aberdeenshire North and Moray East is a coastal community. It boasts beautiful views of nature, bustling ports and delicious local produce. Peterhead is the largest fishing port in Europe, with a huge daily fish market. Fraserburgh is a fantastic port town and my home. Fraserburgh harbour has developed a £300 million master plan, which, if brought to reality, could deliver more than 1,000 new jobs. Portsoy has a remarkable harbour with unique local products. Each July, Portsoy hosts the Scottish traditional boat festival, which celebrates the craft behind boats with tremendous events and music. There are many more coastal communities, such as Buckie, which has a large marine industry.

Golfing is a popular leisure pursuit in the constituency, with many world-class golf courses found right across it; Cruden Bay and Fraserburgh are only two among many. Across Scotland, there are more than 2,000 active Scottish fishing vessels, and three quarters of them fish primarily in inshore waters. The inshore fleet is diverse and includes trawlers, creelers, netters, dredgers and divers. In 2019, there were an estimated 14,092 people directly employed in the seafood sector, many in remote coastal and island communities.

[Alison Hume (Scarborough and Whitby) (Lab)]

Fishing is far more than an industry; it is part of our identity in coastal communities. Does the hon. Member agree that a sustainable inshore fishing industry is vital to our economic growth?

[Seamus Logan]

I completely agree.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

For the industry to be sustainable, it must have access to labour. The inshore fleet in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, like the one in mine, will doubtless be crying out for labour to come in from foreign countries. It is not able to because of the way the visa rules are structured.

[Seamus Logan]

I believe the Prime Minister himself agreed with me on the issue of labour shortages very recently.

Some 95% of commercial fishing jobs are located in areas of Scotland that, together, are home to less than a third of the total population.

[Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)]

Does the hon. Member agree that we desperately need a proper, fully thought out fishing strategy to support this vital industry in our local communities?

[Seamus Logan]

That is a reasonable point, but some of these matters are devolved, so it might be difficult to have a UK-wide strategy.

In 2021, Scottish exports of fish and seafood were valued at £1 billion, accounting for 60% of total Scottish food exports and 63% of total UK fish and seafood exports. Scotland’s seas around our shores make up over 60% of the UK’s total waters. However, fisheries need confidence to operate. Aberdeenshire council’s recent decision to cut the night-watch service at Macduff harbour is ill thought out and economically illiterate. This is despite an economic development plan for the harbour that was accepted by the council’s harbours sub-committee only last December, in which it highlighted that the harbour supports around 280 jobs and injects £11.2 million into the local economy.

There are many things I could complain about—depopulation, unemployment, poor access to healthcare or transport infrastructure, which the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper) mentioned—but let us look hopefully to the future. The continued growth of Scotland’s renewable energy sector will be an essential feature of our future clean energy system and a potential key driver of economic growth for many of these communities, not least in my constituency. I want to reassure the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) about pylons. None of the cables that are coming ashore in my constituency will see any pylon development within at least 10 to 15 miles of the shoreline, which is very reassuring.

An abundance of renewable energy resources creates opportunities to meet domestic needs, to exploit new technologies in carbon capture, wave power and hydrogen production and to export low-carbon energy to others in these islands and to Europe. These developments bring great hope to many struggling coastal communities in Scotland, not least my own.

--- Later in debate ---

[Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)]

I am pleased to speak in the debate and I thank the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone) for securing it.

In 2019, a House of Lords report on the future of coastal communities called Brighton

“probably the UK’s most successful seaside community,”

and we are. I am very pleased that the city council has recently set up a new seafront development board, and I have already had a positive meeting with its chair to discuss how we continue to make our seafront better, to support and grow our city’s wonderful reputation for heritage, music, the arts, shopping, amusement, community action, diversity, nature and wellbeing.

As others have said, there are currently no Government funding schemes specifically for coastal areas, and there is no ministerial focus; I echo the comments of everybody in this House on that. We need focus on the specific challenges that our coastal communities face, because austerity and Brexit have bitten Brighton’s communities too. Our people have big problems with housing costs, holiday lets, employment, health, transport and health inequality, which all need dealing with.

[Seamus Logan]

Does the hon. Member agree that Brexit has done immense harm to places such as Brighton and other coastal communities?

[Siân Berry]

I could not agree more. The amount of different sectors of the economy in Brighton and Hove that have remarked to me on the impact of Brexit is huge, not least the cultural industries.

I will echo others and talk a little about the regularly appalling state of our sea water, which is a genuine threat to our success. Southern Water has been taken to court and found guilty of criminal behaviour and lying, yet we still have sewage overflows off the south coast on a regular basis. I have met sea-swimming groups and individual constituents who have been very sick after swimming in the waters around Brighton, and the only way to get that properly under control is public ownership. My Green colleagues and I will continue to push for that in this Parliament.

I will very quickly shout out Lucy Davies, the brilliant and enthusiastic new director of Brighton Dome. When I met her recently, she told me about the excellent collaboration happening between cultural institutions along the Sussex coast. The coastal catalyst programme will support creativity and culture for young people from Bognor Regis to Bexhill, and it is exactly the kind of co-operative work that needs to happen.

There is no single solution to the challenges that impact on our coastal communities, but we need ambition, vision, a dedicated Minister and a proper package of strategic initiatives and funding. As MPs we can help by working together and with local leaders to build on the ideas, build up new initiatives that we all agree our communities need because of their very special natures, and put on the pressure for that to happen.