Coastal Communities

Debate between Seamus Logan and Steve Darling

Thursday 20th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[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.