Chamber and committees

I appreciate the importance of what the commission does and I am fully signed up to the animal welfare principles on which it is based and, indeed, to much of what you report to us. However, I represent an island constituency in which fishing and creeling are important. People are curious to know where your recommendations about crabs and cuttlefish are leading. I understand why, independently, you have to come to the views to which you come about sentience, but what do you expect people to do? Are you looking for people to change how they cope with bycatches and creels? What would you like us to do to improve the lot of a crab?

Thank you very much. That is helpful.

That is very helpful. One of my questions was about species for which the only practical method of getting them to market might be getting them there live. Prawns are the obvious example. I think that people can readily understand the point in your supermarket example. However, anxiety might be expressed in communities whose whole economic model is based on getting prawns live to market, for example. Would what you are saying about some species, such as crabs, have an impact on such trade?

The fisheries negotiations are, if not exactly a festive occasion, at least a predictable feature of the advent season. This year the UK has ensured for itself less influence over the negotiations than ever before.

The last few years could be described as having been challenging, at best, for Scotland’s fishing industry and for our coastal communities as a whole. The combination of Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic have resulted in huge losses of income and even the closure of some entire fishing enterprises. Therefore, it is important that Scotland’s voice is heard—in whatever indirect way that Scotland can ensure that that happens—in the on-going coastal state negotiations.

As the talks surrounding 2021’s catch agreements were concluded only in the summer, it is a cautiously hopeful sign that the negotiations for 2022 seem to be proceeding in a more timeous manner, with agreements for pelagic stocks having been signed at the end of October. However, despite the swifter progression of the next coastal state negotiations, Scotland’s fishermen still face myriad difficulties.

Although fishermen were promised that Brexit would bring welcome benefits to their businesses, the last-minute deal instead sacrificed the needs of the Scottish fishing industry all too quickly. Who can forget the gridlock at the Anglo-French border or the Northern Irish ports in January this year, with tonnes of good-quality Scottish produce going to waste due to the mountains of additional paperwork and costs that were brought about by Brexit? Labour shortages—which, I noticed, one Conservative member seemed to completely and casually dismiss as irrelevant and which were already a concern for both the catching and processing sectors, not least in my constituency—have been further exacerbated this year against the backdrop of a lack of seasonal workers across multiple industries.

As we have heard from the Government today, protecting our marine environment is one of the most important ways that Scotland can be a world leader in carbon capture and storage. Scotland’s seas are estimated to hold more carbon than the total that is stored in our land resources, such as our peatlands, forests and soils. However, I want to say that fishing deserves a future as part of all this—a future in which designations are managed at a genuinely local level and in which the concerns of some of our most fragile communities are listened to.

It is essential that those who work in the fishing industry can access the right Government information, support and initiatives. It seems that support schemes are in high demand, given that the marine fund Scotland was suddenly closed at the beginning of October due to the high level of applications for the funding. I am pleased that Marine Scotland, in its own words, has

“taken stock of the MFS commitments”

and has decided to reopen the fund as of Monday this week.

Scotland’s fishing industry is a vital component of the economic, social and cultural life of communities around Scotland’s coastline. In my constituency, it represents overwhelmingly small businesses and small concerns. I hope that the coastal state negotiations provide a platform for reminding ourselves, as much as any other country, of that fact and of the importance of that fact in the months and years that lie ahead.

If Brexit is, as the picture that the member paints suggests, an unqualified success, can he explain why many fish-processing businesses in my constituency cannot find a workforce?

Will the member give way?

We have talked a lot about culture, one definition of which is “collective behaviour that takes a long time to change”. I am interested in hearing from Professor Mitchell and others about how we can change culture. In particular, how can we make use of some of the opportunities for culture change that are presented by the 26th United Nations climate change conference of the parties—COP26? Given that it is happening in Scotland, COP26 appears—among many other things that it is doing—to be challenging all of us in Scotland to think about the institutional culture differently and as something that must and can be changed quickly. What is the relationship between everything that is going on around COP and everything that is going on around Christie?

I have no relevant interests to declare, but as usual I refer people to my entry in the register of members’ interests.

I was not doing that.

People are increasingly engaged in COP26 compared to previous COPs—I am again using COP as an analogy or metaphor for this question. There is public awareness of the problems, although perhaps not of what policy changes will be needed. It strikes me that one thing that drives forward the kind of change that the witnesses or COP are talking about is public engagement in the possible outcomes. Therefore, useful though such conversations are, there comes a point at which we have to start talking about specific outcomes. That is why political parties put in their manifestos commitments about X number of Y. It is comprehensible, unlike the important but abstract conversation that we just had.

What do we all do to engage people in specific outcomes? If you were drawing up a shortlist of those outcomes, what should they be?