Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government has since 2021 awarded £8.25m to Seafood Scotland as Scotland’s national trade and marketing organisation for the seafood industry. Seafood Scotland projects have included those:

• supporting domestic and export market development;
• promoting wide awareness of Scottish seafood as a sustainable food source and the opportunities it offers as a career destination; and
• co-hosting, in October 2024, the Responsible Seafood Summit in St Andrews which attracted 350 delegates from around the world to further develop a healthy, responsible global seafood community.

Seafood Scotland is currently leading on the development of a Scottish Ocean Cluster alongside other key stakeholders including Zero Waste Scotland, Ibioic, Opportunity North East and Aberdeenshire Council. This project is part of a concerted and integrated movement to increase the utilisation of processing and catching by-products, and to increase their value by converting them for example to food and biomedical products.

I refer the member to the answer to the question S6W-33850 on 31 January 2025. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

We acknowledge that there is an overall lack of data and evidence on women in fisheries for a number of reasons, and we agree that steps are needed to improve this. This is an important issue and many of these gaps will need to be filled in collaboration with the industry and the wider research communities.

We acknowledge that there is an overall lack of data and evidence on women in fisheries for a number of reasons, and we agree that steps are needed to improve this. This is an important issue and many of these gaps will need to be filled in collaboration with the industry and the wider research communities.

The Commercial Fisher Social Survey Scotland pilot is testing methods to deliver a representative social survey with the goal of capturing diverse industry voices and addressing underrepresented groups like crew members and a range of onshore roles that women may be involved in.

The Scottish Government is currently supporting a UK Government Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs project on “Co-designing an Evaluation Framework for Recruitment and Retention of Domestic Seafood Workers”. This project includes a survey and focus groups with people working in fishing, processing and aquaculture across the UK, including Scotland. The project will seek to explore questions related to barriers and opportunities for new entrants and across different project stages.

We are aware that the fishing sector is not always understood as welcoming to women which can discourage women from entry. There are also reports of sexist attitudes, behaviour and language and this is unacceptable.

We would benefit from further research into views of men (of different ages) working in seafood jobs towards women and how these are changing, and we would be happy to explore options for collaborative working and for actions to be developed in partnership with the fishing industry and the wider research communities.

I understand the concerns around increasing competition for marine space and the different pressures on various marine activities.

I welcomed publication of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations’ and the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation’s joint report, ‘Spatial Squeeze in Fisheries’ in June 2022. I am very aware of the potential cumulative impacts on the fishing industry and my officials and I continue to engage stakeholders to explore this issue within the policy development process.

Effectively managing how we use our marine space is critical in our transition to net zero, the achievement of our national and international biodiversity commitments and to maximise the opportunities a blue economy approach can deliver for our marine industries and communities.

That is why we have committed to developing a new National Marine Plan for Scotland (NMP2). Marine planning is a powerful tool for managing multiple uses of our seas by bringing together different interests and seeks to balance the needs of people and our environment through decision-making. Encouraging economic growth across both developing and existing marine sectors is a key priority.

A new planning framework as part of NMP2 must help facilitate this, and further action aimed at tackling the climate and nature emergency. Delivering a new National Marine Plan relies on speaking and working with those who know our seas best. We have taken forward a number of engagement events that have discussed the full range of marine planning issues, of which pressures on the marine space has been a high level topic. Please find details of these below:

Fisheries stakeholders present:

• 22-06-2023 – NMP Forum, in-person event at EICC, Edinburgh
• 20-06-2024 – NMP2 HLO Fisheries workshop, virtual
• 22-8-2024 – NMP2 Fisheries in-person workshop at FSS offices in Aberdeen
• 13-11-2024 - NMP Forum, in-person event in Stirling
• 21-01-2025 – NMP2 Community Engagement drop-in session, virtual meeting

Environmental stakeholders present:

• 22-06-2023 – NMP Forum, in-person event at EICC, Edinburg
• 11-01-2024 – NMP2 consultation authorities workshop, VQ
• 02-02-2024 – Meeting with consultation authorities, VQ
• 23-4-2024 – NMP2 HLO workshop with Consultation authorities, VQ
• 25-8-2024 – NMP2 HLO and draft policy ideas workshop with eNGOs, virtual
• 30-5-2024 – NMP2 HLO Workshop with young Environmentalists, virtual
• 13-8-2024 – NMP2 HLO follow-up discussion with Young Environmentalists, virtual
• 15-8-2024 - NMP2 Environment follow-up discussion on HLO and draft policy ideas, virtual meeting
• 13-11-2024 - NMP Forum, in-person event in Stirling
• 21-01-2025 – NMP2 Community Engagement drop-in session, virtual meeting

The Scottish Government’s Vision for Trade and Scotland: a Trading Nation clearly set out our ambitions for international trade, which is vital to the whisky sector.

The Scottish Government works closely with the UK Government to address and prevent market access barriers for Scotch whisky around the world. The Scottish Government also works collaboratively with the sector on international trade asks. Support for individual companies is available from Scottish Development International, Scottish Enterprise and Scotland Food & Drink.

The Scottish Government does not have the powers to prosecute Marine and Fisheries offences, these powers lie with the Crown Office Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) who prosecute on our behalf. This is a technical point.

The 1984 Act is one of many acts and orders which the Scottish Government uses to control marine and fisheries activities.

The 1984 Act mainly controls restrictions on fishing methods in vulnerable areas, much of which is now covered by orders made under the Marine Scotland Act 2010.

The legislation used depends on the offences committed and the penalties available.

Additionally, the Scottish Government has powers to issue Fixed Penalty Notices (FPN) in lieu of reporting cases to the COPFS. Most cases where a penalty was deemed appropriate were dealt with in this way. Details of FPNs are published, link Reporting statistics from marine and fisheries compliance - gov.scot

Table detailing cases prosecuted under the 1984 Act.

The Strategy for Seafood was developed in discussion with key stakeholders across the seafood sector. This was primarily via meetings with producer organisations, regional fisheries groups, representatives of the processing industry and a number of further organisations with an interest. This engagement highlighted a number of ongoing issues which the sector was experiencing. This included access to sustainable funding support; approaches to marine spatial planning; support with technical trade issues; simplified access to support; labour shortages; coordinated marketing support; and coherent and collaborative marine management.

The Strategy was also informed via wider industry engagement relating to seafood trade that was ongoing during its development. This included a questionnaire issued to key industry stakeholders in 2021 which sought to understand barriers to seafood trade and any support required.