Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Tuesday, May 16, 2023

Official Report 1001KB pdf

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Highly Protected Marine Areas (“The Clearances Again”)

The final item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S6M-08590, in the name of Rhoda Grant, on “The Clearances Again”. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.

Motion debated,

That the Parliament congratulates Donald Francis (DF) MacNeil, and Skipinnish, on securing a top ten iTunes download position for their song The Clearances Again; understands that this was achieved just 24 hours after the song’s release; further understands that this song is a protest song, which seeks to raise awareness of the Scottish Government’s proposed Highly Protected Marine Areas; believes that these proposals will ban inshore fishing and all marine activities and impact on the economy of the Highlands and Islands, and notes the view that the Scottish Government should heed the reported concerns and revisit this policy.

17:20  

I thank the MSPs who signed my motion, which has allowed the debate to take place. I make no apology for bringing the issue of highly protected marine areas back to the chamber. The impact that they will have on the whole of my region is unprecedented and the Scottish Government must listen to and, more importantly, hear the concerns.

It is a signal of those concerns that “The Clearances Again”, the song by Donald Francis MacNeil and Skipinnish, has achieved such success. I understand that it was a roaring success at the concert that coincided with the Scottish fishing expo in Aberdeen last weekend. The song spells out the dismay of our fishing communities at distant decision makers destroying their livelihoods and incomes at the stroke of a pen.

The economy of much of the Highlands is dependent on the sea. However, every aspect of life on our islands is governed by the sea. That includes their economies and connections to the mainland. The fishing community is obviously dismayed. The impact that HPMAs could have on fishing is devastating. Even the most sustainable and environmentally friendly forms of fishing would be affected.

The success of the no-take zone in Lamlash bay is quoted to us. However, the Clyde Fishermen’s Association, which was instrumental in setting up the zone, tells us that the success is unmeasured. There have been no comparative studies to show whether the policy has worked. We also have the no-take zone in Broadbay, which has not worked well. We must have robust science to guide our management of the seas.

I am grateful to Rhoda Grant for bringing the debate to the chamber and for taking the intervention. She gets to the crux of the matter. I am sure that she agrees that the point is that, if we are going to have an effective policy, we must understand the science behind it. The effect of marine protected areas has not even been considered and, until such time as the Government is prepared to gather evidence and take communities with it, the HPMA policy will be a bad one.

I can give you the time back, Rhoda Grant.

I agree absolutely with Brian Whittle. It is also important that those who live and work on the sea have their evidence recorded, because they have a huge amount of anecdotal evidence to add to the debate. They need to manage their fishing to maximise their catch while leaving enough behind to ensure that they have income and employment for the future. The communities concerned have, by their own initiative, taken measures to conserve stocks, such as the V-notching of spawning lobsters to protect females from being harvested. They are not people who damage the environment but people who need to work with it and protect it.

Rhoda Grant has been talking about low-impact fisheries. Would she support establishing area-based fisheries management zones, including low-impact-only areas, alongside HPMAs?

The important point is that the measures be taken with the agreement of, and in consultation with, local communities that know their own seas. Many communities have said to me that they want the management of their own fishing grounds and, indeed, marine environments to be devolved to them. We should do that rather than have a top-down policy that causes fear and alarm in communities.

The Government must revisit the policy. It cannot impose HPMAs on communities and say that the only communities that will be exempted are the ones that are vehemently opposed because that ramps up the pressure rather than calming it down and enabling negotiation with communities so that we can find out what is workable.

Does Rhoda Grant agree that every single local authority in the Highlands and Islands is opposed to HPMAs? The seafood industry is entirely opposed. The whole marine tourism industry is opposed. Therefore it appears that there is vehement opposition—at least throughout the Highlands and Islands. On the First Minister’s own logic, that surely means that he has already agreed that there can be no HPMAs, because of such opposition.

I agree that there is vehement opposition throughout the Highlands and Islands and, indeed, beyond. However, asking communities to demonstrate such opposition rather than sitting down and working with them is the real issue. We should be spending this time on considering how we protect our seas instead of on demonstrating vehement opposition.

Fergus Ewing mentioned a number of organisations and industries. Most of the debate surrounding the issue has been about fishing, but it is about much more than that. As he said, other industries are equally dismayed by the policy. For instance, will fish farms be allowed to stay where they are? Will they be exempted in the way that ScotWind sites have been, or will they have to move from their current sites? If they have to move, what timeframe will they be given to gain the consents that they will need to enable them to move to other sites, and what impact will that have on fishing in those new areas?

There will also be an impact on seaweed harvesting, which is another important industry that supports our rural economies and jobs. If it is also banned, will we lose prime Scottish brands such as ishga and Hebridean Seaweed? Will they no longer be able to harvest seaweed for their products? Less well known than the use of seaweed in other products is its use to replace plastics with a more environmentally friendly substance.

Seaweed is also used for fertiliser. That practice is well known in the crofting communities, as the Scottish Crofting Federation’s response to the consultation highlighted, but now large sustainable brands such as Hebridean Seaweed are providing fertiliser worldwide. Given what is happening to supplies of fertiliser around the world due to the war in Ukraine, we cannot view the policy in isolation.

Tourism is promoted throughout our coastal communities, and it is a growing industry. However, the policy will impact on that, too. The proposals go so far as to suggest that swimming could be banned in some areas. If we take it to include canoeing, kayaking and wildlife boat trips, the impact will be huge. It also begs the question: if people cannot swim there, should anyone be allowed to run a ferry there? Of course, that might be the object of the exercise, given the current lack of ferries and the daily disruption to their operation. Simply to ban them might provide the Government with a valid excuse for the lack of ferries at the moment.

Not all areas will be designated, and that means that we will be funnelling activity into smaller and smaller areas. The culmination of such activity in small areas will be to create damage, so that impact must be assessed.

The song by Donald Francis MacNeil and Skipinnish talks about the clearances happening once again. The clearances are not something that is easily evoked in the Highlands and Islands, yet in this instance the comparison is valid. People are already selling up, any investment has been shelved and families are already moving out. The policy will cause depopulation and will clear people off the land. People will not accept that.

Donald Francis comes from Vatersay—an island that was made famous just over a hundred years ago, when his forefathers fought for their land. The Vatersay raiders were jailed for their temerity in cultivating the land and building homes there. Despite their imprisonment, their actions led to the Government of the day buying the land for crofting. They were among the very early land reformers, fighting for their right to survival. The song evokes this:

“My people, my language, my Island
And the rights that our forefathers won
To remain on the soil of our homeland
By the sweep of a pen will be gone”

Surely it should not take modern-day Vatersay raiders to overturn this decision.

17:30  

I warmly commend Rhoda Grant for bringing the topic to the chamber again, and for her eloquent expression of the anger that is felt at the proposals in our fishing communities. In the debate last week, I talked about our fishing communities. Tonight, I will focus on the impacts on our newer industry: aquaculture.

Aquaculture is a tremendous success story: it is supported by the main parties in the chamber and provides 2,500 direct jobs and no fewer than 10,000 indirect jobs, with a staggering turnover of £1,000 million a year. Our salmon has attracted the accolade of the Label Rouge—which is, incidentally, rarely handed out by the French—and provides no fewer than 850 million high-protein, healthy, enjoyable, nutritious rich meals a year.

At a time of burgeoning growth in the planet’s population, with no chance of more agricultural land becoming available onshore, the world’s seas should surely be used, over the rest of the century, to help feed the world, and in particular the poor. Fish farms will be fewer in number in the future, and—as in Norway—they will move from the estuaries out into deeper waters. HPMAs should not hamper or prejudice that environmentally friendly development.

The industry is now characterised by innovation, high-quality marine engineering and higher standards of fish health and welfare. In addition, it supports a growing onshore supply chain. In my constituency alone, we have Gael Force Marine, AKVA Group, Benchmark Packaging and Pharmaq Analytiq, which are all significant Inverness employers. There are many good well-paid jobs—not just on our coast, in Inverness and on our islands, but throughout Scotland—sustained by aquaculture. For example, there is DFDS, which has 150 staff in Larkhall; Migdale Smolt at Bonar Bridge; and Mowi Scotland, with 1,000 people in Rosyth. The aquaculture industry, like other industries, needs sustainable growth.

Salmon Scotland has said that the industry supports marine protection, but only based on evidence and science, and the HPMA proposals are based on neither. The industry wholly opposes the proposals. Salmon Scotland believes that they have been driven by politics, not by rational analysis and evidence, and it fundamentally disagrees with the glib and bald assertion

“that salmon farms are incompatible with marine protection”.

It goes on to state that

“Neither the Bute House Agreement nor the consultation documents”

even attempt to consider the economic impact on all those industries.

The potential of our aquaculture sector is perhaps illustrated by a saying that I believe is current in Norway, which is that fish is the new oil. That is the extent of the opportunity that we have in Scotland. The opposition to HPMAs is very strong; I believe that it covers the whole of the Highlands and Islands, and indeed the whole country. My recommendation is to go back to the drawing board and review the existing MPA structure, which Mr Whittle rightly mentioned in his intervention, because that process is—for good reason—regarded with mistrust by fishermen around the country.

I will conclude, in the short time that I have available, by asking what, at the end of the day, Parliament is for. What is the purpose of our being here in this centrally heated, pleasant chamber, with our salaries and our perks? It is to enable us to give voice to the views of the people. I believe that that voice is loud and clear: go back to the drawing board, go and speak to the people, go and speak to the fishermen and listen carefully. As Rhoda Grant said, they know how to manage things best. If we do not do that, does the Scottish Parliament as an institution continue to be worthy of the name, and are we worthy of the honour of being members here?

17:34  

I congratulate Rhoda Grant on bringing to the chamber this members’ business debate on a topic that is, and will continue to be, extremely concerning.

As some may possibly remember, I, too, mentioned the song “The Clearances Again” when I spoke in the chamber last week, and I, too, congratulate Donald Francis MacNeil and Skipinnish on their chart success. The verse that I read out went:

“A Mayday call we cry.
We will stand for the rights of our children.
We will not let our islands die.”

Those are powerful and emotive lyrics—members should be grateful that I chose not to sing them. I am sure that my son, as a big fan, would have volunteered to do so, and I know that we look forward to hearing Skipinnish perform the song live at the Royal Highland Show next month.

We also learned that Donald Francis is a lifelong inshore fisherman who has, for his whole life, fished around Mingulay and the other islands to the south of the island of Barra. Like many others, he fears that if the Scottish Government presses ahead with its controversial proposals to introduce HPMAs in 10 per cent of Scotland’s seas, that will spell the end for many coastal communities scattered the length of the country.

If HPMAs are put in place to that extent by 2026—and early indications certainly suggest that the Scottish National Party will allow its extremist Green coalition partners to dictate this issue, regardless of the undoubted damage that it will cause—a significant area of Scotland’s coastal and inshore waters will be closed off to all fishing, aquaculture and infrastructure developments, where spatial pressures are already causing issues for our coastal communities.

The fact that so many nationalist MSPs seem so hellbent on pushing through these highly contentious proposals, when such a large number have fishing interests on their own doorsteps, indicates just how dysfunctional this SNP Government and its back benches have become, with the Green tail wagging the yellow dog.

As someone else said, the SNP is in government, but it is certainly not in power. For MSPs who represent coastal areas, voting in favour of the proposals is almost like signing their own P45, because—make no mistake about it—people in the fishing sector and coastal communities have long memories. Only a few such MSPs have shown the courage of their convictions and are ignoring their party in order to put the interests of their constituents first by voting against this madcap plan. Indeed, perhaps the most dramatic intervention came from Fergus Ewing, who ripped up the consultation paper, describing it as “a notice of execution”. It is not only a notice of execution for the fishing industry, but a notice of eviction for those other SNP MSPs at the next election.

Members on all sides of the chamber, and people across the fishing fleet who have, for generations, fished sustainably, recognise the need for targeted, specific conservation measures. Working together, there have been successes, without the need for sledgehammer legislation, and with stakeholders coming together to agree measures to protect stocks and habitats.

How can Mairi Gougeon and Màiri McAllan argue that HPMAs are needed in 10 per cent of our waters, when there is not a shred of scientific evidence to support that blanket approach? These draconian plans have already united the seafood sector, and some non-governmental organisations, in opposing the Government’s approach, which has undermined any sense of working together for the common good.

Only last Friday, at the fishing industry’s conference in Aberdeen, Elspeth Macdonald of the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation warned that the conservation zones are too big a price for fishermen to pay when they are being introduced for political rather than ecological reasons.

It must be remembered that the fishing industry has long been committed to nature conservation that is founded on evidence, properly and carefully developed, with the genuine involvement of stakeholders; and balanced alongside sustainable use. On the contrary, in this instance, there is no evidence for, nor transparency around, the view that the establishment of HPMAs across 10 per cent of Scotland’s seas will guarantee the ecosystem regeneration that is being sought. In fact, there is a significant danger that the exact opposite will be achieved, with a potential increase in predator stocks impacting on other species.

Our fishermen are already subject to an ever-tightening spatial squeeze, and further reductions in the areas that are available to them to fish will certainly drive many of them out of business. The Scottish Crofting Federation has warned that the plans will have

“a devastating impact on crofting”.

There is still time for the nationalists to do the right thing and ditch their approach to HPMAs, even if it means a messy divorce from the Greens. Surely the nationalists must now listen to the widespread opposition from the fishermen’s associations in Shetland, Orkney, the Clyde and Galloway. I strongly urge the Government to rip up its current commitment and start afresh, with our fishers at the heart of the debate.

17:39  

I, too, thank Rhoda Grant for bringing this important debate to the chamber, and I congratulate inshore fisherman Donald Francis MacNeil and Skipinnish for the protest song, “The Clearances Again”. For the song to have made it into the top 10 download charts within just 24 hours of having been released indicates the strength of feeling among people in the Highlands and Islands and across Scotland, who agree with the sentiments that are expressed about the Scottish Government’s HPMA proposals.

As an islander myself, albeit that I am from northern waters, I understand the threat to the way of life that the song so eloquently and passionately describes. However, we should not make the mistake of thinking that it is about looking through rose-tinted glasses at some romantic notion of how life used to be—a life that is yearned for again. We have strong links to our seas, and we want to ensure that they are healthy and sustainable for future generations.

I also congratulate the SNP Scottish Government, because it has managed to unite coastal and island communities around Scotland in vehement opposition to what it has presented with astonishing insensitivity. It is not that there is opposition to sustainable and responsible management of the marine environment to tackle biodiversity loss and the climate emergency—far from it. It is that the proposals, as they stand, have the potential to decimate communities, businesses and livelihoods, and to make people move away from what are often the most fragile of areas.

The policy—“a blunt instrument”, as Shetland’s only Green councillor described it—appears to have been drawn up on the basis of political demands, without any understanding of the interconnectivity between land and sea. Indeed, Donald MacKinnon, who is the chair of the Scottish Crofting Federation, has pointed out that the impact of the proposals extends beyond the shoreline and goes inland, through the crofting counties. Crofters are often also fishermen.

The no-take zone at Lamlash Bay is frequently highlighted during discussion about HPMAs, despite the lack of clarity about whether there has been a positive impact across all species. Lamlash Bay, which is an area of just 1 square mile, cannot be used as the sole basis for no-take zones around the rest of the coastline. Different areas include different marine habitats and environments; that should be considered alongside marine spatial planning.

We can also look at the evidence-based work over the past 23 years from the Shetland Shellfish Management Organisation—which, incidentally, won the annual Fishing News sustainability award on Friday night in Aberdeen.

When we talk about fishing and aquaculture, what we mean is provision of high-quality nutritious food and high-value exports beyond our shores. It means business investment and jobs—often well-paid skilled jobs—through direct and indirect employment. It includes the catchers of fish, crabs, langoustines and scallops; the growers of salmon and mussels; the processors, hauliers and marine engineers; the net makers and feed suppliers; and many more throughout the supply chain, as Fergus Ewing described.

Communities are viable because of fishing and aquaculture because it keeps working-age families there—people who keep the school roll up and the local shop open. The Government missed the opportunity to bring communities along with it by not engaging with them at the beginning of the process, and it seems to have been surprised by the reaction to this top-down policy. It has lost the trust of island and coastal communities.

We already have marine protected areas covering almost 40 per cent of Scotland’s seas. HPMAs could add 10 per cent to that coverage, and with offshore wind, the impact on fishermen and fish farming is undeniable. As Elspeth Macdonald of the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation pointed out at the Scottish Skipper Expo in Aberdeen last week, the industry

“feels under threat like never before”,

because of both the rapid development of offshore wind farms and HPMAs. She said:

“Let us be in no doubt, while the energy sector rushes to show its green credentials in energy transition, these will be massive industrial developments in our own waters. Very little is known about their long-term effect. The problem with being ambitious to be ‘global leader in offshore wind’ ... means you are also the global guinea pig.”

The offshore wind farms will become vast no-take zones for fishing vessels, which will increase spatial-squeeze pressures on the fleet.

In conclusion, I repeat my call to the Scottish Government to rethink its current HPMA proposals.

17:44  

I congratulate Rhoda Grant on bringing this important debate to the chamber. I would like to address a number of points. First, I believe that it is irresponsible, inflammatory and misleading to compare HPMAs to the Highland clearances. If the member truly believes that the policy is so damaging, why did she and her Labour colleagues stand on a manifesto commitment to introduce HPMAs that would cover 20 per cent of Scotland’s seas? The truth is that Labour cares more about political point scoring than it does about our coastal communities.

In the face of the ecological and climate crisis delay matters, and acting quickly is vital to restoration of our ocean’s productivity and resilience. Fish biomass in a wholly protected marine reserve is, on average, 670 per cent greater than it is in unprotected areas—

Members rose.

I will not take interventions, as I have very little time and I want to get all my points across.

The policy is about protecting our fish nurseries and it is about allowing key areas of our sea bed to recover, in order to increase the abundance of our seas so that they support more fishers fishing more fish, and to protect the ecosystem for all of us. That is what the policy aims to do, but we need to work with the people on the ground, who know the waters intimately. I urge all low-impact and static-gear fishers to work with the Scottish Government and the Greens to make the policy work for them, for the stocks that they fish and for their communities.

Most of our creelers and divers are, as the Skipinnish song says,

“At one with the ocean and nature”.

It does a great disservice to the responsible members of coastal communities to conflate them with the big businesses that are the trawling and dredging industries. Trawler gear is not at one with nature—it is destroying nature on our sea bed, including vital fish nurseries and other blue-carbon habitats. Most of the dredge fleet is not based in the communities where they fish; bar in Shetland, the majority of the dredge fleet is nomadic. Low-impact fishers are almost always linked to the patch in which they fish—

Will the member take an intervention?

—and they harvest our seas responsibly—

Will the member give way on that point?

I am sorry—[Interruption.]

I must keep going.

Ms Burgess, resume your seat for a second.

Mr Carson, the member has made it clear that she is not likely to take an intervention. That is not an invitation for you to shout from a sedentary position. There will be respect shown in the chamber, irrespective of whether members agree with the views that are being expressed.

I can give you back the time, Ms Burgess.

That is very much appreciated, Presiding Officer.

Clearances were operated through violence and force: the Scottish Government’s HPMAs could not be more different. Coastal communities have always been central to the designation process, and plans to bring stakeholders together using maps to draw out sites collectively, in order to mitigate impacts and to consider how to provide a just transition, are crucial parts of the early consultation.

The First Minister has even promised that the HPMAs—fish nurseries—will not be introduced where communities are opposed to them. The clearances were driven by profit: they were about moving the majority of people off the land in order to boost profits for a privileged few. HPMAs—fish nurseries—are not driven by profit but by science, and by the need to protect our environment and boost fish stocks to supply our communities—especially our coastal communities—and our economy.

There used to be a time when Scottish Labour supported the many, not the few. As we have seen, those days are long gone. I want young people to have ample opportunity to stay in their communities in order to help coastal communities to thrive and to build community wealth.

We must deliver housing that local people can actually afford, invest in the good green jobs that they want to do and enable sustainable fishing. We need to support the local initiatives that are painstakingly restoring coastal habitats after decades of damage, and which are creating jobs, in the process. Protecting a mere 10 per cent of our marine commons from all forms of fishing is not a big ask for biodiversity and our ecosystem services. Let us listen to fishers, especially creelers and divers, but let us also amplify the voices of our coastal communities on the whole, which might want a small slice of their coastal zone to be set aside for nature and biodiversity.

17:48  

I begin by saying to the member of the Green Party, who spent most of her speech attacking the Labour Party, that the comparison that is being made between HPMAs and the clearances is not from the mouths of people in the Labour Party, but is directly from the mouths of people in the community. It is in the name of the title of the song that is quoted in the motion for debate tonight. The song is written by an islander, and is being listened to by people across the Highlands and Islands, as members on all sides of the chamber have testified tonight. It is that member, and this Government, who are refusing to listen.

It is right to highlight the role of protest songs at this point in time, because when rights are lost and community is threatened, and when hearts yearn for justice for their communities they call, in song and in poetry, to our common humanity and they ask us to listen to them.

I have heard the words of families—the words of fathers and mothers in those communities, saying that they see no future for their children. If the cabinet secretary wants to listen to them, she would do well to hear them properly and to revisit the proposals.

The work of Donald Francis MacNeil and Skipinnish calls to mind, I think directly, the poetry of the clearances and land agitation of the early 19th century that was first collected by Donald Meek. “Tuath is Tighearna” is the name of his collection—it means “Tenants and Landlords”. In this situation, people know who the tenants are and they know who the landlords are. This is how people feel they are being treated: they feel that the land is not their own and the seas are not their own—that they are being granted permission to be there rather than owning and living in their own communities.

Will the member take an intervention?

No, thank you, sir.

The landlords are as they ever were—the elite of Edinburgh telling those people exactly how to live their lives and what they should do. The current debate over HPMAs is, frankly, just the latest example in a litany of policies.

Do Michael Marra and the Labour Party not accept that we are only at consultation stage, and that the point is that the cabinet secretary is going to go around the country to speak to those communities?

Jim Fairlie would do well to listen to all those communities right now. The member who is sitting next to him has highlighted very well the unanimous voice of those communities. I am sure that the cabinet secretary will hear that loud and clear in the coming months, as she tours the country.

We know already that having an axe hanging over the necks of every coastal community is a very poor way to develop policy, and that it is receiving the reaction that we would expect.

When we think about the ferries that do not sail, the breakdown of crofting regulation, delays in extending broadband provision, housing policies that are pushing families out of villages and the tokenistic commitment to the Gaelic language, we see that this Government’s myopic focus on central belt policies has served our island and coastal communities poorly for 16 years: it has betrayed them.

During the statement regarding the ferries from the Government earlier today, the people in those communities who were listening would have been appalled at the temerity of the Cabinet Secretary for Wellbeing Economy, Fair Work and Energy attempting to make a virtue out of the ferries disaster that has happened. I feel that the tone of that statement speaks to the very problem that we see in the motion that is in front of us now.

We need to maintain and build sustainable communities in the Highlands and Islands, and that can be done only by growing their economies, creating more jobs and giving people reasons to stay there with their families or to move there. Success for this protest song—this cry for justice—will not be measured on iTunes or Spotify; it can be measured only by whether the Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero and Just Transition, her Minister for Green Skills, Circular Economy and Biodiversity and the Cabinet actually listen to it, hear it and change their own tune.

I call Màiri McAllan to respond to the debate. You have around seven minutes, cabinet secretary.

17:52  

Presiding Officer, I thank you and all the members who have taken part in today’s debate. The fact that we are discussing this topic again is testament to the importance of the issue.

As others have done, I begin by commending Skipinnish and Donald Francis MacNeil for so evocatively capturing the strength of feeling among some people in relation to the issue. It represents, I think, two great things about our nation: how politically engaged Scotland’s polity is and how we often express our political views through our culture and the arts. That is a beautiful and important way to express ourselves, and it often communicates issues in a way that is more accessible. It also has longevity; when debates are over and consultations are complete—or ripped up, in the case of Fergus Ewing—songs about people and about culture will endure.

With all that, I repeat what I have said before to those who are concerned about the proposals that we have consulted on. First, I care; secondly, I sympathise—I am a rural MSP, who has probably done more days working the land than most people in the chamber, and I understand the connection with the land in the way that coastal and island communities feel connected to the coast and sea—and, lastly, I am listening.

As I said when I launched the initial consultation—

Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?

I will very briefly.

When you say that you are listening—

Through the chair, please, Mr Carson.

I beg your pardon. I ask the cabinet secretary why Elspeth Macdonald from the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation said:

“I’m sorry to say our recent experience in engaging with the government on HPMAs has been far from meaningful.”

If anybody feels that way, I am determined to work to make sure that everybody who engages with my department, me and the Government realises that I appreciate that, and that everybody feels that the engagement is meaningful. If that is how she feels, I am determined to work on that.

Members are telling me to go back to the drawing board, but the truth is that I never left the drawing board. We are at the drawing board and I have, rightly, invited Scotland’s communities to the drawing board with me.

Will the member take an intervention on that point?

I will take one more intervention.

The cabinet secretary mentioned the 4,000 replies to the consultation that she initiated. If she is listening and is going to go through all those 4,000 replies, how can she possibly come to the nominal percentage of 10 per cent prior to reading all the consultation replies?

The consultation was on the proposal; we have to put something on the table on which to consult. That is how policy is developed.

Rather than consulting on pre-determined areas at the end of the process—that would have been a top-down model—we have instead consulted early and on principles, including what might constitute HPMAs, what people thought of the 10 per cent figure and how they felt about the timeline. Those are exactly the questions that we asked and exactly the questions that I will now consider.

Will the member take an intervention?

I will take one more.

The cabinet secretary says that she is consulting on the 10 per cent level, but that figure is included in the Bute house agreement. Is it up for negotiation or is it set in stone?

Cabinet secretary, I can give you the time back for all the interventions.

I will consider the responses to every aspect on which I have asked questions in the consultation. I will work with my Green colleagues on whatever we are told. We have been very clear from the start. We took our proposal to communities, invited them around the drawing board with us and will carefully consider what they have told us.

Having confirmed that I will do that, I want to take the opportunity to address some inaccuracies—some of which have been repeated in the debate—that are causing people concern. Contrary to what the motion says, our proposals would not ban inshore fishing, and certainly not ban all marine activities. Our proposals, which we have consulted on, are that certain activities could be restricted in carefully selected locations throughout Scotland’s seas, inshore and offshore.

We suggested that those sites would be selected based on the best available scientific evidence and rigorous socioeconomic assessment. Fergus Ewing cannot have read the consultation if he thinks that there was no socioeconomic assessment built into it. It is like a thread through the consultation. We committed to doing that in close collaboration with stakeholders in order to understand how it would impact businesses, individuals and communities. I reiterate that we are at the very earliest stages of developing HPMAs and no sites have been selected—they have not even been proposed.

All of that is happening against the backdrop of the strong track record that the Scottish Government, the Scottish fishing industry and coastal communities have on working together to meet shared challenges, deliver mutual benefit and ensure sustainable co-management. Of course, we sometimes hold different views on individual issues, but we have achieved great success when we work in partnership and on a pragmatic basis. My commitment to a partnership approach is absolutely resolute.

In the time that I have left, I remind members that we cannot forget why we have to take action. We are in the midst of a climate and nature emergency. Our oceans are critical to the sequestering and storing of carbon and to supporting ecosystems and species, the abundance of which is directly tied to how healthy our natural world is. We have to protect our oceans so that they can protect us.

I will say this time and time again to reassure people who I know are worried, because I do not want them to be worried: I am absolutely determined that, as we take the actions that we must take in response to the climate and nature emergency, it will be done via a just transition. It will be done hand in hand with communities, particularly with those who could be affected by proposals.

That task is incumbent on me as a minister. I do not have the ability to politically posture about this. I have to be serious about it, and I give my commitment to communities throughout Scotland that I will take that balanced approach.

Meeting closed at 18:00.