Seòmar agus comataidhean

I will give way to my colleague Jamie Greene, who I think was on that committee.

I share the member’s disappointment.

If I had known where we would be today, I would have joined those committee members who called for a moratorium in 2018, because that would have made the industry pay attention. I will explain why we need it to do so.

The figures for 2023 show that 33,000 tonnes of salmon died that year, and that the use of antibiotics was still going up at that stage—in fact, according to the Veterinary Medicines Directorate, there has been a 24 per cent increase since 2017. The industry will say that the level went down the following year, but the issue is that, overall, the use of antibiotics is still rising.

Let us look at the figures from 2024. Mowi lost 600,000 fish in the first nine months of the year, and it was closely followed by Bakkafrost, which lost 543,000. A huge amount of fish is being lost, and I do not believe that there should be any excuse for it. I am a farmer so I know what it is like: I know that, where there is breeding and where farming goes on, there is also a certain amount of dying.

Let us be clear, however: the fish that are put to sea—and 25 per cent of them are dying when they are put to sea—are probably the most mollycoddled animals that you could have. They are given treatment before they go out to sea, to stop them getting sea lice, and they are looked after carefully in the pens.

I accept that there need to be adaptable controls in particular areas. The Kishorn A, B and C sites continually have a high mortality rate, which calls into question whether the approach is appropriate.

The Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee demanded that mortality should be reduced—it was clear about that in its recommendations. When I attended that committee—I attended nearly every single session—we heard from the industry that it was predicting a reduction in mortality in fish farms of only 2 per cent each year.

The figure that has been quoted today was based on the mortality rate in 2018. Let us go back to 2017, when the mortality rate was 17 per cent. If we are to get back to that rate of 17 per cent but the industry is only going to reduce mortality by 2 per cent a year, that means that we will have to wait 19 years to get back to a mortality rate that was judged by the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee to be unacceptable.

The Rural Affairs and Islands Committee’s recommendations are commendable. I like the idea of a road map—I am disappointed that we never had one before for the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee’s 65 recommendations. I am pleased that the data on fish mortality is to be much more open and consistent, and that there is more concern about waste discharge. Across all these committees and all these reports, what we are trying to achieve is for the industry to be a good neighbour—not just for wild salmon but for the other industries that work around their pens.

For the industry to succeed—and I really want it to succeed—it will have to be much more open and transparent than it is at the moment. It will have to show considerable improvements.

I caution the industry against sending letters such as the one that it sent to the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee after the committee published its report. I believe that such letters are threatening. I do not like being threatened by the industry and I do not think that any parliamentary committee should be threatened. We need to make sure that we build on the report through consensus.

Denial and defence by threatening are not going to save the industry. I believe that the industry is in the last-chance saloon. It has had two strikes from two separate committees in the Parliament. I hope that the industry will succeed, but it will have to do a lot more than it is doing at the moment if it is to remain as it is.

Is the member as shocked as I was to see that, by its own admission, at the rate at which it is progressing, it would take the industry 19 years to get back to 2017 mortality levels? Does the member think that that is acceptable?

I apologise that I cannot remember its number, but one recommendation in the REC Committee report was that salmon farms should move further offshore so that there is greater churn in the sea and a chance to keep temperatures lower, so that the farm is less likely to attract some of the pests and jellyfish that are attracted inshore. That does not seem to have happened. Would that be a useful way to reduce mortality on salmon farms?

Rumbustious.

Of course I accept that fact—as a farmer, I am well aware of it. Let me give an example: on the farm, sometimes we get blackleg. If that happens, it will kill the animals, so we stop producing the animals in that area, move them to a different area, reduce our stocking and look for ways to prevent the disease. The problem is that the salmon industry has not been doing those things; it just keeps going.

I will take one more if I have time.

I am delighted to be able to open this debate on behalf of the Scottish Conservatives. Before I go any further, I remind Parliament of my entry in the register of members’ interests, which states that I have an interest in a wild salmon fishery. I have had that interest for 45 years, during which time I have been involved in watching salmon farming around the coasts of Scotland.

I, too, would like to thank committee members for all the work that they have done. I know how difficult it has been, as I have been there before, when the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee considered the issue in 2018.

As a Conservative, I support businesses. I support businesses that bring a great deal to Scotland’s economy in terms of employment and opportunities, and in terms of our balance of payments. However, we must be clear that those businesses cannot do that at any price.

It would be wrong to scoot past without reminding members of the fable of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”. Members will recall that, in that story, events resulted in the Emperor going out undressed because people were incompetent and gullible and pretended not to know what was going on. I am none of those things and, when it comes to salmon farming, I will not be any of those things.

In 2018, the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee told this Parliament that there were things wrong with salmon farming. It made 65 recommendations, and I am disappointed that the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee, having looked at some of those recommendations again, is having to acknowledge that a lot of them have not been complied with.

I remember sitting on the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee and hearing calls for a moratorium on salmon farming. In the end, two members dissented from the part of the report in which we did not call for a moratorium. I was one of those who did not want a moratorium, but my position might have changed.

I thank Claire Baker and the Labour Party for their motion, which allows us to discuss a subject that I have been involved with for nine years on various committees that I have sat on.

For me, the debate is split into two parts. I hope that I will have time to get to the second part, but let me start with the first part, which is the delivery of ferries. During the nine years in which I have been involved, I have seen two owners of the yard, four CEOs or turnaround directors, three different chairs, goodness knows how many ministers and goodness knows how many cabinet secretaries—I have lost count. What have we got from that? Not a huge amount. We have one boat, which is seven years late and is costing far more than anything else, and we have a yard that is waiting to deliver the Glen Rosa.

If the cabinet secretary wants to stand up and tell me when the Glen Rosa will be delivered, I will be delighted, because neither the committee that I sit on nor the Parliament has been told a date, despite the promise that we would be told a date before the end of January. We are now told that we might get it by the end of March if we are lucky. I will take an intervention on that if the cabinet secretary wants to respond.

The yard should be the pride of Scotland and it should be delivering ferries for Scotland, but at the moment there is no CEO and the chair has never built a ship in his life, having been involved in aircraft for a lot of it. The yard is costing Scottish taxpayers £20 million a year in unrecoverable costs just to stay open. We have an admission from the past CEO and the previous CEO that, every time we build a ferry there, its cost will be 25 to 30 per cent greater than the cost in any other yard in the world. That information was given to the committee in evidence.

It is therefore unsurprising that the small vessels replacement programme could not go to Ferguson Marine. I wish that it could have done. However, the board signed off on an investment plan, which was also signed off by the Deputy First Minister, saying that the matter would be solved with the direct award of the small vessels replacement, for which the yard would get £14 million to help it to build, knowing fine well that the permanent secretary had said that a direct award of the small vessels replacement programme would likely be illegal.

How do we sum all of that up? Is it incompetence? Is it inexperience? Was it a gamble? I do not know. It is probably all those things. What we do know is that the Government appointed the board and the turnaround director and approved the appointment of the CEOs. I am sorry to say this, but I believe that the Government has sold the workforce down the river. It is a disgrace. I am disappointed that I have to stand here in the Parliament and say that, but it is a fact.

I turn to the west coast ferry services. Ms Hyslop sat on the very committee that took evidence on ferry services for the Western Isles, and we heard very clearly during an evidence session that there should be a direct award only if islanders supported it. I have had no evidence presented to me—or to the committee that I sit on—that islanders now approve of a direct award.

The Government is now talking about a direct tender process, but it has not done the one thing that it has been asked to do, which is to sort out the whole procedure. We have CMAL, Transport Scotland and CalMac—a plethora of organisations—but we have no one in control, and the whole thing is tumbling out of control.

I am sad to be standing up in Parliament saying this. I am sad that the Government cannot give me a date for delivery of the Glen Rosa, because no one seems to know that, and I am sad that the Government has sold Ferguson Marine Port Glasgow down the river. It is a disgrace.