Why should fishermen have a veto over our relationship with the EU?

The Herald Scotland

22-05-2025

It would also work towards 'an ambitious new UK-EU security pact to strengthen co-operation on the threats we face'. The latter course of action has been driven by external events, notably the Trump presidency. The former, about breaking down trade barriers, has started to be delivered when it would have been easier to back off.
Indeed, apart from other considerations, this is a significant set-back to the narrative that the Starmer Government is pandering to the advances of Reform UK. Doing deals with Brussels was scarcely designed to win the approbation of Mr Farage. And sure enough, the cry from that quarter was 'surrender' and 'total capitulation'.
However, Farage was not the only party leader to respond with opportunistic sloganising. Far from welcoming rapprochement with the EU (which he is supposed to be desperate to join), our First Minister went into familiar Rev I M Swinney mode to bemoan Scotland being 'an afterthought in the UK's decision-making' while the fishing industry had been 'surrendered'.
Read more by Brian Wilson
This did rather ignore the facts that, like the rest of the UK, Scottish businesses will export more easily to the EU, Scottish travellers will move more freely, Scottish shoppers will benefit from cheaper food, Scottish youths can look forward to exchange schemes, Scottish musicians will see touring restrictions lifted, and so on. Not perfect of course, but a pretty good start. And utterly different from what went before.
Swinney's complaint appeared to have been based entirely on the predictable reaction of the Scottish Fishermen's Federation. On the face of it, this is an unlikely union. The Federation overwhelmingly represents Scotland's wealthiest and most powerful fishing interests and was vociferously pro-Brexit. Swinney, on the other hand, supposedly can't get enough of the EU.
Never easily satisfied, the SFF was extremely disgruntled with what Brexit delivered them via Boris Johnson's negotiations – a 10 per cent increase in quota by 2026 to be followed by annual renegotiations. The Starmer deal has not taken anything away, except the pain of going through the same ritual annually.
It might reasonably be assumed that Johnson and his Scottish colleagues did their best for the Buchan Brexiters and the fact they had to settle for the deal they got suggests that this will always be an issue on which the EU will hold a firm line. That will be the same next year and the year after.
The logic of having given the SFF and its counterparts a veto over progress on the whole range of EU relationships would be that the same veto would kick in annually. That is not a price worth paying and the more you know about the interests that the SFF represents, the less inclination there is to believe their demands are appeasable or their objections should be decisive.
Maybe Swinney should be more careful about where his ingrained instincts lead him. If the EU sees fishing rights as a bargaining chip with the UK, how much higher a price would it seek to extract if Scotland ever went knocking at the Brussels door with an application to join? The charge of 'surrender' is a self-inflicted contradiction of which Swinney should be regularly reminded.
Keir Starmer with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Monday (Image: PA)
Living in the Western Isles (which are surrounded by 22 per cent of Scotland's inshore waters if we want to get territorial about it), tends to create a different perspective on what the 'Scottish fishing industry' means. In fact, there really is no single industry but a whole range of sectors which, historically, have had deeply conflicting interests.
The biggest threat to the west coast has long come from the north-east of Scotland, rather than Spanish or French interlopers. The north-east ports had the capital and catching power with precious little respect for lesser interests. In recent decades, this has been compounded by the market in licences and quotas, leading to the near demise of white and pelagic fishing in many communities.
When the UK joined the Common Market, 98 per cent of catches in the Western Isles were in these two categories. That has now been entirely reversed and over 90 per cent by both catch and value come from shellfish. The damage done by Brexit – which the Scottish Fishermen's Federation campaigned so hard for – was to the markets on which the shellfish industry (and also salmon farmers) relied.
Unsurprisingly therefore, the EU deal has been welcomed in these communities because it removes barriers to European markets. Meanwhile, to the east, almost half of all Scottish quota is owned by five families while a third of the Scottish catch is landed overseas, mainly in Norway.
Neither statistic has been to the benefit of Scotland's fishing communities yet this is the hierarchy which the Scottish Fishermen's Federation exists to lobby for and further entrench. So which side are you on, Mr Swinney?
Arguably, additional quota could be used to diversify or revive fishing in places that have seen decline and loss over recent decades. But what has happened? The additional quota secured by the Johnson government and devolved to Edinburgh to allocate has gone straight to those with existing catching power.
When this allocation was announced last year, there was a vague reference to 'the longer-term potential for community quota allocation initiatives'. But why not now? If the Scottish Government had the slightest interest in addressing injustices, past and present, within the Scottish fishing industry, there are plenty places to start. Far easier to shout 'surrender' and, as usual, appeal to the politics of grievance.
Brian Wilson is a former Labour Party politician. He was MP for Cunninghame North from 1987 until 2005 and served as a Minister of State from 1997 to 2003.