The U.K. Department of Environment Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) has announced its new Fishing and Coastal Growth Fund, and Scottish government officials and fishing groups have called the way those funds are divided up “ocean-going madness.”
DEFRA announced on 20 October that it plans to invest GBP 360 million (USD 479 million, EUR 413 million) in the Fishing and Coastal Growth fund, which benefits coastal communities and the fishing industry through investment in infrastructure and equipment. However, of that total funding, just GBP 28 million (USD 37 million, EUR 32 million) is going to the Scottish government, GBP 18 million (USD 24 million, EUR 20 million) is going to the Welsh government, and GBP 10 million (USD 13 million, EUR 11 million) is going to the Northern Irish government.
Minister of Parliament for Orkney and Shetland Alistair Carmichael said the amount being sent to Scotland is unacceptable, BBC News reported.
"If the minister is sincere when she says that the aim of the government is to maximize local investment then to use the Barnett Formula to distribute this is ocean-going madness,” he said in the House of Commons.
Scottish Rural Affairs Secretary Mairi Gougeon also rejected the funding allocations, and in a letter to U.K. Environment Minister Angela Eagle called it “wholly unacceptable.”
"It is unjustified and nothing short of insulting to the Scottish fishing industry and our coastal communities," the letter said. "It also disproportionately benefits your own fishing sector in England - for whom you have retained over GBP 300 million [USD 400 million, EUR 344 million], despite landing significantly smaller catches than Scotland."
The Scottish Fishermen’s Federation Chief Executive Elspeth Macdonald called the way DEFRA decided to carve up the funding “grossly unfair” to the Scottish fishing industry, considering it accounts for 60 percent of landings by both value and volume.
“When the fund was announced in May as a consolation prize for the government giving away access to U.K. waters until 2038 for as yet nothing in return, Defra said it would invest in new technology and equipment to modernize the fleet and work with industry to target investment where it matters most,” Macdonald said. “Five months on, Defra having held only one meeting with the industry, we’re told that the fund will be allocated according to the Barnet formula, due to an opaque change within the Treasury.”
The Barnet formula allocates funding based on population, and given Scotland’s lower population it was thus given a much lower allocation of the funds.
“Previously, Scotland’s share of fisheries funds was set at 47 percent,” Macdonald said. “That has now been reduced to less than 8 percent at the stroke of a pen and with no discussion. This has gone from being a consolation prize to now being a booby prize.”
The Scottish seafood industry has pushed back against the government after its push to emphasize the need to protect its industry amid renegotiations of Brexit didn’t stop the U.K. government from giving away what it considered to be too much of the nation’s fishing access to the E.U.
“It’s hard to feel that this government cares one jot about the Scottish fishing industry,” Macdonald said. “Sold out by the prime minister through the E.U. re-set, told that we would have this fund to help support the industry for the future, only now to find that Scotland’s share is close to derisory,” Macdonald said. “This is another bitter blow to Scotland’s fishermen.”
