Fall in investment in marine science ‘a real worry’
11th February 2025
The new Scottish government budget for 2025-2026 has been described as ‘very disappointing’ for Scotland’s rural businesses and communities.
Finlay Carson, convenor of the Scottish parliament’s Rural Affairs and Islands (RAI) Committee, noted in a scrutiny debate on the budget that the rural affairs and islands portfolio was the only one that had seen a decrease in its resource budget from the previous year – a fall in real terms of 2.1%.
“From that observation alone, it is not clear how the budget will support the Scottish government’s stated ambitions when it comes to supporting rural and island communities,” he said.
Finlay Carson said that after hearing stakeholders’ concerns about several fisheries-related statutory instruments, the RAI Committee had decided to focus on budget allocations for marine management by the Marine Directorate.
“The Marine Directorate’s budget for 2025-2026 has decreased by £3.4m in cash terms. That follows a cut of £4.8m last year,” he said.
“The committee heard from fisheries stakeholders that the cuts are having a negative impact on the directorate’s capacity to undertake scientific research and that, due to decreased resources, fisheries research has declined over the past decade, which is in contrast to the position of equivalent institutions in the UK and internationally.
“The committee saw for itself the condition of the directorate’s laboratories in Aberdeen, which was far from ideal and was potentially having an impact on scientists’ ability to conduct research effectively.
“Stakeholders also raised concerns about the inadequate resources for the directorate to conduct effective enforcement, ensure compliance and develop co-managed structures with stakeholders through Regional Inshore Fisheries Groups.”
Elspeth Macdonald, chief executive of the SFF, said the budget cut was ‘a real worry for us’.
“The Scottish government has got a huge range of policy proposals, objectives, marine plans, but we are very aware that all the time their resources are becoming more thinly spread,” she told Fishing News.
“What does concern us is that in trying to do things quickly to meet perhaps political objectives or before the end of the parliamentary term with limited resources, there is the potential to result in bad policy, or poorly thought-through, unintended consequences.”
She said there had been ‘an enormous increase’ in the resources going into the Scottish government offshore wind directorate, which had probably tripled in size over the last couple of years.
Yet while the Marine Directorate wanted to develop its thinking around inshore fisheries management, there wasn’t ‘anything like sufficient resources allocated to actually having a good baseline of understanding the situation of some of our inshore stocks’.
“We understand there are pressures on public sector budgets, but government’s priorities and plans have to match the resources that are available. There’s no point promising the world if you haven’t got the resources to deliver it,” said Elspeth Macdonald.
“We are really concerned about the loss of investment into the core data collection and core science that we need to underpin decision-making going forward.
“The Scottish government talks about wanting to be a world leader in marine science, but you need to invest in that – it won’t happen on its own.”
This story was taken from the latest issue of Fishing News. For more up-to-date and in-depth reports on the UK and Irish commercial fishing sector, subscribe to Fishing News here or buy the latest single issue for just £3.50 here.
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