Public finance minister responds to Holyrood question on Scotland’s share of Fishing and Coastal Growth Fund
The Scottish Government will continue efforts ‘in pursuit of a fairer share’ of the Fishing and Coastal Growth Fund for Scotland, the public finance minister has said. The comments from recently appointed minister Hannah Mary Goodlad came in an exchange with SNP backbencher Karen Adam last week.
Karen Adam, the MSP for Banffshire and Buchan Coast, had asked the government for a breakdown of the funding it expected to receive from the UK Government’s Fishing and Coastal Growth Fund. The minister replied that, over theremainder of the UK spending review period, Scotland would receive £2.1m in 2026-2027, £2.7m in 2027-2028, £2.8m in 2028-2029 and an estimated £3.4m in in 2029-2030.
In the current financial year (2026-2027), the full allocation was added to the Marine Fund Scotland (FN, 22 January, ‘Scottish Fishing and Coastal Growth Fund share added to Marine Fund Scotland’).
The question then gave Hannah Mary Goodlad the opportunity to add that Scotland’s total allocation – at £28m of the £360m fund over 12 years – was less than 8% of the total. Fishing, she said, is existential’ in both her constituency of Shetland and in Karen Adams’, which includes Peterhead and Fraserburgh. The funding share-out was, the minister said, ‘another example of a consequence of Brexit, which Scotland and the people of Shetland did not vote for’.
Karen Adam said the decision to use the Barnett Formula to devolve the fund was ‘a political choice’, highlighting that funding for agriculture was previously devolved without being Barnettised. She asked if the minister would ‘press the Treasury for a fairer settlement to reflect Scotland’s share of the industry’ – having noted that Scotland has more than 60% of UK fishing capacity and lands more than 75% of UK quota species – while ‘working across government with industry to maximise support now’.
Hannah Mary Goodlad said she strongly agreed that giving ‘only a Barnett share’ of the fund to Scotland was a ‘deliberate political choice by the UK Government’. Fishermen have been used as ‘political pawns’ over the years, she said, adding that it was ‘clear that fisheries are an irrelevance to Westminster, yet the industry is important for Scotland’.
The Scottish Government had, she said, ‘always been clear that the application of a population-based model to fisheries fails to recognise Scotland’s greater share of our UK seas’, and would ‘continue to make that point strongly to the UK Government in pursuit of a fairer share of the fisheries and coastal fund being allocated to Scotland’.
Maggie Chapman (Green, North East Scotland) asked how the Scottish Government could ensure that the funding that comes to Scotland ‘is used to support genuine ecological sustainability and, importantly, community benefit’ and ‘does not simply subsidise business as usual’.
Hannah Mary Goodlad replied that ‘our fishers are great stewards of the sea’, and that sustainable fish stocks were in their best interests. Fisheries funding in Scotland would, she concluded, ‘take a merit-based approach to allocation’ considering ‘economic, social and environmental perspectives’.
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