Salmon Scotland
BY HAMISH MACDONELL
The message MSPs are, increasingly, listening to what the industry has to say
I
t has been three years now since the Sco�sh salmon sector last held a Christmas recep�on at Holyrood. In December 2018, dozens of MSPs were there. There were at least four cabinet secretaries, a good sma�ering of junior ministers as well as special advisers, poli�cal editors and columnists, all ea�ng, drinking, laughing and apprecia�ng the posi�vity exuding from a sector with a good tale to tell. Since then, a combina�on of difficult elec�on �ming and Covid has put paid to all subsequent plans. Indeed, on the evening earmarked for our Sco�sh Parliament recep�on last month, the lights were off in the members’ restaurant at the parliament, the staff were all at home and you could almost see the poli�cal equivalent of tumbleweed blowing through the corridors and hallways of parliament. Our inability to get that social, face-to-face contact with MSPs for the last three years has been deeply frustra�ng. It has been just one of the barriers we have faced in ge�ng our message across to the country’s decision-makers. We have not been able to hold parliamentary exhibi�ons – usually a sure-fire way of engaging directly with numerous MSPs of all par�es; we have not been able to take many of them out to farms and those invaluable in-person mee�ngs have also disappeared in a puff of pandemic-induced worry.
But all that just makes Salmon Scotland’s achievements over the past three years all the more remarkable. Despite the restric�ons, the lack of mee�ngs, the cancelled recep�ons and limited contact, our reputa�on among Scotland’s parliamentarians is up – significantly. In 2018, before our last Christmas recep�on, we commissioned a survey of MSPs to find out how we were viewed by our parliamentarians. In 2018, a total of 34% of MSPs were favourable towards the salmon sector and 25% had an unfavourable view – a net favourability ra�ng of plus nine points. In the three years since, our favourability has grown year on year. The latest survey, in 2021, found that a total of 46% of MSPs now have a favourable impression of salmon farming in Scotland and just 19% are unfavourable – a net ra�ng of plus 27 points. Our favourability is up 12 points in three years and our unfavourability score has dropped by six points over the same �me. This would be good in any period. Turning a plus nine ra�ng into a plus 27-point ra�ng would be an achievement to be applauded, but to do so during a pandemic that has cut face-to-face access to almost nothing is a really solid and quan�fiable success. I pointed out in a previous column how we at Salmon Scotland had changed tac�cs and started to emphasise the wider salmon supply chain to MSPs outside our tradi�onal farming areas and how successful that had been.
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www.fishfarmermagazine.com
11/01/2022 14:11:02
