5 minute read
Hamish Macdonell
BY HAMISH MACDONELL
The message
MSPs are, increasingly, listening to what the industry has to say
It 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 diffi cult 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-fi re 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 – signifi cantly.
In 2018, before our last Christmas recep� on, we commissioned a survey of MSPs to fi nd 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� fi able 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.
Top: Sco� sh salmon Above: Sco� sh salmon farm Opposite: Sco� sh Parliament
That has certainly been a factor, but we were also very conscious of the changing nature of the parliament in the last year.
A� er the elec� on in 2021, about a third of the MSPs were new to the parliament and most were new to poli� cs.
We started working on them before and a� er the elec� on, knowing that they would come to parliament ready to hear ra� onal and compelling arguments, unburdened by the misinforma� on and myths peddled by our opponents.
And so it has proved. The surveyors we commissioned interviewed 25 new MSPs this year and found that 22 of them had not just had communica� ons from Salmon Scotland, but every single one was sa� sfi ed with the contacts they had had from our organisa� on.
However, the most important aspect of this survey work is that it iden� fi es where we s� ll need to make signifi cant progress.
Salmon farming enjoys considerable support among Highlands and Islands MSPs (not surprisingly), but we have some way to go to persuade central belt MSPs to share the same view.
The economic arguments are well known and clearly understood, but the good environmental story we have to tell – and the drive for longterm, world-leading sustainability – s� ll has not cut through.
The Sco� sh Parliament is obviously not the whole story because it is not just MSPs who are key decision-makers for our sector.
Councillors, par� cularly in our farming regions and especially those with a key role in planning decisions, are also vitally important to the long-term, sustainable growth of our sector.
They will be facing elec� ons this year, so the engagement exercise, which we have pioneered so successfully at Holyrood, needs to be rolled out in Inverness, Lerwick, Lochgilphead, Stornoway and a hundred places in between.
The message we take to them will be similar to that which has worked so well for our na� onal poli� cians: our farmers produce a healthy, nutri� ous, locally sourced food to world-leading standards. They provide solid founda� ons for dozens of communi� es in remote rural Scotland, support thousands of jobs across the country and have millions of sa� sfi ed customers around the world.
However, by far the most sa� sfying part of this whole process has been the realisa� on that, when presented with the facts, the evidence and the context, our decision-makers have been able to look at the wild cri� cisms that drop into their inboxes (like the green-inked le� ers of old) with fresh eyes, seeing the misinforma� on for what it is.
We s� ll have a long way to go, there is no doubt about that. But this is a contest we are winning. This year’s MSPs’ survey shows that the trend is heading in the right direc� on and we are determined, absolutely determined, to keep it going that way.
