Torcuil Crichton

That is true. Our problems are not uniquely island problems, nor are they uniquely Scottish problems: they are demographic, economic and social problems for coastal communities around the whole UK. I know that that is not entirely the responsibility of the Minister. Having risked the ire of the Home Office, rather than the Minister, I will carry on and risk the anger of my hon. Friends the Members for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham) and for South East Cornwall (Anna Gelderd), and possibly of the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George). I am after their tuna, or rather our tuna. One quota for which the Minister does have responsibility is the bluefin tuna stocks, which have increased significantly. Thanks to climate change, bluefin tuna are roaming far north and wild in the Atlantic. There has been a great decade-long catch-and-release scheme around the British coast. The catch is by rod and line, so the catches are selective, of good quality and of the same stock as those caught in other regions of the UK. They have the potential to be a great home market and export market. The UK was allocated something like 39 tonnes of bluefin tuna in 2023, but so far none of those commercial licences has been granted to a Scottish boat. All 13 were granted to the south-west of England; none of them has come to Scotland, far less to the Hebrides, where operators have set themselves up not just as rod-and-line operators, but potentially as smokers and exporters to the domestic and international markets. For all the quota to be allocated to one area seems very odd. It is not what we would expect. We might expect weight to be placed on geography and on socioeconomic impacts: a bluefin tuna fishery in the Western Isles would be economically significant. For rod-and-line operators and others who have prepared themselves to turn commercial, it is deeply frustrating to be turned off in that way.