Mr Alistair Carmichael

That would have been perfect sense. It was certainly also regrettable that it was said that the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation had asked for this, when they obviously had not. A good, mature working relationship between the two Governments is required, and unfortunately we are just not there at the moment. That may change after May—who knows? The irony of the fuss created by SNP Ministers about the allocation of the fishing and coastal growth fund was not lost on fishermen in Shetland. As The Shetland Times pointed out, Shetland received only 5% of the Scottish Government’s marine fund, despite the fact that we account for 20% of Scotland’s fishing product. We were assured by local SNP politicians that this was entirely different, as their scheme was “merit based”, which presumably means that we got our quota share only because we were not good enough to get the rest. The relationship between the UK Government and the devolved Administrations is one thing; more important still is the relationship between all Governments and the industry as a whole. When any Government think they know better than the industry, we know that bad outcomes are just around the corner. Never has that been seen more clearly than when the SNP in Edinburgh, along with their coalition partners the Greens, sought to close down vast areas of fishing grounds by designating them as highly protected marine areas, which was stopped only by the most colossal campaign by industry and community organisations around the coast. It should never have been so difficult to make our own Government back down on measures that were so obviously an existential threat to coastal and island communities.