Policy Research Media Morhamburn

In these times of untrustworthy banks, negligible interest payments on savings and a receding economy, it seems everyone is looking for a nice safe place in which to put their hard-earned. The same could be said of the Scottish Government, who need new economic horses to back with our hard-earned now that their front-runner, banking, has fallen at a fence and broken all of its legs.

Where then to look? Renewables is already pretty high up the list, high-tech manufacturing is a long-standing friend but has never quite regained the reliability it once had in the halcyon days of Silicon Glen, and while the service sector keeps plodding along, it is risky to base your economy on hairdressers and tanning salons.

What then about fish? Despite the obvious and long-standing problems of over-fishing, the CFP and what seems like a long, slow decline, fish is something of a growth industry, certainly according the latest Scottish Fish Farm Annual Production Survey.

Scotland is now the world’s second biggest producer of farmed salmon (Norway is first). The growth of aquaculture in Scotland is a positive story, an industry based away from the population centres, that serves valuable economic, and potentially social, purposes and in which Scotland is genuinely world-class.

It would be difficult to quantify, but the dividends that this position must also have for Scottish food and drink, hospitality and ultimately tourism should also be significant. I also can’t help but feel that a nation such as ours which is historically unhealthy and makes pitiful use of its abundant natural larder could be making more of our national delicacies, coveted as they are around the world yet often ignored here.

However, farmed salmon (and other seafood which is increasingly being farmed such as mussels) are not a magic bullet; there is no pink gold in them there waters.

Opponents point to degradation of wild salmon stocks by escaped fish, of environmental damage to the sea bed, and infection by parasites. Equally, as the Scottish ‘brand’ is delivered around the world on the font of salmon packets, critics would point to the wild sea-lochs of the west coast being blighted by the siting of the farms.

The point here is that government has to be careful to support and grow an industry without taking the ‘growth at all costs’ course that saw other industries implode. Marine Scotland, a new agency was launched in 2009 and is tasked with delivering ‘sustainable economic growth through clean, healthy, safe, productive, biologically diverse marine and coastal environments, managed to meet the long term needs of nature and people’.

Noble words, but consider that the FSA’s statutory objectives are listed as: ‘Promoting efficient orderly and fair markets; helping retail consumers achieve a fair deal; and improving our business capability and effectiveness’.

Scottish Government figures released in December last year showed that the aquaculture sector is continuing to grow in numbers and productivity, and the Scottish Government is also fairly satisfied that results from recent EU fisheries talks have had relatively positive outcomes.

But perhaps governments need to move away from encouraging growth for growth’s sake, and look at how to do things better and more sustainably, even if that equates to less rapid (but more sustainable) growth. We all have to resist the quick fix, and take a genuinely long term view of what could be a proud Scottish industry and a positive catalyst in so many different ways.

History has taught us a lesson about prestige industries and the hubris that can sneak-up on even the brightest and most well-intentioned minds. The responsibility of learning that lesson falls upon everyone involved in these industries.

Just think, would Mr Darling swap a good chunk of the tax revenues that were pouring in for most of the 2000s from record bank profits, for a viable and properly functioning banking sector now?