It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara) for initiating this important debate today.
Whisky is Scotland’s gift to the world, a gift that brings enormous benefit to the Exchequer. It has a substantial impact on our trade statistics and generates substantial employment in Scotland. The success of the
whisky industry is rooted in rural Scotland, where the addition of well-paid employment puts substantial income into many local economies.
There has been a renaissance in Scotch whisky with so many iconic brands being marketed and sold throughout the world. Its brand identity is unparalleled and has been hard won, although it needs to be protected and invested in. There is a competitive threat from other products, but none have the right to call their product Scotch whisky. The rich diversity of successful Scotch whisky global brands has helped to create the circumstances for an explosion of investment in new distilleries, often small community-based operations that add to the rich tapestry of unique product offerings and the breadth of those offerings to the discerning palate. Each whisky is unique and is shaped by the environment and character of each distillery with the barley, the local source of water and the peculiarities of the still among other things affecting the character of each whisky.
We have several distilleries in my constituency, including some in the planning and development phase. In Skye, we have the iconic Talisker whisky, which was the favourite of writer Robert Louis Stevenson. In his poem, “The Scotsman’s Return from Abroad”, he said:
“The king o’ drinks, as I conceive it, Talisker, Islay, or Glenlivet.”