This has been a good and lively debate. Perhaps the one complaint is that my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) said that there were too many interventions from the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar—that is a scurrilous allegation!
First, I wish to put on the record my own pleas, just as many other Members have done. I represent a coastal community; indeed, it is one of the few constituencies—perhaps the only one—that reaches the 200-mile exclusive economic zone. Our current pleas are about tuna, dogfish and herring. We would like to have some tuna quota, as tuna are passing regularly through the Hebrides—about 200 miles west of the Hebrides, within the Hebrides to St Kilda area—as Angus Campbell of Kilda Cruises sees frequently when he goes out there. That call is backed by the Western Isles Fishermen’s Association secretary Duncan MacInnes, with that organisation of course being the biggest fishermen’s association in Scotland.
The second area where we need support and help is on dogfish. We need a by-catch allocation, because friends I went to school with have been in the unfortunate situation of having to dump perfectly good dogfish. I worked as a fisherman on two separate occasions, and on one of those, more than 20 years ago, we were specifically targeting dogfish. That was of course ended because of the unsustainability of that fishery, but again dogfish are coming back and it is a shame to catch these fish, which are later marketed as rock salmon, only to dump them over the side and not use them. Of course we also need to do something about herring, my third point, because herring are appearing on the west coast in great numbers and are being caught as by-catch, but there is no quota allocation and so again they are being dumped. I hope that the Minister was listening to those three points.