'A friend to people across the sector'

Salmon Scotland chief executive Tavish Scott has praised the commitment and professionalism of Rural Affairs Secretary Mairi Gougeon, who is reported to be stepping down as an MSP at the 2026 Scottish Parliament election.

Gougeon’s ministerial portfolio includes aquaculture, and she has been supportive of the salmon sector since taking on the rural affairs job in 2021.

Scott said: “Scotland’s salmon sector wishes Mairi Gougeon all our best wishes for her future career. She has been a friend to people across the sector and has always made the positive case for salmon to Scotland.

“We have valued her commitment and professionalism and look forward to continuing to work with her during the remaining months in this parliamentary session.”

Dundee-based newspaper The Courier reported on its website last night that Angus North and Mearns MSP Gougeon wrote to local Scottish National Party members yesterday to confirm she would be standing down.

A step back

 “It has been the honour of my life to be elected to represent and serve the people of my home constituency of Angus North and Mearns as an SNP representative since 2016, and before that, as a councillor for Brechin and Edzell since 2007,” Gougeon wrote.

The 39-year-old added: “Come 2026, I will have been in an elected position for just about half of my life and the time has come for me to take a step back from frontline politics and pursue new opportunities.”

Gougeon’s tenure as the minister in charge of aquaculture has not been plain sailing.

Griggs report

One of her early initiatives was to commission an independent review of the aquaculture regulatory process by Professor Russel Griggs, who reported that “the degree of mistrust, dislike, and vitriol at both an institutional and personal level between the industry (mainly finfish), certain regulators, parts of the Scottish Government and other stakeholders is at a level that I have never seen before”.

Griggs, an experienced business, public and third sector regulatory expert, made a number of recommendations in February 2022 to make permitting simpler and quicker within a year, but progress has been slow and three years on little has changed.

HPMAs

In 2023, Gougeon has to tread a careful path between loyalty to the government and to many people she represented as Rural Affairs Secretary when Net Zero Secretary Màiri McAllan’s consultation on a proposal to exclude fishing and aquaculture from 10% of Scotland’s seas by creating Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs) sparked a furore.

Gougeon’s predecessor, Fergus Ewing, who had been relegated to the back benches by the SNP-Scottish Greens administration, tore up the consultation paper in a parliamentary debate and warned that a rebellion by SNP MPs would sink any move to impose the no-go areas. McAllan later scrapped the plan.

Gougeon appeared as a witness in an evidence session for an inquiry into salmon farming by the Scottish Parliament’s Rural Affairs Committee last year. The minister has also been a regular visitor to aquaculture events, opening Aquaculture UK in Aviemore, and attending both Seafood Expo Global in Barcelona, Aqua Sur in Chile, and Aqua Nor in Trondheim. During her trip to Norway she also visited Ocean Farm 1, the semi-offshore salmon farm operated by SalMar, co-owner of Scottish Sea Farms.

Sea lice framework

One controversial development that has occurred on Gougeon's watch has been the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) sea lice risk framework that imposes "standstill" lice limits on fish farms.

SEPA believes that changing the rules will better safeguard wild salmon smolts from lice from fish farms that they pass during their migration, but salmon farmers say  SEPA’s modelling massively overestimates the number of lice on farms and the threat to wild smolts.

They have now submitted site-by-site appeals against the changes, preventing them being imposed by SEPA until the appeals are decided.