“I made a promise I would raise my voice as loudly as I can for fishing,” says Scottish Conservatives’ shadow cabinet secretary for rural affairs, land reform and fishing
© GB News 2025
The subject of fishing has once again been rising up the agenda, thanks to the work of the UK Fisheries Campaign (UKFC). In this, we have been helped by members of the UKFC Political Advisory Board. Not only do these politicians command a public profile, they are also able to help us with the background political work to ensure that the views of UK fishermen form the framework for the negotiations about to start for a new UK-EU fishing agreement.
GB News had already started covering some of our ‘soft-launch’ activities and on Thursday 17 April, GBN’s Martin Daubney interviewed a member of our Political Advisory Group, Tim Eagle, a Scottish MSP who has backed the UK Fisheries Campaign from the beginning.
As with all politicians who are helping us, Tim is doing so on trust that the policies of the UKFC will be reasonable and – very importantly – that these will not come down to tribal loyalties between parties. We are pleased that the non-partisan nature of the UKFC is being adopted in the same spirit by those who are advising us politically.
Here is the interview with Tim Eagle MSP
The TV interview is followed by the transcript, for those who are not in an environment where they can watch and listen to the video.
With thanks to GB News
Transcript
Martin Daubney: “Now we can now cross to Tim Eagle. He’s the Conservative MSP and the shadow cabinet secretary for rural affairs, land reform and fishing. Mr Eagle welcome to GB News. So the UK Fisheries Campaign launches today. Tell us why fishing is back in the news and tell us what you hope to achieve with this campaign?”
Tim Eagle MSP: “Well thank you for the opportunity to do so. I think it’s absolutely amazing we’re talking about fish. We need to talk about it. I’m up here on the northeast coast of Scotland. We’ve got Peterhead, Fraserburgh, Scrabster and Shetland which I think Ryan is from himself. Fish is really important to us up in the northeast – a massive part of our economy – and it should be a massive part of the UK economy but we haven’t been talking about it enough.
“Labour have let some signals out that concern us greatly because we thought we were moving towards a better approach, a better time for UK fishing, but actually now it looks like France is sending signals suggesting that they’ll only do a deal if they get more of our waters. I don’t want to see that and I made a promise to many friends of mine along this northeast coast that if I became an MSP, which I did, I would raise my voice as loudly as I can for the fishing. So I’m hoping that the louder we can raise this and thanks to people like yourselves and GB News we can make sure this is high on the agenda.”
Martin Daubney: “Okay Tim Eagle I’m also joined by Chris Hope, GB News political editor. He’s got a question for you.”
Chris Hope: “Okay, hi Tim. You know we’re looking now into of course this summit between Sir Keir Starmer and Ursula von der Leyen on May the 19th – a month away – in London.
Now we want to do a deal on security and defence but there’s talk already this week that any deal is to be tied to a deal of access to our fishing waters. Do you think keeping us safe is worth trading away fishing quotas?”
Tim Eagle MSP: “Well I just don’t think it should come down to that. I think we’ve seen this before that the EU value the fishing and what we’ve got in our North Sea now. I don’t think even the new campaign that started is saying we should kick out all of our EU boats but we need to make sure that our industry is protected. We’re suffering from spatial squeeze up here in the Northeast. We know that quotas aren’t as much as we want them to be so I just don’t think that that should be the binary choice it comes down to.
“We can have access to our waters. We can encourage more of our fishermen to come into the industry, keep young people up in the area, and also we can have deals that hopefully protect our security moving forward which I accept is very important in this day and age.”
Martin Daubney: “Okay gentlemen, thank you very very much for joining us today. That’s the launch of the UK Fisheries Campaign. You can get involved by going to UKFish.org. Thank you gentlemen for your time. Tim Eagle MSP and the fisherman Ryan Mouat, thank you very very much for joining us.
Martin Daubney: “Now in response to the campaign launch a government spokesperson told GB News this. It said: ‘The government will always act in the national interest while protecting our fishing communities and fulfilling our international commitments to protect the marine environment and we are not providing a running commentary on ongoing talks with the European Union.’”
OBSERVATIONS
We are fortunate in having secured the support and backing of some important politicians with a knowledge of and interest in fishing. For the UK Fisheries Campaign to be successful, it is essential that we have this support.
Tim Eagle is the Member of the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood representing the Highlands and Islands Region. He is also the Conservatives’ Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Land Reform and Fishing. A farmer and family man with two young children, Tim has been actively involved in supporting Scottish fishermen and has thrown his support behind the UK Fisheries Campaign for the whole nation.
The team at the UK Fisheries Campaign is grateful to Mr Eagle for his advice and equally for his unstinting and cheerful support and encouragement.
More about Tim Eagle
Party website : https://www.scottishconservatives.com/people/tim-eagle-msp/
Constituency website : https://www.timeagle.org.uk/