Scottish Affairs Committee
20 May 2026
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Scottish Affairs Committee House of Commons
00:01 - 00:57
Speaker 5
Morning, and welcome to this meeting of the Scottish Affairs Committee. Today, we're going to be looking at connectivity in Scotland's islands and particularly around the issue of fixed links. It's an issue that the committee is taking a great deal of interest in, and we have visited the Faroe Islands to see the tunnels that they have to give ourselves as as good as possible an idea of of what the options might be. So we're very much looking forward to today's session with you and for the visit we're going to make in early June. So thank you for coming along today, and we'll begin with a question from myself.
I think it's been said that the islands are perhaps not able to contribute as well as they would like to The UK's economic future. Can you explain why that is the case in the current setup?
00:59 - 02:09
Speaker 13
Yeah. I'm happy to take that one. I think the reality is it's just the difficulty of making the the connections between the islands. At the moment. The the ferries are very weather dependent, have reliability issues, and things like that.
And yet, we're dealing with industries in the island where where time really is important, and I'm thinking about things like the space port, a new entry into our local economy, but also the traditional industries as well because fishing and aquaculture depends on those really quick connections. And at the moment, some of the seafood we have has to take three ferries before it even reaches The UK Mainland. So those are all potential points for delay and and failure. And certainly in the North Isles and Yell and Ernst, we not only have the spaceport, but we have Culovo and Yell, which is a significant fishing port, and we also have a lot of aquaculture, both salmon farming and and mussel farming in the island too. And both of those are are really significant industries in in terms of the The UK economy.
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