Green MSP insists the Bute House power-sharing with the SNP is 'totally intact'

Ariane Burgess defends agreement after HPMAs were dropped by the Scottish Government

Scottish Greens co-leaders Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater with former first minister Nicola Sturgeon after signing the Bute House Agreement. Image: Lisa Ferguson.

A Green MSP has insisted the party’s power-sharing agreement with the SNP is “totally intact”, despite a number of key Green policies being dropped or blocked.

Last week the SNP’s Net Zero Secretary Mairi McAllan announced the Scottish Government is ditching its plans to create highly-protected marine areas (HPMAs) after backlash from coastal and island communities.

HPMAs were part of the Bute House Agreement, which brought the Scottish Greens into government for the very first time.

Ariane Burgess MSP.

Despite this setback Ariane Burgess, Green MSP for the Highlands and Islands, has defended the agreement, saying her party and the SNP are committed to working together on marine protection.

Speaking on The Sunday Show, Ms Burgess said: “The agreement is totally intact.

“We are constantly in conversation with our colleagues in the SNP and I am confident that the marine protections we are both committed to bringing in will come forward.

“What we are doing is taking the conversation to the communities and designing something together to ensure we have long-term fishing.”

The proposals agreed upon between the Greens and the SNP saw Scottish ministers agreeing to have 10 per cent of Scotland’s seas classed as HPMAs by 2026.

Fishing, renewable energy schemes and some watersports such as wild swimming and windsurfing would all be banned within HPMAs.

The proposals were widely criticised, including from some backbench SNP MSPs - rebel backbencher Fergus Ewing even dramatically ripped up a copy of the consultation document during a debate on this in Holyrood.

This is just the latest in a number of key Green policies included in the Bute House Agreement to be thrown out or blocked.

Last month proposals for a deposit return scheme were postponed after the UK Government said Scotland’s scheme could not include glass.

And the UK Government also blocked the Scottish Government’s gender reforms, despite a majority of MSPs agreeing to the proposals.

Following Ms Burgess’s comments, Rachael Hamilton, rural affairs spokeswoman for the Scottish Conservatives, says she fears the SNP and the Greens “remain committed” to causing “untold damage to our fishing communities”.

She said: “Ariane Burgess has confirmed what I and Scotland’s fishing communities had feared - that the coalition’s plans for HPMAs have not been ditched - just delayed pending a cosmetic rebrand.

“The Greens made HPMAs a red line in their Bute House Agreement with the SNP, so there’s no way they were ever going to allow them to be dropped.

“It’s obvious from their endorsement of Mairi McAllan’s statement last Thursday, that the policy is merely being delayed in a bid to placate rebel SNP backbenchers, and will be reintroduced in another guise.”

She added: “Humza Yousaf has been in thrall to the extremist Greens ever since becoming First Minister.

“The upshot of that is a nationalist coalition that doesn’t understand or care about rural and coastal communities - as the ferries scandal, failure to dual key trunk roads and these planned fishing curbs demonstrate.”