Brian Wilson has considerable knowledge of the fishing industry in the isles (“Highly Protected Marine Areas are draconian child of SNP-Green love-in”, April 18). His call for devolving control of fishing regulations to regional or local level has merit, especially if it ended the practice of trading fishing licences.

However, the scrapping of the three-mile limit in 1984 by the UK government, which had banned bottom trawling within three miles of the coast, combined with the adoption of the Newhaven scallop dredging rig, collapsed numbers and average size of both marine fish species and migratory sea trout and salmon by the 1990s. They’ve never recovered; sea trout and salmon also being hit by sea lice from fish farms where farmed salmon suffer overcrowding, sea lice infestations and chemicals used to kill them. Wild wrasse, which eat the lice, are often caught by the thousands, put in the farms to clean the salmon, then all killed rather than released when the salmon are harvested.

Rod fishing for wild salmon and sea trout also makes up a significant part of tourism in Scotland. Tourism makes up 5% of Scottish GDP. The fishing industry, though important to employment in some places, just 0.22%. Not all tourists come to fish, but many do.

Fish can’t evolve at the rate sonar or trawlers can. If we want to preserve fish species and the otters, seals, dolphins and sea birds which rely on them, and have a viable fishing industry in the long run, the scale of commercial fishing must be limited, along with the methods used. A new three-mile limit on trawling combined with inshore conservation areas like those the Scottish government propose will be vital to allow fish to breed and grow, including the sandeels most other species rely on. Mr Wilson is right to say these don’t need to be blanket bans though. Exemptions could be made for local, small scale fishermen using approved methods, such as creel fishing for lobsters.

Duncan McFarlane, Carluke

We are a generation away from independence

The woeful state of Scottish politics has put the independence cause back decades. We are not positioned as a burgeoning state ready to face the world, but a deeply immature democracy, unable yet to manage our own devolved affairs competently.

The Salmond affair was a sign that our political culture was seriously malformed. Now it becomes clear in the wake of the Sturgeon/Murrell debacle, that the Scottish Parliament is not yet able to hold its executive arm to any meaningful account. It also has yet to develop adequate mechanisms with which to prevent proportional representation lapsing into rule by unrepresentative fringe parties.

With a culture war between progressives and traditionalists raging in the background, we have a political elite who are so detached from the realities of competent economic management that they can't deliver a bottle-return scheme, or a boat. Yet, they seriously want us to trust them to deliver a whole new nation-state.

In my judgement, we are a generation away from being ready to take up the challenge of nationhood, which incidentally is the decent interval between constitutional referenda anyway.

G Matthews, Perth

The case against a light touch in politics

On the UK political spectrum, one end of that spectrum idolises light touch regulation. It is already floating the suggestion that the best way to fast-track AI development is to use light-touch regulation while the EU is adopting a more cautious approach.

Light-touch regulation involves the relaxation of regulations to cut corners by lowering safety standards while nursing the hope that disaster will not be in the offing while profits pour in to get ahead of one's commercial rivals .

However, the mention of yet another employment of light-touch regulation should be enough to send a shiver through anyone with a memory that does not exist within the bubble that a week is a long time in politics.

Who has not been appalled by the discharge of raw sewage into our rivers on so many occasions? The shameful tragedy of Grenfell still stands starkly before our eyes. At the apex of such consequences of light-touch regulation was the global banking collapse of 2008,which brought misery to so many .

You would have thought those would be lessons enough to make light-touch regulation a no-go area. in any field of human endeavour.

And yet there are those so thirled to an ideology which puts profits before people that light-touch regulation will always be their first port of call.

Denis Bruce, Bishopbriggs

Scotland is crying out for a fresh start

Humza Yousaf delivered his vision for Scotland lacking in any fresh ideas that might inspire an insipid economy and an electorate waiting for the next SNP arrest. What we got was the same as usual. Progressive taxation translating into higher taxes that would impact what is already a fragile economy and people’s pockets. Surely inappropriate tax rises at this time?

Scotland is crying out for a fresh start and any political party that can offer a positive vision delivered through enterprising policy initiatives will be the beneficiary. Humza Yousaf singularly failed in his “offer” to the electorate.

Richard Allison, Edinburgh

What the numbers say on poverty

You'd expect, from the logic of Dr Gerald Edwards (April 19), that the lower taxed areas of the UK, outside Scotland, would have lower levels of poverty.

A quick check showed that child poverty in Scotland is 4.63%, while in the rest of the UK it is 6.41%. It would seem that his skills in numeracy might be even worse than the SNP

Iain Cope , Glasgow

Is this stability I see before me?

“Stands Scotland where it did?” Thus runs the well-known question asked by Macduff in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The answer at the present moment has to be – Well, not exactly. The much admired Nicola Sturgeon is no longer First Minister and her party seems to be in considerable disarray.

No doubt we will in due course be hearing more from the authorities about ongoing enquiries. However, there will be widespread disappointment that Nicola’s departure has not been as smooth as she and others might have expected.

Those of us who are proud Scots, albeit ‘in partibus alienis’, will hope that political stability and palpable probity can soon return to our native land.

Andrew McLuskey, Ashford, Middlesex

Time to let the others have a go

So, we’re not doing the bottle return, we’re not doing the National Care Service, we’re not doing the bill to prohibit drinks marketing, we’re not doing the GRR bill, we’re not getting the ferries, we’re not closing the poverty related attainment gap, we’re not doing the Named Person, we’re not catching up with delayed health interventions…what are we doing? Oh yes, we are hammering the incomes of the so-called middle and upper earners so that we can continue with our irresponsible vanity projects but keep passing the buck for all failures to Westminster.

Can we please have a professional group of politicians running Scotland? Time for Scottish Conservatives and Unionists to move into the centre seats at Holyrood (the others have had a go and we’re getting nowhere).

L Vint, Ayrshire

The puzzle of government finance

The SNP should face questions over party finance, but, more importantly, they should also face questions over Scottish government finance. They have been spending taxpayers’ money like confetti. The UK government allocated £15.5bn to the Scottish government to help recover from the coronovirus crisis. SNP ministers spent £11bn on 300 Covid-related projects in 2020 and 2021.

Audit Scotland have been concerned that not all of this expenditure can be identified. They said that "it was hard to see how some financial decisions had been reached" and urged the SNP government to "improve the transparency of public finances". Alas the SNP government seem more concerned with transgenderism than transparency.

William Loneskie, Lauder

Quality of the questions must improve

Among the yardsticks with which the decline of the UK can be measured, is the quality of Prime Minister’s question time. This has gone from serious and often witty repartee to playground jibes and cheap personal attacks. The Speaker seems unable or unwilling to bring the “combatants” back to their proper function in the State legislature.

This is also true of Holyrood where questions and answers are far too long and scattergun politicking. The Presiding Officer should inform the party leaders that normal questions/answers will be time limited (30 seconds at most): otherwise their mikes will be switched off. There will be times where serious issues take longer, but it will be obvious when that happens.

GR Weir, Ochiltree