Scottish Fisheries Minister Richard Lochhead should be able to attend vital EU talks in future, Alex Salmond announced at the weekend.
The First Minister said new Scottish Secretary Danny Alexander had given him assurances that a Whitehall ban on an SNP minister attending European Fisheries
Council meetings will be overturned.
Mr Salmond was speaking in the wake of a row that erupted earlier this month after the previous UK Government sent Lord Davies, a junior minister in the UK Department for the Environment, to a meeting in Vigo, Spain to discuss reforms of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) rather than Mr Lochead.
Mr Lochhead had be due to represent the UK at an earlier Fisheries Council meeting in Brussels which was called off when European airspace was closed due to Iceland’s volcanic ash.
Mr Salmond said the decision to bar Mr Lochhead MSP for Moray, was almost unbelievable and accused Whitehall of acting arrogantly.
However, he said the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat UK Government appeared to share his belief that a Scottish Government minister should attend meetings when a UK Government minister is available.
Mr Salmond, who has lodged a complaint with the joint ministerial committee which is designed to resolve disputes raised by the UK’s devolved governments, said “I am given to believe that this not an issue that will be repeated.It should not have happened”.
Earlier this month, Aberdeen North Labour MP Frank Doran defended the decision to send Lord Davies to the meeting in stead of Mr Lochhead.
Mr Doran argued that, on the basis international aspects of fisheries policy is reserved to Westminster, a UK minister should be sent in circumstances where these is no agreed policy between the various governments.
