Scotland Has the Evidence. Now Comes the Hard Part

Scotland voted on 7 May. The SNP returns to Holyrood as the largest party, but without a majority. For the coastal communities that depend on salmon farming, the real test is only beginning. The question is no longer what the science says about aquaculture, wild salmon, or the environment. The question is whether Scotland’s new government has the nerve to finally act on what it already knows.

A Fragmented Parliament Faces a Structural Test

The seventh general election to the Scottish Parliament was held on 7 May 2026, with counts held on Friday 8 May.

The SNP is the largest party in the Parliament, with Labour and Reform UK in joint second place, tied on 17 seats each. It is one of the most fragmented parliaments Holyrood has seen in years.

For a political party to secure a majority of seats at the Parliament, it must secure at least 65 seats. The SNP falls well short of that. Every major policy move will now require negotiation, compromise, or cross-party confidence to survive.

That political reality matters less for the direction of policy than for the ability to deliver it. Scotland’s environmental and rural governance agenda was legally locked in before the first ballot was cast.

Passed in January and granted Royal Assent on March 12, 2026, the Natural Environment (Scotland) Act 2026 establishes a statutory architecture that the next government, whatever its political composition, must now deliver. No credible political actor is proposing to dismantle it. What has changed is the climate in which it must function.

Here is what the Act actually changed for Scotland’s land and marine governance:

• Statutory biodiversity targets are now embedded in law for the first time
• Scottish Ministers now have powers to make regulations allowing National Park authorities to issue fixed penalty notices for offences under National Park bylaws.
• Part 3 of the Act expands the statutory grounds on which NatureScot may intervene in relation to deer management and establishes a clearer escalation pathway.
• The Act updates a number of criminal offences in relation to salmon and freshwater fishing and has amended a number of the penalties in the event of an offence being committed.
• The Act requires the Scottish Government to report on the effectiveness of penalties under the sea fisheries legislation within two years, with a power to amend penalties using secondary legislation following that review.

Decades of Science, Yet Outcomes Still Stall

Across aquaculture, wild salmon management, and rural land use, Scotland has spent decades building a detailed, peer-reviewed evidence base. The monitoring is mature. The data is thorough.

But evidence rarely leads quickly to outcomes. That is the problem Scotland must now face openly.

The public sector, particularly in regulatory domains, has evolved into a fragmented, expensive, and process-heavy system where delay becomes the rational institutional response.

SEPA is the lead regulator responsible for managing sea lice and wild salmon interactions and for managing sea lice and sea trout interactions. It operates in a high-scrutiny environment shaped by overlapping remits and constant legal challenge from multiple directions. When the cost of getting a decision wrong carries regulatory and reputational consequences, perpetual review starts to look like safety. Inertia becomes the system output, not the exception.

The result is a cycle of consultation and assurance that substitutes for confident decision-making. Parliament has struggled to confront this honestly. So too have the agencies charged with delivery.

One of the most striking political decisions during the passage of the Act was the removal of powers that would have allowed Ministers to modify the Environmental Impact Assessment and Habitats Regulations, after cross-party concern that such powers could weaken environmental protections. That cross-party instinct is important. It confirms that environmental protections are now treated as baseline expectations, not open political bargaining chips.

A Billion-Pound Sector That Cannot Wait

Scotland’s salmon farming industry is not a niche player. It is the economic backbone of some of the most remote and fragile communities in the country.

Those numbers represent real people. Hauliers, hatchery technicians, feed suppliers, and processing workers in places where few alternative industries could sustain this level of year-round employment.

Salmon accounts for 96 per cent of Scotland’s aquaculture value, while HMRC data confirms that Scottish salmon is the UK’s largest food export. Getting the regulatory environment wrong does not just affect corporate balance sheets. It affects whether families in coastal Scotland have stable, well-paid work.

New data released by Salmon Scotland shows survival rates reached 99.1 percent in March, the strongest performance for that month since farm-level reporting began in 2018, edging above the previous March record of 98.98 percent set in 2025. The sector attributes these gains to a sustained investment of more than £1 billion over the last eight years, targeting innovation in veterinary care, technology, and stock management.

Yet the sector itself must also adapt. Industry engagement has too often defaulted to defensive posture and technical argument. In a political environment where public trust matters as much as data, evidence alone is no longer enough to win the case for reform.

At present, the system is too slow, too complex, and too uncertain. Lengthy and fragmented consenting processes delay decisions and reduce confidence, meaning missed opportunities, reduced competitiveness, and slower economic progress.

What This Parliament Must Now Deliver

The defining challenge for the next five years is not about writing new legislation. The Natural Environment Act 2026 did the structural work. The challenge now is delivery.

In a minority government, that means building confidence across party lines rather than relying on single-party authority.

Several things must now align:

• Regulators held to account not just for compliance, but for proportionality and real-world outcomes
• Ministers given institutional support to confront accumulated process overload
• The aquaculture sector engaging earlier, acknowledging uncertainty, and framing growth in terms of ecosystem health and community benefit
• Cross-party agreement on what good regulatory performance actually looks like in practice
• Wild salmon recovery, nature restoration, and rural development treated as connected priorities, not competing ones

In total, Scottish salmon reached 45 countries in 2025, and the sector has a stated production target of 300,000 to 400,000 tonnes annually by 2030, which would require near doubling of current output and could mean 18,000 direct and indirect jobs. That ambition depends entirely on a regulatory framework that is predictable, proportionate, and prompt.

A fragmented parliament does not make reform impossible. It makes the quality of that reform more important than ever.

A minority government can be formed where the party is confident it can make alliances with other parties to pass budgets and legislation on a case-by-case basis, as the SNP has done before following the 2007 election. The political toolkit exists. The question is whether the will to use it on complex environmental and rural issues is there.

Anne Anderson, a former SEPA official and aquaculture sector executive who has been closely analysing this juncture, has argued that institutions must move from designing regulation for endurance to designing it for outcomes. That is the clearest way to frame what is at stake right now.

Scotland already has what it needs to move forward. The legislation is in place, the science is clear, and the communities waiting for progress are real. What happens in this new parliament will not just shape the future of salmon farming on Scotland’s coastlines. It will reveal whether Holyrood can finally match its ambition with the courage and consistency to act. That choice, more than any vote, is what will define this moment. Share your thoughts on what Scotland’s new government should prioritise for aquaculture and the environment in the comments below.