A political feast

Richard Lochhead admits he is “spoiled”.
His job might well be as tough as any other government minister, but no matter how stressful it gets or the long hours it might entail, the chances are there is some pretty good food and drink at the end of it.
Since 2007, as Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment, one key element of his job has been almost an ambassadorial role highlighting the benefits of ‘Scotland’s larder’.
It is the reason why a conversation with him is peppered with references to people like Andrew Fairlie, the chef whose 2-Michelin-starred restaurant at Gleneagles has been rated the best in the UK, as well as mention of a mouthwatering array of produce from every corner of Scotland from oatcakes to craft beer.
While Lochhead insists he is equally passionate about all areas of his portfolio, which includes farming and fishing, the growth of food and drink has been, in his words, phenomenal and he says we are still only scratching the surface.
His constituency is in Moray, an SNP stronghold that was the former seat of the late Margaret Ewing and the Westminster seat was held by her mother-in-law, Winnie Ewing in the 1970s, and it seems the ideal place to speak to him about food and drink as he says the area is a “microcosm” for Scotland’s food and drink industry.
The drive to Lossiemouth, near where he lives, takes you past a host of Speyside distilleries as well as Walker’s Oatcakes. The area is quintessentially rural Scotland which is the backbone of the industry. Yet growing up in Clarkston on the south side of Glasgow, Lochhead says he was as ignorant as anybody else about what Scotland had to offer.
“I was brought up on a very traditional Glasgow diet,” he says. “On the good side, my mum would make homemade mince and tatties, stews and soups, but my diet other than that was pretty appalling – a typical young central Scotland guy.
“Only when I was out and about in Scotland did my horizons open up to the food we have in this country.”
Exports of food have grown 50 per cent since 2007 and are worth more than £14bn and Lochhead says he is “bowled over” by the opportunities still on offer. While whisky is still the dominating force – and, he says, has room to grow further – there are other areas which can be exploited.
“When the world thinks of Scotland a few years down the line, I hope they think of food and drink. People generally think of France and Italy in terms of fantastic food – increasingly, they think of Scotland.”
But he says: “I want the next generation of people around the world to think Scotland, France, Italy when it comes to food. I think we’ve got that potential.”
While the sector’s growth has been welcomed, one criticism of it is that many of the most successful aspects are owned from outside of Scotland. Drinks giants Diageo and Pernod Ricard, for example, both own some of the better known whisky distilleries and much of the Scottish salmon industry has Norwegian owners.
Lochhead admits it is a challenge to encourage more home-owned companies into the sector – but adds that unlike other sectors, foreign owners cannot simply up sticks and move their business abroad.
“You can’t build a company and then move it overseas because the brand is here. You can’t make Scotch whisky anywhere else, so at least we have that security.”
In addition to the inward investment that is seeing two new distilleries built in Moray alone, including the new Macallan premises, Lochhead says there are more Scottish-owned companies which have appeared, he says he hopes they will be the “multinationals of the future”.
But Lochhead adds there is still a huge mountain to climb to change Scotland’s food culture, enabling more people – not just the foodies – to enjoy what’s on offer.
Food charters were drawn up for both the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and the Ryder Cup in Gleneagles, putting issues like sustainability and provenance at the top of the agenda. Lochhead wants to see them not just rolled out to all other outside events, but also across Scotland – similar to how cities, towns and villages can apply to become ‘fair trade’.
He tells a story of a group of women from Troon who came up to speak to him at the Ryder Cup while he was at the Scotland Food and Drink stall, telling him the food they had eaten was the best they had ever had.
The idea of a government minister manning a food stall, listening to a group “raving about their lunch” is perhaps surprising, but it fits in with Lochhead’s manner as an ambassador, not just as a politician.
When he pulls up to the café restaurant in Lossie harbour, he is full of enthusiasm for the area and keen to show it off to the journalist and photographer who have come up for the day from Edinburgh – pointing out where to get the best ice cream, giving the back story on the owners of the Harbour Lights where we’ve booked a table and after the interview is finished, giving us a tour of the harbour to show that what was once teeming with fishing boats is now a marina full of pleasure craft.
He says: “There’s a buzz about food and drink.  People feel excited about it and optimistic and people in Scotland feel proud about it.
“I go into communities across Scotland and see initiatives where quite often it’s about getting nutritional affordable food to families and people on low incomes. I want to harness all the people who are out there beavering away in their communities and I want to have that replicated across every community in Scotland.” 
Food and drink is not just about the end product, though, and Lochhead says he wants policy to recognise the importance of being able to be self-sufficient and not rely on imports.
It means representing the interest of farmers and the fishing industry, without whom there would be no products but it also means protecting the natural environment.
The week before the interview with Holyrood, he had representatives of the National Farmers’ Union who have objected to ‘greening’ measures in the Common Agricultural Policy, designed to mitigate the impact of industrial agriculture and ensure food production can be sustainable.
Lochhead insists he does not want to become “bogged down” in a debate with environmentalists on one side and farmers on the other.
“A lot of my job quite often is about trying to build bridges. I don’t want it to be landlords versus tenants or fishermen or farmers versus environmentalists. We’ve done a lot of good work over the years to share these agendas.”
He says he was “dumbstruck” when he first came into office when he was told people never sat round the same table together, either from different sectors, or from within the same sector – such as processors and fishermen. 
“The last few years we’ve had the WWF and RSPB sitting down with the fishermen, 10 years ago, that didn’t seem possible.
“You can replicate that story across different sectors.”
This working together ethic is, he believes, one of the reasons for the step change in the way the sector is viewed.
“There’s an opportunity for food to learn from whisky, so the industry has been working closely with the food sector to pass on experience of how to get into international markets.
“We have had different parts of the food industry ploughing their own furrow and I’ve been very keen to say ‘no, no’ this is a big picture thing for Scotland – we can all sit down and do this together.”
Small producers have started branching out seeing the opportunities of taking their wares to wider markets, Fyne Ales, for example, a small craft brewery on the banks of Loch Fyne, Argyll, has started selling not just in some UK supermarkets, but has distributed bottles in the US.
Lochhead praises the companies that are trying to branch out: “It quite often can take a lot of guts to get into new markets because if you’re just supplying local shops or in the case of a craft brewery, local hotels and pubs, it takes a lot of guts to step up into overseas markets given all the organisations required for that. That is why a lot of effort has been put into supporting these companies to do that.
“You get a lot more support now to hold people’s hands to go into these markets, SDI is probably the most popular export agency, definitely in the UK, but probably beyond that. We’ve put a lot of effort into that.”
But more than that, he wants people in the industry to think about “the whole story” not just farmers simply ending their involvement when the cattle leave the farm for the abbatoir or the fishermen land their catch at the quayside.
He wants farmers and fishermen to consider themselves as food producers too.
“Slowly but surely that is changing and you have many farmers, for example, diversifying having farm shops, taking their own stalls at farmers’ markets, or we had the food village at the Commonwealth Games at Glasgow Green which was hugely successful, real farmers with their own meat that they had reared, selling their burgers which went down a storm with punters.”
He adds it can give other suppliers and not just supermarkets a degree of market power. “More and more farmers are looking into the retail side of things and I think that’s fantastic. Also, it means they can diversify their customers so it’s not just the supermarkets that hold a lot of power. They are going direct to customers and they are selling a premium product and getting a good price for it. If I were a farmer, I would not be supplying to just supermarkets via the processor, I would diversify in my outlets.”
Lochhead was recently described in a Sunday newspaper as being one of the SNP’s ‘old guard’.
While at 45, he hadn’t quite considered himself a veteran yet, it is now 30 years since he joined the party, signed up by a Church of Scotland minister who also happened to be a nationalist and would drive him and his friends to the local branch meetings.
Now as one of the founding members of the Scottish Parliament and longest-serving ministers, he is a well-established member of the party.
In his early days in the party, membership was so low that he says “you went to an SNP branch meeting and you left as a senior office bearer” and in 1988, he left work at the electricity board in Cathcart early every night to work on Jim Sillars’ successful by-election to Westminster.
However, the political turning point came when he worked for Alex Salmond, then MP for Banff and Buchan, initially while on a year’s break from university and then returning in the summer and Christmas holidays.
He still refers to Salmond as his “mentor” and said he represented the image that the SNP needed to get elected, making the party more professional in its appearance and giving it a clear political agenda and manifesto.
“I loved that,” he says. “I thought this is exactly what we should be like.” 
The ‘old guard’ comment does not completely seem out of place – as Lochhead is of the same political generation as many others who are now senior figures in the party and prominent within the Scottish Government, including the cabinet secretaries Shona Robison, Fiona Hyslop and Nicola Sturgeon.
Three decades on, the party has seen a meteoric rise in its fortunes, from minority government, a landslide election victory in 2011 and then the referendum last month, which would have been the culmination of what they had been campaigning for.
Lochhead says he was absolutely devastated to have come so close to a cause he had dedicated his life to for 30 years.
He admits there was an “emotional numbness” for the 24-hours after the result and trying to come to terms with it.
“There were tears, then before you know it, you’re watching live on the web the press conference with Alex Salmond announcing his intention to resign as party leader. That’s a lot to take in in a 24-hour period of your life.”
Few people were told that Salmond would be announcing his resignation, and Lochhead did not know he would be going, but said: “All these thoughts go through your head, you’d be lying to say they don’t. What it all means for Scotland, for the people you work with, for the movement, for the SNP – your own future.”
But, he says the initial despondency of not winning soon gave way to a greater optimism. “Often, you have to pinch yourself to think – this is the big vote – this has actually been achieved.”
This has clearly been helped by the startling rise in membership of the SNP – and other parties like the Greens who had backed a Yes vote.
“The campaign was amazing. It was electrifying, the number of people who came out to help the Yes movement and it involved people from all walks of life, people who had never delivered one leaflet before or got involved in a campaign of any kind.
“Politicians just became bit players. I was heavily involved in the campaign here in Moray and across rural Scotland, but just to watch this grassroots revolution in democracy taking place was so humbling. I don’t think any of us in active politics ever thought we’d see anything like this our whole lives. But we did see it and experienced it.”
He adds: “Even the atmosphere in the parliament, you would have thought that it was the SNP that got the best result because the optimism and cheeriness among the SNP group compared to other parties is stark.”
Lochhead said the challenge for those behind the Yes campaign now is keeping people engaged after the experience of the referendum.
“We’re all very proud of the campaign that was run. We feel we won the argument, to a great extent, but of course, the campaign was much more than just about arguments and we can see the momentum at grassroots level going nowhere,” he says.
“Now that’s turned to making sure that the Westminster parties who came up with a last-minute vow are held to account and there’s such determination. I’m constantly being contacted by people here in Moray wanting the campaign to continue, wanting to hold these people to account and wanting to stay involved in the campaign over Scotland’s future – even if it takes a few more years to get to our ultimate goal, they are fired up.
“I went to a branch meeting in Forres, the last meeting had five people at it, 70 were at the meeting on Monday. The calibre of people was outstanding, all wanting to be involved, all wanting to play a part and being realistic about timescales. Saying this may not be something that is going to be secured in the next few months or the next couple of years, we know that, we’ve just had the referendum. 
“In terms of getting more change for Scotland and in terms of the long-term goal of independence, people want to be part of that.”
The final vote was 45 to 55, a 10-point gap, but Lochhead says he felt there were several points in the campaign when Yes was ahead.
Even though he admits as polling day grew closer “things were hardening”, they still believed a Yes vote was possible.
Election campaigns can be full of promises from both sides, but often politicians have their most candid moments when the votes are in – as there is no hiding from the results.
Lochhead says: “Everything was thrown at us in the last week … what’s the word I’m looking for … the scale of what was thrown at us, you just felt helpless in terms of how you could hit back and  that’s where the No campaign succeeded. 
“The huge armoury that was brought in with the scaremongering and the fear stories in the last week of the campaign – then added to that was ‘the vow’. People who were perhaps going to vote Yes but were looking for an excuse perhaps not to, then they were given the reason of the vow because they wanted more powers to the parliament. Taking into account all the scare stories, perhaps it was the safest option to get more powers and vote No. That clearly affected some people.”
As the result is dissected, is there anything the Yes campaign could have done better? Lochhead doesn’t believe so. “A big part of me says look what we were up against and look what was thrown at us and despite all of that, despite being told a Yes vote would lead to world depression, would lead to our banks leaving Scotland, prices going up for food – being deported if you’re from Eastern Europe, as people were being told by the No campaign. Every horror story, despite all of that – 45 per cent of the population with an 85 per-cent turnout voted Yes.
“That’s amazing and the days that have gone by have put that into perspective.”
I ask him if there is any lasting bitterness caused by the campaign, particularly with the claims that No campaigners had simply resorted to scare stories.
He says: “I don’t want to be bitter, I am proud that my contribution to Scotland and public life and being represented is positive in offering hope and optimism and trying to always come up with ways of making things better and ideas for the future.”
He adds: “I am disappointed that there are other people in public life who no doubt feel equally as strong about their own beliefs, but indulged in such negative campaigning. I think one day they will look back and think they’re not very proud of the campaign they ran.”
This, he says, does not reflect on the 55 per cent who voted No, and acknowledges they had their own reasons and believed now was “not the right time” for independence.
“I fully respect that, that’s democracy and that’s the fun part of politics, isn’t it? We all have different views and argue about who’s right and who’s wrong and what’s the best way forward.”
Now the party, bolstered by its huge rise in leadership, is preparing for another annual conference and rather than a victory march, it is likely to be a coronation, with Nicola Sturgeon standing unopposed as the new leader of the party.
Lochhead, who says he has known Nicola “all through her different hairstyles”, says he is privileged to be in the same political generation as her and quite simply, “there is no other candidate for the post”.
“I’m a huge fan of Nicola Sturgeon,” he says. “I don’t think you can have anything but admiration and respect for her contribution, particularly since being appointed Deputy First Minister and of course, throughout the whole of the referendum campaign she was outstanding.
“Given that many political parties are struggling to find a credible candidate for First Minister in the eyes of the public, the SNP is lucky enough to have two leading candidates in terms of the existing First Minster and the deputy. We’re in a very privileged position to have so much talent in our party.”
He adds: “I think one thing for certain is the party is going to be different under Nicola Sturgeon, Alex is such a huge dominant personality and there’s no escaping that. He has been leader of the SNP for most of the last 25 years. Many of us have matured and developed in terms of our involvement alongside him. He’s been my mentor, I think Nicola Sturgeon has said the same thing. There is a sense of the unknown but there’s also a sense of opportunity.”
Alongside the leadership there is another contest, though, as Transport Minister Keith Brown, Training Youth and Women’s Employment Secretary Angela Constance and Stewart Hosie, the SNP’s finance spokesman in Westminster, Stewart Hosie, are all standing for deputy leader.
He is characteristically diplomatic about all three candidates and points out that rather than being some bitter and negative contest, as some can be, all three have gone out of their way to praise their opponents. He says he is a fan of all three and they will all bring different qualities as deputy leader and potentially, FM.
But as one of the ‘old guard’, would Lochhead have considered standing for the role?
He says it was considered, and members of the party, both from Moray and elsewhere in Scotland, had suggested he put his name forward.
But he adds: “I know what the job involves; I feel I’ve got enough on my plate at the moment. I’m three and a half hours away from where I think a lot of the demand would be in terms of some of the jobs that would have to be done. 
“So maybe one day but I don’t think the time is right for me.”