Commenting on the changes, Bertie Armstrong, chief executive of the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation said: “Michael Moore has fishing in his constituency and was a consistently good friend to the Scottish fishing industry. Whenever Cabinet level support was appropriate, he was invariably right there with us. We thank him for all his efforts on our behalf and we will be sad to see him go.
“Similarly, we will also greatly miss Richard Benyon, who has been an impressive fisheries minister. Under his watch we saw the UK corner fought well, including such solid practical outcomes as effort control being frozen and the entirely justified imposition of sanctions on the Faroes for their disregard of an international agreement.
“We welcome Alistair Carmichael as the new Secretary of State for Scotland, who also has a good knowledge of the fishing industry and with whom we already have a working relationship.
"We look forward to meeting the new UK Fisheries Minister George Eustice immediately and to work closely with him as the vitally important negotiating season for fishing opportunity and management for 2014 and beyond gets underway.”
