ALISTER Jack has admitted that “not everything has been smooth” as Scotland deals with the impacts of leaving the European Union.

The UK's Scotland Secretary was speaking to the Scottish Tory conference earlier today where he talked up the benefits of Brexit following the release of figures that show a dramatic drop in Scots food and drink exports to the EU.

Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed Scots exports to the EU in January 2021 were down 63% on the previous year, while Scotland’s largest food export category, fish and shellfish, dropped dramatically by 83%.

ONS data also showed that UK exports as a whole dropped 41% in January, compared to December 2020, when the UK was still part of the world's largest trading bloc. Imports dropped by 29%.

READ MORE: New figures reveal Brexit's 'grim' damage to Scotland's food and drink sector

In his conference speech, Jack, the MP for Dumfries and Galloway, said: "An undertaking on this scale was always going to have snags and the seafood industry has suffered.

"We addressed that with a £23 million support fund and a dedicated taskforce to untangle the knots of EU red tape.

"Meanwhile, a further £100m has been earmarked for the seafood sector to help it maximise the opportunities now we are free of the dead hand of the Common Fisheries Policy.

"Food and drink producers and our agriculture sector are also poised to take advantage of opportunities on new horizons."

However, this blue-sky thinking by the Tory MP has previously been dismissed by Scotland Food and Drink's chief executive, James Withers (below), who said earlier this week that post-Brexit trade barriers are "real and costly".

The National: James Withers, chief executive, Scotland Food & Drink

In response to the ONS data release for Scotland's exports, Withers said: “The financial damage to our seafood industry is particularly stark. A fall of over 80% in what is the UK’s biggest food export has brought a crisis to a sector reeling from the worst trading year in memory. You can’t stockpile fresh fish and shellfish, so that has not been a factor at all in these figures.”

He added: "The so-called teething problems still with us and have cost the industry tens of millions so far.

"This has to act as a catalyst to open negotiations with the EU to recognise aligned food standards and reduce the red tape burden. Without that, these trade figures will never recover to anything like the levels before.”

Throughout his speech, Jack took aim at the SNP and focused on a "claim" by the party's Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, that indyref2 could be delivered this year. 

Jack left out that Blackford also said the Scottish Government's first priority was the coronavirus pandemic.

Jack said: "It is chilling that with the monumental task of recuperating from a pandemic still ahead, supposedly serious politicians can spend even a moment contemplating the reckless folly of another referendum."

READ MORE: Boris Johnson says only Tories can stop SNP majority and indyref2 amid Labour attack

In response to claims the SNP are prioritising a referendum over the Covid crisis, Scotland's Constitution Secretary Michael Russell MSP said: “No one is proposing holding an independence referendum now, but if the people back a post-pandemic referendum in the coming election then democracy must prevail."

Russell challenged Prime Minister Boris Johnson to make his position "crystal clear" on whether Scotland has the democratic right to choose independence in a "post-pandemic referendum" should the SNP deliver a pro-independence majority in May's Holyrood election.