Written Statements

Wednesday 11th December 2024 Written Statements

Wednesday 11 December 2024

Fishing Opportunities: 2025

Wednesday 11th December 2024 Written Statements

[The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Daniel Zeichner)]

The UK has reached agreement with the EU and Norway on catch opportunities for 2025 through the UK-EU-Norway trilateral and UK-EU bilateral negotiations. Across these negotiations, the UK secured agreement on over 80 total allowable catches (TACs), providing access to £660 million of UK fishing opportunities. Alongside the coastal state negotiations on stocks including mackerel, this brings the total UK fishing opportunities secured for 2025 to 720,000 tonnes, worth an estimated £890 million based on provisional landing prices.

Further, since leaving the EU, the UK has a larger share of many of the total allowable catches set at these negotiations. It is estimated that the UK might have received around 600,000 tonnes of fishing opportunities if we were still an EU member state, in comparison to the 720,000 tonnes actually received. That is an estimated increase of 120,000 tonnes of fishing opportunities for the UK fleet in 2025.

In these negotiations the UK Government worked closely with the Scottish Government, Welsh Government and Northern Ireland Executive to secure outcomes that deliver on all our domestic and international obligations, improving the sustainable management of our fish stocks for the long term in support of the whole of the UK fishing industry.

UK-EU agreement

The UK has secured fishing opportunities of 150,000 tonnes, worth around £360 million based on historic landing prices, through agreement on around 70 TACs as well as agreement on arrangements for non-quota stocks. This is an increase of around 10,000 tonnes compared to 2024 largely driven by increasing scientific advice on sustainable catch levels for Northern Shelf anglerfish.

An initial estimate suggests that slightly fewer UK-EU TACs are set to align with scientific advice from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) compared to last year, due to a challenging advice picture for a number of stocks. The Government will publish early in 2025 a full assessment of the number of TACs set consistent with ICES advice across all annual negotiations.

The UK and EU also made commitments to work together through the Specialised Committee on Fisheries to address the management challenges of certain fisheries. This includes reviewing the effectiveness of measures to protect spurdog and continuing to progress work on technical measures to support the recovery of depleted stocks in the Celtic and Irish seas. The UK and EU also agreed to continue to work together through the SCF to support ICES in improving the science base for a number of stocks, including pollack in ICES area 6 and 7 (which will be benchmarked by ICES in early 2025) and sole 7hjk.

For non-quota stocks (NQS), the UK and the EU agreed a roll-over of access arrangements for 2025 to ensure continued access to fish NQS in EU waters. UK fleet landings for these stocks are historically worth around £30 million a year. We also agreed to roll over existing joint management measures and increase within ICES advice some catch limits for sea bass, and a roll-over of access arrangements for spurdog in the North sea and albacore tuna.

UK-EU-Norway trilateral negotiations

The UK has also reached agreement with Norway and the EU on catch limits for 2025 for six jointly managed North sea stocks, giving the UK fishing fleet access to opportunities worth over £300 million, based on historic landing prices.

The parties agreed TACs for six stocks. Four of the six stocks were set in line with, or below, independent scientific advice from ICES. For North Sea herring, parties aimed to set TACs in line with advice. However, the current management structure, to which the UK has long objected, means we cannot consider outcomes to be in line with headline advice. Finally, for Northern Shelf cod, the parties acknowledged the current advice structure means the sub-stock located in the southern North sea and eastern channel in quarter one brings down the advised catch limits for sub-stocks further north and therefore brings significant challenges for the whitefish sector in the North sea. The parties therefore agreed an approach to set the TAC using part of the headline advice in combination with an alternative catch scenario provided by ICES. This approach is forecasted to lead to biomass increases across all three of the stock’s sub-stocks and secures fishing opportunities that recognise the economic importance of cod in the mixed fishery.

The parties renewed their commitment to deliver long-term management plans (LTMP) for their shared stocks and agreed a request to ICES to advise on an LTMP for saithe. The parties also noted their commitment to start discussions on a new management model for herring in 2025, a significant priority for the UK. That model should also incorporate the newly-developed LTMP. The parties also agreed to start discussions in 2025 about moving the management of Northern Shelf anglerfish (monkfish) to a joint basis, and they further committed to continue to progress their joint work on the monitoring, control and surveillance of their shared stocks.

Multilateral coastal states negotiations

The UK has agreed TACs at the level advised by ICES on the three widely-distributed stocks we share with other coastal states in the north-east Atlantic: mackerel, blue whiting and Norwegian spring-spawning/Atlanto-Scandian herring. The opportunities will be worth an estimated £240 million to the UK fleet in 2025, based on historical prices. The UK will also have additional mackerel quota in 2025 as part of the multi-year deals with Norway and Faroes agreed last year.

Regional fisheries management organisations

The UK has continued to support the sustainable management of widely distributed and highly migratory stocks via regional fisheries management organisations (RFMOs) of which it is a member. RFMO negotiations this year have resulted in the agreement of a wide range of stock-related measures, conservation measures and measures to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUU) activities. These negotiations have also delivered around 2,000 tonnes of fishing opportunities for the UK, as well as a new sharing arrangement for the reopened Canadian Northern cod fishery.

UK-Norway and UK-Faroe Islands bilateral negotiations

Bilateral negotiations between the UK and Norway and the UK and the Faroe Islands on access arrangements and exchanges of fishing opportunities are ongoing.

[HCWS296]

Farming Schemes

Wednesday 11th December 2024 Written Statements

[The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Daniel Zeichner)]

I have today confirmed this Government have injected more than £343 million into the rural economy in the first week of December, benefiting more than 31,000 farmers.

This includes payments worth £223 million to countryside stewardship revenue customers and £74 million to environmental stewardship customers, administered by the Rural Payments Agency (RPA).

This Government are providing over £5 billion to the farming budget—the largest ever increase in investment in sustainable food production in our country’s history. To further support farmers, we have today announced new details on how farmers will benefit from improved and optimised farming schemes.

A new and improved countryside stewardship higher tier (CSHT) scheme will open in 2025, providing new quarterly payments designed to improve farmers’ cashflow and a rolling application window so customers can apply throughout the year.

It also includes new actions to improve flood resilience and species abundance and important funding to secure enhanced environmental benefits and deliver for nature recovery, including sensitive areas such as sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs).

Our commitment to farmers is steadfast. That is why I am working hard to get money into farmers’ bank accounts as well as announcing today how farmers can benefit from the new CSHT scheme, with more flexible actions, improved payments to help cashflow and a rolling application window.

It is part of our £5 billion farming budget over two years—the largest ever directed at sustainable food production in our country’s history.

As we set out our plan for change, we are focused on supporting our farmers, supporting rural economic growth and boosting Britain’s food security.

Our farmers are the heartbeat of the nation’s rural economy, and I remain focused on supporting them by getting payments into bank accounts as quickly as possible.

I am very pleased that this December we have been able to inject more funding than ever from environmental schemes into the rural economy.

This comes at the same time as providing more certainty over the details in the CSHT offer to enable farmers to see for themselves how it can benefit them.

CSHT will open through an initial controlled roll-out to ensure everyone gets the necessary support. Initially, applications will be by invitation—on a rolling monthly basis.

We are also publishing an additional 14 sustainable farming incentive (SFI) endorsed actions, further improving the offer. These will be available from summer 2025 to enable farmers and land managers to contribute further benefits to grassland, heritage and coastal sites, among others.

Further payments made in December include £39 million under SFI, as part of the quarterly payments system designed to improve farmers’ cashflow, and a further £7.4 million has been paid to customers who have completed capital grants works.

As part of this Government’s new deal for farmers, we will set up a new British Infrastructure Council to steer private investment in rural areas including broadband roll-out in our rural communities.

We are also developing a 25-year farming road map, focusing on how to make the sector more profitable in the decades to come.

Farmers and land managers are stewards of the environment, and we will continue to invest in them to make their businesses, food production and our country more sustainable and resilient through environmental land management.

[HCWS298]

UK Food Security

Wednesday 11th December 2024 Written Statements

[The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Daniel Zeichner)]

Later today we intend to lay the next edition of the UK food security report in Parliament, as required by the Agriculture Act 2020. The UKFSR sets out an analysis of statistics relating to food security, serving as an evidence base to inform future Government policy and public understanding. This 2024 report will reflect improvements in the evidence base following consultation with a range of experts and stakeholders from across the food system.

Food security is national security. Food security is also complex and exposed to many different variables globally and domestically such as the weather, markets and trade. It is therefore vital that the Government monitor food security trends, and even more so in a world facing increasing challenges from geopolitics and climate change.

The Government have confirmed to businesses and industry groups from across the food sector that work is under way to develop an ambitious new food strategy. The Government will be considering the UKFSR’s findings to inform this work.

[HCWS297]

Prison Capacity Strategy

Wednesday 11th December 2024 Written Statements

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)]

Integral to this Government’s plan for change is ensuring that we have the prison places we need to lock up dangerous criminals and keep the public safe. On 4 December, the National Audit Office published a scathing report, “Increasing the capacity of the prison estate to meet demand”. It is unequivocal in its criticism of the previous Government’s approach to the criminal justice system, including their commitment to delivering 20,000 additional prison places by the mid-2020s and failure to deliver, with only 500 additional cells being added to the overall prison places stock.

Significant delays to projects—in some cases running years behind schedule—and a failure to address rising demand have left the system thousands of places short of the capacity it requires. It is now clear that even the original mid-2020s commitment was not sufficient to keep pace with the expected demand for prison places, according to the last Government’s own projections. This put the viability of the entire system in jeopardy. Had we run out of prison places, police would not have been able to make arrests and courts could not have held trials. It could have led to a total breakdown of law and order in our country—with all the associated risks to public safety.

The expected cost of the Ministry of Justice’s and His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service’s prison expansion portfolio, to build 20,000 additional places, is currently estimated to be £9.4 billion to £10.1 billion, which is at least £4.2 billion higher than estimated for the 2021 spending review. None of this was revealed by the last Government; it only came to light when I became Lord Chancellor in July of this year.

Today, we publish the 10-year prison capacity strategy and the first annual statement on prison capacity. The strategy is detailed, setting out our commitment to building the 14,000 places the last Government failed to deliver as part of their 20,000 prison place programme, and the aim of completing it by 2031. It further sets out where, when and how we will build new prisons, and expand existing prisons through additional house blocks, refurbishments and temporary accommodation.

This strategy is realistic. Prison building is complex, as is, notably, the planning process to get sites approved for development. It is also costly to the taxpayer. Our delivery plans include contingency places to give resilience to the programme if a project becomes undeliverable or provides poor value for money and cannot be taken forward.

We are ambitious. This strategy sets out our work with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to streamline the delivery of prison supply, including reforming the planning system, and delivering on our commitment to ensure that prisons are recognised as nationally important infrastructure. This Government’s ambition is to secure new land, so that we are ready, should further prison builds be required in future.

And we are committed to improving transparency, now and in the future, so we will legislate, when parliamentary time allows, to make it a statutory requirement for the Government to publish an annual statement on prison capacity, like the one we are publishing today. The annual statement will set out prison population projections, the Department’s plan for supply, and the current probation capacity position. This statement fulfils that transparency commitment for 2024, and holds us, and future Governments, to account on long-term planning, so that decisions on prison demand and supply are in balance.

Finally, we are being honest. Building enough prison places is only one part of the prolonged solution. In the coming years, the prison population will continue to increase more quickly than we can build new prisons. This is why, in October, I launched the independent sentencing review. The review will make recommendations in spring 2025, which will help us ensure there is always a prison place for dangerous offenders, that prisons enable offenders to turn their back on crime, and that we expand the range and use of punishment outside of prison.

I consider this 10-year prison capacity strategy and the annual statement, along with the independent sentencing review, necessary steps in our plan to protect the public and restore their confidence in the criminal justice system.

[HCWS294]

Northern Ireland Act 1998: Consent Process Outcome

Wednesday 11th December 2024 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Hilary Benn)]

Following my written ministerial statement of 2 December (HCWS277), I can confirm that the Northern Ireland Assembly held a vote on the continued application of articles 5 to 10 of the Windsor framework yesterday. The motion passed with a majority of the elected Members voting, but not with cross-community support.

As set out in both schedule 6A to the Northern Ireland Act 1998 and article 18 of the Windsor framework, this result means that the next of these votes will take place in four years’ time and not eight years’ as cross-community support was not forthcoming.

I am now under a legal duty to commission an independent review into the functioning of the framework. The review will report to me with its findings within six months, after which I shall be required to lay a copy of it before Parliament and then to respond.

The Government are, separately, obliged to inform the European Union of the result of the vote and the Minister for the Cabinet Office will shortly do so in line with the terms of the Windsor framework. I shall continue to keep the House updated on these matters.

[HCWS295]