Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the potential market effect of small quotas on demersal fisheries that rely on catching prawns to make trips commercially viable.

The UK’s approach in annual negotiations has been to seek solutions that are sustainable, and which support our fishing industries and local communities. Following the ICES advice for zero catches for quota stocks taken within mixed fisheries would, if applied, close economically important UK fisheries and have a significant impact on the associated coastal communities such as the Irish Sea Nephrops fishery where whiting is an unavoidable bycatch. In this situation, a total allowable catch (TAC) has been set at a level to allow a bycatch of whiting which seeks to prevent closing the Nephrops fishery while still allowing whiting to recover.