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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he plans to publish a UK Ocean Recovery Strategy in summer 2021; and if he will make a statement.

The Government has an existing strategy - The UK Marine Strategy. The overall objective of the UK Marine Strategy supports the UK’s vision for ‘clean, healthy, safe, productive and biologically diverse oceans and seas’ and is consistent with our commitments in the 25 Year Environment Plan.

Achieving this vision is about protecting the marine environment, preventing its deterioration and restoring it where practical, while allowing sustainable use of marine resources.

In October 2019, we published the updated Marine Strategy Part One which sets out our assessment of the status of UK seas and our targets and indicators for the period up to 2024. In March 2021, we published our update to the Marine Strategy Part Two, which sets out the programmes we have in place to monitor progress against these targets and indicators.

We are currently preparing an update of the Marine Strategy Part Three, which sets out our Programmes of Measures designed to help us achieve or maintain the vision set out in Part One of the Strategy.