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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what level of fishing mortality reduction her Department considers sufficient for the conservation and recovery of sea bass stocks.

The advice from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) in 2014 was that fishing mortality for sea bass should be reduced by 61%. Measures currently under discussion for introduction this year need to make substantial progress towards this objective.