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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what his Department's methodology was for collecting and collating data on views of small scale fishers in its report on the service standard assessment of the catch recording service.

The development of the catch recording service and the methodology used followed Government Digital Service standards. A broad user research programme, following industry best practice, was conducted and covered eight key locations around the English coast to seek views from fishers. A public consultation on the catch recording system also ran from 19 February 2019 until 2 April 2019 to seek input from industry.