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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will make it his policy to ban bottom trawling and the use of other bottom towed fishing gear in all offshore marine protected areas on a whole-site basis, rather than on a feature-based approach.

Each Marine Protected Area (MPA) protects specific features, whether that is a particular species or a variety of different habitats. We have recently consulted on five candidate Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs). HPMAs would have the highest level of protection in English waters and would take a whole-site approach.

98 MPAs in English inshore waters already have byelaws in place to protect sensitive features from damaging fishing activities and the first four offshore byelaws have now been established. A Call for Evidence on byelaws in 13 more MPAs has recently closed. Byelaws are developed using an evidence-led process to determine what measures are required to protect sites. Site by site assessments are carried out to tailor management measures and to avoid unnecessary restrictions on fishing. Only fishing activities which could damage the protected features of an MPA require management, such as trawling on the seabed. We aim to have protection in place for all our offshore MPAs by 2024.