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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 12 December 2016 to Question 56672, on salmon: conservation, when fisheries representatives will be informed of the outcomes from the multi-organisation working groups.

Good progress continues to be made on the Five Point Approach to Salmon and the Environment Agency will be reporting on progress this autumn.

Priority is currently directed towards an informal byelaw consultation, which will commence in April and will focus on all salmon rod and net fisheries in England. The Environment Agency wishes to fully understand the consequences of all the options which will be proposed in the informal consultation to evaluate their effectiveness to individual river salmon stocks. The Environment Agency will consider the responses over the summer with a view to advertising any new byelaws in October 2017.

Interested fisheries representatives will be able to respond to this consultation process. The outcomes of the informal consultation and progress on the other four work streams of the Five Point Approach will be covered in the autumn progress report.