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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, on how many fishing vessels the catch recording app was live tested during fishing trips, prior to the fish being landed, before the Government (a) determined whether that app met the service standards set by the Government Digital Services and (b) introduced the fishing vessel licence condition.

The app was tested with seven vessels during the development phase in early September 2019. This was followed by a soft-launch testing exercise with 17 further vessels which successfully completed more than 100 fishing trips.

The development phase met the service standards set by the Government Digital Services.

To date all over 5.9 metre vessels have been invited to join the catch recording service, over 1000 have accepted and almost 4000 catch records have been submitted.