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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department has taken to tackle known limitations of fisheries stock assessments since 2020; and whether she plans to allocate additional funding to help improve data collection in fisheries.

The Department has invested significantly in research and development with an aim to improve fisheries stock assessments since 2020. Additionally, the Department has run a Fisheries and Science Partnership scheme, which provided grant funding to fishing industry and academia partnerships to undertake fishery science projects.

Fisheries Management Plans published by the Department include the identification and delivery of evidence to support known gaps. This financial year alone the Department has invested £2.5 million in filling these evidence gaps. The Department is also reforming the fisheries data collection programme to ensure its fit for purpose and further help to address these evidence gaps.