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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what progress he has made on introducing a replacement to the European Maritime and Fisheries Funding after December 2020.

We made a commitment in our manifesto to maintain funding for fisheries across the UK’s nations throughout the Parliament and to support the regeneration of our coastal communities.

Last year, the Government provided an extra £37 million of domestic funding for the sector, which will be available until 2022. England’s share of this funding is available via the Maritime and Fisheries Fund, which was opened in October 2019. Scotland was allocated £16.7 million, and delivery will be managed by Marine Scotland.

The Fisheries Bill will provide England and the devolved administrations with new domestic grant making powers that will ensure we have sufficient powers to support our future priorities. Fisheries is a devolved matter and, in future, grant schemes will be developed by each of the devolved administrations targeted towards their own national priorities.

We have been evaluating the current EMFF scheme and the needs of the sector. We have conducted social, environmental and economic evaluations to better understand the sector’s needs and where funding should be targeted.

We plan to hold a formal consultation exercise on the design of a future scheme in 2020.