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

To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have, if any, to publish a timebound strategy to meet their legal obligation to aim that fishing occurs at sustainable levels.

As an independent coastal state, the UK now sets catch limits through negotiations with other coastal states, led by the best available science. In line with the sustainability objective in the Fisheries Act 2020, our aim is to achieve environmentally sustainable outcomes as well as socio-economic benefits. The UK Joint Fisheries Statement, published last November, lists 43 Fisheries Management Plans (FMPs) to be developed across the UK and sets out a timetable for their publication. The FMPs will set out policies to maintain or increase stocks to sustainable levels (or contribute to doing so). Our FMPs will contain short-, medium- and long-term time bound actions to be delivered over the lifetime of the plan. The actions are to support the sustainable management of fish stocks – they are based on the best available evidence and input from the fishing sector. We plan to publish the first FMPs by the end of this year.