Asked by: Pippa Heylings (Liberal Democrat - South Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps she has taken to ensure that fishing catches are recorded and accounted for.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
To ensure fishing catches are accurately recorded and accounted for, all English vessels must record their catches either in a logbook or, for vessels under 10 metres, using the Catch Recording application. These systems provide an accurate picture of how much fish is being taken from English waters.
Compliance with this requirement is monitored through analysis of data and vessel inspections. Fisheries control and enforcement are devolved matters, with each Devolved Administration responsible for conducting inspections within its respective waters.
Asked by: Pippa Heylings (Liberal Democrat - South Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether all catches are recorded and accounted for in UK fisheries.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
To ensure fishing catches are accurately recorded and accounted for, all English vessels must record their catches either in a logbook or, for vessels under 10 metres, using the Catch Recording application. These systems provide an accurate picture of how much fish is being taken from English waters.
Compliance with this requirement is monitored through analysis of data and vessel inspections. Fisheries control and enforcement are devolved matters, with each Devolved Administration responsible for conducting inspections within its respective waters.
Asked by: Pippa Heylings (Liberal Democrat - South Cambridgeshire)
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 29 October 2025 to question 83898, how many (a) pelagic trawls over 24m and (b) demersal seines over 10m enrolled as volunteers to design and test Remote Electronic Monitoring (REM) systems; and how long the design and testing phase of the REM rollout will take.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra is currently working with one volunteer vessel from Fishery A, pelagic trawls over 24m. No volunteers have come forwards from Fishery B, demersal seines over 10m. The volunteer early adopter phase of each REM project will continue until the project objectives and monitoring objectives are met.
Asked by: Pippa Heylings (Liberal Democrat - South Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made on the potential effect on the creation of habitats as a result of small sites being excluded from BNG as proposed in the Improving the implementation of Biodiversity Net Gain for minor, medium and brownfield development consultation.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
A Government response to the ‘Improving biodiversity net gain for minor, medium and brownfield development’ consultation will be published in due course.
The Government will also publish a full impact assessment setting out all relevant costs and benefits.
Asked by: Pippa Heylings (Liberal Democrat - South Cambridgeshire)
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 29 October to Question 84396, what percentage of the fishing catch quota has been distributed through (a) Fixed Quota Allocation Units, (b) the Quota Application Mechanism and (c) other routes for the most recent year for which data is available.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
In 2025, the percentage of quota distributed through fixed quota allocation units was around 90% (‘existing quota’ and ‘additional quota’), 5% of English allocated quota was distributed via the Quota Application Mechanism and 5% via alternative routes. In 2026, the percentage splits will change because the Quota Application Mechanism is increasing from 5 stocks to 14 stocks, for that reason fixed quota allocation will need adjusting accordingly and can only take place once we have concluded negotiations for access to fishing opportunities in December.
Asked by: Pippa Heylings (Liberal Democrat - South Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will publish a list of fishing vessel licences including sanctions for fisheries and labour offences.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Marine Management Organisation (MMO) publish UK wide lists of licensed fishing vessels and details of fishing vessel licences. The MMO does not publish sanctions for fisheries offences, but regularly publishes details of its successful prosecutions for marine and fisheries offences on the UK government website.
Asked by: Pippa Heylings (Liberal Democrat - South Cambridgeshire)
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 is taking to ensure that small producers are not placed at a cash flow disadvantage compared with larger producers under the payment structures of the extended producer responsibility scheme.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
pEPR in the UK has some of the most generous support measures for small businesses across any packaging scheme globally. These are exemptions from disposal fee and recycling obligations for producers with an annual turnover below £2 million and packaging tonnage below 50 tonnes; and an exemption from data collection and reporting obligations for small businesses with turnover below £1 million and packaging tonnage below 25 tonnes. These exemptions apply to approximately 70% of businesses supplying packaging in the UK. To support businesses that are subject to disposal fee obligations we have also provided flexible payment arrangements to help obligated businesses manage cashflow, by paying fees in quarterly instalments. Where producers are a liable and struggle to meet payment plans outlined in the regulations, further options are available on request.
Asked by: Pippa Heylings (Liberal Democrat - South Cambridgeshire)
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 (a) bycatch and (b) illegal discarding by vessels in the last year.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
We continue our effort to minimise and, where possible, eliminate the bycatch of sensitive species. Working in partnership with industry and eNGOs we have a range of activities in place including: continuation of the long-standing Bycatch Monitoring Programme (BMP) which reports annually on bycatch rates analysed by gear type; the Cetacean Stranding Investigation Programme (CSIP) that closely monitors UK-wide cetacean strandings and conducts post-mortems on stranded marine mammals; the Clean Catch programme which recently launched a bycatch monitoring and mitigation trial; a comprehensive evidence review analysing bycatch across sensitive marine species (cetaceans, seabirds, seals, elasmobranchs); and developing a seabird bycatch mitigation action plan for England.
The Marine Management Organisation (MMO) monitors discards and catches from all commercially licensed vessels in England. MMO collects this data alongside undertaking regular inspections of vessels. The Landing Obligation, introduced under the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy, has not met its goals; illegal discarding still happens, and discard patterns in the English fleet haven’t changed. To improve discards management and move away from the landing obligation in England, Defra and the MMO are conducting a paper trial of ‘catch accounting’. This is a new approach that accounts for the total removal of stock compared to the current system which only logs landings.
Asked by: Pippa Heylings (Liberal Democrat - South Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much funding the Marine Management Organisation has received in each of the last five years; what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the funding on the enforcement of fishing regulations; and what assessment she has made of the value for money of this funding for taxpayers.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
As set out in the Annual Report and Accounts of the Marine Management Organisation, total expenditure was £36.1 million in FY20/21, £42 million in FY21/22, £42.7 million in FY22/23, and £54 million in FY23/24.
Defra works closely with the Marine Management Organisation and other organisations to make sure the appropriate arrangements to enforce fisheries regulations are in place to protect our waters. This funding enables the organisation to operate an enforcement regime of fishing regulations amongst their other duties and is provided in line with the principles of managing public money, including the Accounting Officer’s duty to ensure spending decisions represent good value for money through the accountability and assurance processes Defra has in place.
Asked by: Pippa Heylings (Liberal Democrat - South Cambridgeshire)
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.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
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.