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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps is she taking to reduce the harmful impacts of long lining.

Longlining is a method of fishing used in parts of the UK. It is recognised that bycatch can occur in this fishery.

To address this, Defra funds the Clean Catch programme, a research programme dedicated to better monitoring and reducing bycatch of sensitive species in the UK, and the Bycatch Monitoring Programme (along with Scottish Government, given the devolved nature of fisheries management). Defra also commissioned the ongoing Bycatch Risk Prioritisation Framework, which assesses species vulnerability to bycatch in all fisheries in England and the UK.

The Department also plays a role internationally, for example, in tabling a proposal to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) to recommend the use of hook-shielding devices to reduce seabird bycatch in longline fisheries to help protect albatrosses and petrels in the South Atlantic and securing agreement at ICCAT to prohibit the retention of several vulnerable shark species.