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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, for what reasons under 10m fishing vessels in England are being required, under new licence conditions, to report all fish caught and landed when there are de minimis exemptions for over 10m vessels.

For paper and electronic recording for vessels over 10m in length, there is an exemption on recording fish under 50kg in the log book. However, this information is supplemented by an additional requirement for a landing declaration which provides accurate weights of all fish caught. A similar exemption was considered for under 10m vessels, however, given some stocks catch limits are very small, applying a de-minimis exemption would not be appropriate.