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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will make it his policy to adopt a more precautionary approach to the exploitation of deep sea species.

Applying a precautionary approach is an objective of the Fisheries Act 2020 and, a principle of the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement for UK-EU shared stocks. Deep sea stocks are data poor, this means there is less data available about the stocks’ health compared to other species and therefore the UK already adopts a precautionary approach to improve the protection of these vulnerable species. In addition to jointly setting total allowable catch levels through annual negotiations, the UK and EU are developing measures to support the long-term recovery of deep sea species including roundnose grenadier and western red seabream via the Specialised Committee on Fisheries.