The proportion of fishing trips undertaken by UK vessels using remote electronic monitoring (REM) equipment was less than one percent of the total fishing trips undertaken by UK vessels in each of the last three years from 2014 to 2016. The type of vessel using REM equipment were large capacity vessels, fishing off shore for fish stocks that were subject to quotas. In 2016 nearly 40 percent of UK landings of North Sea cod were made by vessels fully documenting their catch using REM equipment.

Details of planned UK observer trips are set out in United Kingdom’s Work Plan for data collection in the fisheries and aquaculture sectors. The Work Plan can be found at the Gov.UK website. In England and Wales, 525 staff days per year are allocated to observer sampling with 1032 days for Scotland and 460 days for Northern Ireland.

Ministers and officials have had meetings with a number of organisations to discuss a range of issues associated with EU exit including the 1964 London Fisheries Convention. As the Prime Minister told Parliament on 29 March, we hope to be able to say something about this soon.

We are looking very carefully at the London Fisheries Convention. As the Prime Minister told the House on 29 March, we hope to be able to say something about this soon.

In accordance with international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, following EU exit, the UK will be responsible for managing living resources, including fisheries, within its territorial waters and Exclusive Economic Zone.

The Secretary of State has met the Welsh Minister for Agriculture on several occasions as we seek to ensure we get the best possible deal for the whole of the UK. We have committed to carefully considering any proposals that the devolved administrations put forward. Discussions on the issues are ongoing.

Civil Servants have to ability to work flexibly across government sites where there is a business need to do so. The issuing of all passes is controlled by the local Departmental Security teams who follow strict procedures and protocols. Information on the number of people holding security passes for other government departments who are granted access to Defra premises is not centrally recorded.

Defra has issued 7501 passes since 2011. Data for 2010 is no longer held.

Defra is currently unable to provide data on the number of Defra passes that are active.

This information is available in the ONS Public Sector Employment Statistics last published on 15 March 2017:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/publicsectorpersonnel/datasets/publicsectoremploymentreferencetable

There have been the following number of prosecutions for fishing without a valid rod licence in each of the last five years:

Year

Number of prosecutions

2012

2,168

2013

1,880

2014

2,268

2015

1,798

2016

2,088

All of the above figures are from between 1st January and 31st December.

The Government has no plans to abolish the fishing rod licence. The income from the rod licence fee allows the Environment Agency to provide its fisheries service to rod licence holders.

The table below shows the Environment Agency sales figures of rod licences in each of the past five years:

Year

Rod licence sales (£ million)

2012/13

21.8

2013/14

21.6

2014/15

21.5

2015/16

21.1

2016/17

20.6

The rod licence year runs from 1st April to March 31st.

The fees the Environment Agency collects through rod licence sales are spent on providing a fisheries service to fishing licence holders. The Environment Agency’s fisheries functions, for which it has powers to collects licence fees, relate to maintaining, improving and developing salmon, trout, freshwater, and eel fisheries as specified in the Environment Act 1995.

Over the past three years rod licences have been issued through website sales, telesales, over the counter sales under a contract with the Post Office Limited and a small proportion have been sold through retained agents. It is estimated that the average administration cost for issuing a rod licence is approximately £1.62 per licence.

Since 1 March 2017, the Environment Agency has been providing the website sales and telesales elements in-house, in compliance with the Government Digital Services (GDS) standards. Over the counter services are still being provided by the Post Office but the Environment Agency has now ceased to sell through retained agents.

The Department has published research on the main drivers of changes to food prices which have been observed to be food commodity prices, currency exchange rates and oil prices. It will be changes to any, or a combination of these factors, that will bring changes to prices.

ONS statistics on food prices are published each month as part of the Consumer Price Index. In the most recent statistics published on 11 April, food prices had increased by 1.3% in the year to March 2017 following almost three consecutive years where food prices fell. Exchange rates and energy costs have been the key drivers of these changes.

The Government annually publishes Family Food, which draws on data from the Living Cost of Food Survey. This publication includes questions on household spend on food, including that by the lowest 20% income households, which has remained constant at around 16% for a number of years.

The Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES), developed by the Voices of the Hungry project of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is used to collect food security data in up to 150 countries under the Gallup World Poll. The Department for International Development supports this work financially and updated results will be published later this year by the FAO. We understand from the FAO that global FIES results will be launched in June, and the individual country level estimates, which are three-year averages, will be published in September.

Since 8 May 2015 two official documents and 12 official sensitive documents have been recorded as lost by Defra.