As an island nation, surrounded by some of the most productive seas in the North East Atlantic, fishing remains an enduring part of our national story. As a renewable and highly nutritious food source, abundant off our coasts, requiring few inputs and carrying a comparatively small carbon footprint, fishing is directly relevant to the nation’s food security, public health and climate ambitions. Yet fishing continues to operate without a guiding vision.

Since leaving the European Union’s Common Fisheries Policy at the end of 2020, the UK has developed a domestic framework centred on the Fisheries Act 2020, the Joint Fisheries Statement and a programme of Fisheries Management Plans. The legislative architecture for sustainable management is therefore in place. What is missing, however, is a coherent, long-term strategy that connects this framework, and the industry, to the wider policy environment in which the business of fishing operates.

The recommendations within this report are set against a single foundational ask that would address this: that Government, working in partnership with the devolved administrations, sets out a long-term strategy for UK fishing and the wider seafood sector.

Published in September 2026, the report sets out a framework of recommendations built on four key pillars and four cross-cutting enablers, offered as a package, to be taken together as the basis of a coherent strategy for UK fishing.

The materials described above are not official publications of the House of Commons or the House of Lords. They have not been approved by either House or its committees. All Party Parliamentary Groups are informal groups of Members of both Houses with a common interest in particular issues. The views expressed in this report are reflective of the evidence collated and submitted to this process.