IUU Fishing - Quantifying the costs of IUU fishing to the UK

Since the 1st January 2021, the UK is no longer subject to the EU's Common Fisheries Policy and is an independent coastal state once again. The UK had been covered by the EU's Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported (IUU) fishing regulations (1005/2008). These regulations are retained in UK law but the UK has the freedom to set its own policies and regulations on IUU.

The UK's status as an independent coastal state provides an opportunity to better understand how IUU fishing affects the UK. Better understanding this will influence policy development to tackle IUU fishing. The financial cost and environmental, economic, and social impact of IUU fishing on UK industry has not yet been quantified.

In 2021 Defra commissioned a systematic review, which identified, reviewed and critiqued existing literature of the impacts of IUU fishing and how they relate to the UK. A copy is attached to this ITT. The review found that the information currently available regarding IUU activities impacting the UK is primarily based on large scale estimates (often global) of both volume and cost, or is derived from low sample-size studies which often lack statistical robustness.