That this House welcomes the ruling by the judges at the Permanent Court of Arbitration to dismiss the EU’s challenge to Britain’s ban on commercial fishing; recognises the importance of sand eels to the wider ecosystem, in particular wild seabird populations; acknowledges the puffin and kittiwake bird populations, whose diets largely rely on sand eels, drastically decreased as a result of industrial sand eel fishing by Sweden and Denmark in the North Sea which is why the dismissal of the EU’s case is vital to ensuring populations can recover; and notes that the Isle of May in North East Fife is home to one of the UK’s largest puffin colonies with an estimated 52,000 breeding pairs as well as tens of thousands of other birds including shags, guillemots, razorbills and kittiwakes.
