British Conservative MEPs have defeated a move in the European Parliament to impose a blanket ban on all deep sea trawling.

They successfully voted down an amendment to proposed legislation, which would have shut down Britain's deep sea fishing industry overnight with devastating consequences for communities.

An historic deal to reform the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) has today been agreed by the EU Parliament and will become law on 1 January 2014. 
The final deal follows more than three years of difficult negotiations, in which the UK took the lead to secure significant reform of the fundamentally flawed current CFP.