The EU's Common Fisheries Policy is up for renewal, with updated legislation expected in 2013. Next week, fisheries ministers meet to thrash out the plan, pitting lovers of the sustainable techniques promoted by celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall against those who want subsidies to maintain huge trawler fleets.

This skirmish doesn't just affect an ancient industry, which employed nearly 30,000 people in the UK in the Sixties, down to well under 15,000 today, but the price of the 300 million servings of fish'*'chips Brits tuck into each year.

For every 10 per cent increase in the stock of herring, haddock, or hake, there should be a 2 to 5 per cent decrease in the price of a fish supper, which, incidentally, went up by about 50p a portion last year.

At least 49 stocks, including blue whiting and plaice, are overfished in the north-east Atlantic. In September, a report by the New Economics Foundation found a cessation on fishing these species, from two months for mackerel to a little over nine years for certain types of cod, would replenish their numbers, and mean the catches would double in value from £130bn to £260bn over a 40-year period. That translates to 50 per cent more fish per Brit each year, from around 20kg consumed to 30kg. "Naturally, that would lend itself to a drop in prices," says the report's author, Rupert Crilly.

However, it seems unlikely that such a radical proposal will be endorsed, as many campaigners fear that the EU will continue a policy of pumping the vast majority of the ¤1bn (£800m) of annual subsidies into new boat

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