Richard Burden – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Richard Burden on 2016-01-13.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what his Department’s (a) budget and (b) spend for maritime surveillance was in each of the last five years; and what the (i) names and (ii) lengths of contract are of companies engaged in UK maritime security.

Mr Robert Goodwill

Her Majesty’s Coastguard monitors shipping off the United Kingdom coast for the purposes of ship safety and pollution prevention. That monitoring uses ships’ Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) where those are fitted under international requirements. Ships are monitored by RADAR in the Dover Strait and the Sunk area in the approaches to the Thames Estuary. Pollution is monitored through the European Union’s SafeSeaNet satellite arrangements. There are no specific contracts in place with companies or organisations for the commercial provision of maritime surveillance information.

The Department for Transport (DfT) has a comprehensive set of maritime security measures in place which port facilities in the UK and ships on the UK Ship Register are required to implement for countering the threat from terrorism. Responsibility for delivering these measures rests with the port and ship owners. As such DfT does not have any contracts with UK maritime security companies for the provision of security services at ports or on board ships.