Maritime Security

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

It is always a pleasure to receive a question from the noble Lord. Indeed, the man now in charge is in your Lordships’ House today. It was, of course, the current Government who set up JMOCC, which works very closely with the NMIC. The noble Lord is quite right that maritime assets are spread over a number of organisations: Border Force, the Royal Navy and the coastguard. Co-ordination of these assets is incredibly important. JMOCC was set up in October 2017, so it is not even two years old. It has a lot of capability to deal with live incidents and make sure that maritime assets are in the right place. One of the things this £9 million will do is provide extra capacity so that a planning team can be built to make sure we have optimum deployment of all vessels where we need them.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

Would the Minister perhaps address the part of the Question related to the Persian Gulf, which she managed to pass over in total silence in her original reply? Would she not agree that probably the best way to strengthen maritime security in the Persian Gulf is to work with our other European allies to get a dialogue going about how to preserve the nuclear agreement with Iran and how to avoid tensions, which risk spiralling out of control?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

There is quite a lot in the noble Lord’s question and I will endeavour to cover as much of it as possible. I did not mean to gloss over it. The situation in the Strait of Hormuz is incredibly important. The NMIC has been giving valuable support, which I have witnessed myself, by monitoring vessels in the Persian Gulf, not only tracking Red Ensign vessels in transit, which of course is very important, but looking at vessels of interest to see what they might be doing. We are working very closely with our international partners. We are part of the international maritime security construct. We have committed to a frigate or destroyer for that construct, a Royal Fleet Auxiliary tanker and, of course, staff in the command structure and below that. We are working with our international partners. It is absolutely important that Iran does not develop a nuclear capability. Our actions with our partners are part of that.