Fishing Vessels: Safety
(asked on 5th February 2024) - View Source
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 2 February 2024 to Question 12084 on Fishing Vessels: Safety, what the total legal costs incurred by his Department were for (a) investigations of suspected non-use of personal floatation devices and (b) any other purpose by legal firm DWF in each of the last five years.
The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) incurred the following legal expenditure with DWF over the last 5 years:
a) Legal costs in issuing notices related to breach of the Merchant Shipping and Fishing Vessels (Personal Protective Equipment) Regulations 1999 - £31,104 in 2023. Nil return for information related to prior years.
b) Total legal spend with DWF (inclusive of spend detailed in part a) over the last 5 years is detailed below:
Year | Payment |
2018 | £9,701 |
2019 | £10,849 |
2020 | £15,079 |
2021 | £13,501 |
2022 | £472,869 |
2023 | £1,382,895 |
The change in total spend profile with this legal services provider reflects the fact that the MCA has reduced its suppliers to consolidate and reduce overall costs by utilising the framework for procurement of legal services.