Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the cost to the public purse of repatriating UK citizens was after the collapse of Monarch airlines.

The Department is not yet able to give a final figure for the costs of the repatriation operation as we are awaiting invoices from third parties. In line with the usual transparency guidelines on Government financial reporting, the final expenditure will be made clear in the annual accounts for the Department, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and the Air Travel Trust (ATT), which should be published in June 2018.

At this stage, the current forecasts suggest that the total cost of the repatriation operation remains broadly in line with the original estimate of around £60m.

The Department is focused on making sure that there is clear burden sharing of the repatriation operation, and is seeking to recover costs of the operation from third parties. This is a continuing process and a final position on cost recovery is unlikely to be known until the completion of the administrative process; this may take several months. The Department will in due course be able to report back with more detail.