Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether he plans to take steps to ban ships carrying Russian produced coking coal from UK ports; and what options are available to achieve that.

The UK does not currently have sanctions in place on Russian coal. We are continuing to explore options to reduce our energy imports from Russia in response to its aggressive actions in Ukraine.

My Rt. Hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport wrote to all UK ports on 28 Feb 2022 asking them not to provide access to any Russian flagged, registered, owned, controlled, chartered, or operated vessels.

Legislation has followed this and the government made Regulations (The Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) (Amendment) (No.4) Regulations 2022) on 1 March 2022 which restrict any Russian flagged or registered ship, or any ship owned, operated, controlled or chartered by a person connected to Russia, arriving at a UK port. This was a vital measure to take in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine and the government has acted accordingly.

We will set out full details on our energy supply strategy in the coming weeks.