Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment he made of the effect of reducing allocations to successful applicants to the Port Infrastructure Fund by 34 per cent.

Several options for distributing the £200M fund were fully considered, ranging from fully-funding a few projects at selected ports to significantly funding as many projects as possible. The latter was chosen as the most beneficial, appropriate and fair option. All successful projects were awarded unprecedented levels of Government funding for ports infrastructure, all given as grants.

The greatest effect of this approach is providing a far greater quantity of ports throughout Britain with funding assistance than otherwise would have been possible. In normal circumstances, ports would be expected to fund such facilities themselves.