Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, if he will list the maritime ports his Department classifies as nationally significant.

The Department for Transport does not designate ports as nationally significant or otherwise, and in general expects them to compete freely with each other irrespective of size. However, 52 ports are designated (based on handling more than 1M tonnes of cargo in a year) as "major ports" for statistical purposes. A list may be found at Annex A to the publication Port Freight Statistics 2020: Notes and Definitions.

(www.assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1002364/port-freight-notes-and-definitions.pdf ).

Nationally significant port infrastructure projects are defined at s.24 Planning Act 2008.