Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent discussions he has had with British Airways on the resumption of direct flights to Sierra Leone and Liberia.

There have been no discussions with British Airways about the resumption of direct scheduled services. Since British Airways decided to suspend their operations, they have given us no indication of an intention to resume flights to Sierra Leone. Should the situation change sufficiently for the UK Government to become content for direct scheduled services to Ebola-affected countries to resume, it would then be for individual airlines to judge whether it is viable to start services, subject to them requesting the appropriate operating permissions from the relevant authorities.