Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what discussions he has had with UK's Overseas Territories on the effects of sargassum seaweed on the ecological system in the British Virgin Islands.

The Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) is the statutory adviser to the Government on UK and international nature conservation. The JNCC has been discussing this issue with the Overseas Territories for some time and has delivered training expertise to enable the mapping of sargassum and support work on predicting impacts of sargassum washing up along the shoreline in the British Virgin Islands.