Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 18 October 2025 to Question 79364 on Defence Safety Authority, what recent progress the Maritime and Coastguard Authority has made on the development of its own maritime autonomy programme.

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency have developed multiple workstreams to support the UK’s maritime autonomy industry. This includes marine guidance notices and the third edition of the UK’s Workboat Code, which provide a regulatory framework within which autonomous vessels can operate. In addition, the recently developed Remote Operator Training and Certification Pilot Framework provides a voluntary scheme for training and certification of Remote Operators, which will lead to an experienced and qualified workforce.

The existing provisions under the Merchant Shipping Act have been maximised to support various sizes and types of vessels, and as parliamentary time allows, we will go further to enable emerging use cases.