Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what reports have they received about fishing vessels from the West of Scotland and Northern Ireland picking up munitions in their nets (1) from 1 April 2010 to 31 March 2020, and (2) from 1 April to 21 September 2020.

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency recorded twenty-six incidents of munitions being encountered at sea between 1 January 2016 and 31 March 2020, and one incident from the 1 April to 21 September 2020 in the region of the West of Scotland and Northern Ireland.

In the timescale given to respond to this question we were unable to determine whether the encounters detailed above were fishing vessels finding munitions in their nets or due to other circumstances as this requires a manual review of each incident log. Unfortunately, due to the way in which the data from 2010 to 2016 is stored we will require additional time to retrieve data from prior to 2016.