PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
British Overseas Territories (4 February 2015)

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what estimate his Department has made of the annual cost of enforcing marine protected areas in (a) Pitcairn and (b) Ascension Island in the next (i) five and (ii) 10 years; what level of enforcement those costs would provide; and what non-public sources of funding have been identified to date to help meet those costs.

Asked by:
Kerry McCarthy (Labour)

Effective monitoring and enforcement in Marine Protected Areas requires a thorough long-term investment of resources. A good estimate of full enforcement costs, which would include a patrol vessel, can be drawn from our experience in other territories, such as the British Indian Ocean Territory - for which total costs, including a patrol vessel, are £2.75m per year; or South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, where a patrol vessel alone costs approximately £3.2m per year. No non-public funding has yet been identified to meet any cost of patrol vessels in either Pitcairn or Ascension.

Answered by:
Lord Swire (Conservative)
9 February 2015