North Atlantic Submarine Activity

Ben Obese-Jecty Excerpts

Monday 13th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Al Carns]

I am in no doubt, and am absolutely clear, that we have one of the best navies in the world. I have served in the Royal Navy for 24 years as a member of His Majesty’s Royal Marines. Operating in the High North is exceptionally difficult. I have only done a little bit of it in my time on the carrier strike group as the chief of staff, but when you are in Sea State 9 on a pointy frigate, yes, you need to have some mettle to continue doing your job, when it is day in, day out for weeks on end. What I can say is that the Royal Navy perseveres; it does a fantastic job. When that is combined with our P-8s in the sky and, of course, the silent service underneath the waves, I have no doubt that our nation is very well protected.

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

The Minister may recall that back in November when we discussed the Yantar, I asked him about the circumstances under which the fleet contingency group would be given the green light to conduct a maritime interdiction operation. He responded that it would need to meet international law. I was pleased on 25 March when the Prime Minister put out a statement saying that the Royal Marines special forces would be given the opportunity to interdict Russian shadow fleet vessels, but subsequently, we have not seen any of that take place. The Minister mentioned that criteria would need to be met. There are 544 sanctioned Russian shadow fleet vessels. Can he confirm whether all of them—by virtue of being sanctioned—meet the criteria for being interdicted, or are there vessels in that list of 544 that are in scope, but have not yet transited through our waters?

[Al Carns]

As is absolutely clear, the maritime interdiction of a Russian-flagged vessel such as the Yantar is very different from one where the vessel either does not have a flag or changes its flag regularly. The criteria must be met to enable those boardings. The MOD is absolutely ready to go, but unfortunately I will not go through the detail here, because it may allow some of those vessels to put in place the mitigations that would reduce our ability to board them.