Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps his Department took to comply with the requirement for transparency set out in paragraph 5c of Annex B of the Fishing Vessel Avoidance UK Code of Practice extracted from SMP 95 dated 5 June 2002 in the incident with MV Karen on 15 April 2015.

I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave him on 15 September 2015 to Question number 9422 and to the Westminster Hall Debate on 16 September 2015 (Official Report, column 362WH). The submarine was not aware of the incident at the time and, therefore, did not surface. If the submarine had been aware of the incident, the protocols in place under the Code of Practice would have required her to surface and remain on scene to render assistance.

As I said during the Westminster Hall Debate on 16 September 2015, the Royal Navy's reporting procedures have been reviewed to enable it to confirm more quickly in future whether a UK submarine is involved in an incident. If it cannot be confirmed quickly that a Royal Navy submarine was not involved in an incident, we will assume that one was. There should, therefore, be no delay in verifying the involvement of a Royal Navy submarine, and the appropriate action in respect of compensation can be initiated within a few days.