Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, when he expects the UK to ratify International Labour Organisation Convention 185 on seafarers' identity documents; and what recent steps he has taken towards obtaining ratification.

The UK has always been supportive of the Convention but in line with a number of other States preferred alignment with the International Civil Aviation Organizations Standards for Travel Documents (ICAO 9303) as this provided for a more secure document.

The UK was a key State in pushing through the amendments that were formally adopted in 2016 that finally aligned the Convention with ICAO 9303. There are now a number of technical and practical issues that the UK needs to resolve and that we are actively working on. Providing these can be suitably addressed we can then consider ratification.