Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to the Answer to the hon. Member for Chichester, Official Report, column 172W, on 8 July 2014, on Diego Garcia, for what reason records of flight occurrence logs were water damaged; in what format the records are kept; and whether that format has been changed since the damage.

During routine work to add existing records to the store in Diego Garcia, British Indian Ocean Territories (BIOT) immigration officials noted water damage to a small number of records, caused by a leaking roof. This is believed to have resulted from extremely heavy weather in June 2014. Although the extent of the damage was not clear on initial inspection at the time, I refer my hon. Friend to the answer given by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the member for Boston and Skegness (Mr Simmonds) on 8 July 2014, Official Report, column 172W.

However, since 8 July, BIOT immigration officials have conducted a fuller inspection, and previously wet paper records have been dried out. They report that no flight records have been lost as a result of the water damage. A small number of immigration arrival cards from 2004 have been damaged, but that information about those flights is still available in the daily occurrence logs and monthly statistics. These records provide dates of aircraft movements in the Territory, and passenger and crew numbers.

Following the incident, all hard copy records from the affected location are being transferred from the airport to a new location, and will be digitalised over the coming months.