Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether any salvage retrieved from SS Mantola has to comply with the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage.

The United Kingdom is not a signatory to the 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, but has endorsed as good practice the rules set out in its Annex concerning activities directed at underwater cultural heritage. Now that the wreck of the SS Mantola is over 100 years old, having been sunk in Feb 1917, any salvage activities sanctioned or contracted in advance by HMG would take into account the requirements of the Convention.