Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the answer by Baroness Sugg on 4 February (HL Deb, col 1324), what evidence they received that (1) the Royal National Lifeboat Institution’s (RNLI) decision to downgrade the New Quay lifeboat capacity was based on extensive research of incident reports and consideration of local concerns, and (2) the RNLI carries out a coastal safety review every five years; and whether they will publish the evidence they hold in relation to both issues.

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) is an independent charity which declares a lifeboat service to Her Majesty’s Government (HMG) and has advised HMG of their decision to downgrade the New Quay Lifeboat based on the evidence they have collated. HMG has not been provided with copies of the RNLI’s evidence which remains their intellectual property.

The RNLI has also advised HMG of their continuous coastal safety reviews which they carry out to evaluate their own assets on a five-yearly basis. Again, as an independent charity, the RNLI are not required to provide HMG with the written evidence of such reviews and has not done so.