Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Kramer on 3 November 2014 (HL2234) concerning the crash of Malaysian Airways flight MH17, whether they will encourage the Dutch Safety Board to publish an interim report on their findings of the causes of the crash; whether the crash investigation team at Farnborough have completed their investigation of the black boxes; and if so, whether their findings will be published in the near future.

The investigation is being conducted within the framework of Annex 13 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation by the Dutch Safety Board (OVV). The OVV is an independent organisation, which makes its own decisions on when to publish its reports. We understand that the OVV expects to publish its final report within a year of the crash.

The OVV requested the assistance of the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) to recover information stored within both flight recorders (Black Boxes). This work, which was completed on 25 July 2014, was carried out in the AAIB laboratories at Farnborough in the presence of the OVV, the Dutch police and a number of International participants. Subsequently, all of the recordings, and the recorders themselves, were handed back to the OVV and transported back to Holland. The AAIB did not conduct any analysis of the recordings and were not permitted to retain any copies of the information.