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Question accordingly agreed to.Bill read the Third time, and passed.
Motion made, and Question proposed, pursuant to Standing Order No. 54 (Consolidated Fund Bills), That this House do now adjourn.-- [Mr. Robert G. Hughes.]
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Marchioness Disaster
12.23 am
Mr. Nigel Spearing (Newham, South) : I have no pleasure in raising the subject of the Marchioness disaster. We should not be here ; it should not have happened ; and it should have been cleared up by a public inquiry.
In my Adjournment debate on 10 July last year, we were given an answer by one of the Ministers who are now present. I suspect that either he or a colleague will reply to the debate. I understand why two are present ; I think that other debates may follow. I asked at least 10 questions which were not answered in that debate. One of the singular issues was that had the Marchioness disaster happened in June or July with the House in session, there would have been a statement within a day or two. There would have been an enormous furore, and I think that there would have been a public inquiry. Anything less would not have been, and I do not believe has ever been, acceptable.
Fifty people died unexpectedly and tragically in the centre of London. It is the only disaster we have had on the Thames in over a century, since the Princess Alice went down off Beckton. That illustrates the relative safety of the Thames and makes it all the more important that something should have been done.
Three former or existing residents of my constituency, including Stephen Perks, lost their life. One of the former residents was the skipper of the Marchioness, Mr. Faldo. However, my constituency interest is not the prime motivation or interest that I have in the issue. My interest started because this is the 50th year in which I have been fairly regularly navigating the tidal Thames. It is roughly 45 years ago, about the summer of 1945, that I came down the river in a dinghy and moored somewhere near Westminster pier on a buoy when some men in a steamboat said, "Come along, sonny. Get your tea out and moor alongside us." That was the Marchioness.
I have no commercial interest in the river, but I am a vice-president of the River Thames Society and a member of the Inland Waterways Association, Transport on Water, the Thames Traditional Boat Society and the Thames Wherry Trust. That is not the wherry of the Norfolk sort, but the traditional type which for 200 or 300 years were on the river in their thousands.
I make mistakes on the river, as we all do on the road. One looks back afterwards, grateful that others were not making a mistake at the same time. So I have considerable sympathy for both men--one drowned and one alive--who were involved in the incident as skippers. Old Father Thames may seem nice in many ways, and he is ; but he is a nasty old man between Blackfriars and the Tower.
Usually I tend to be rather detailed and legalistic. I hope that the House will forgive me if I become more colloquial in recounting the complex and horrific story of the events that took place after the disaster. I do not want to give way, except to Front-Bench spokesmen if they really wish to intervene.
This has been a story of inaction. After King's Cross and the incident at Clapham, there were, quite rightly, big inquiries. An inquiry asks questions and reveals and the Government and all of us should assist that process. Unfortunately, in this instance, as I will demonstrate, the reverse has been the case. Survivors and relatives have been thwarted not only in their attempts to get a decent
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public inquiry, but even in the matters that they have raised. I do not believe that they have been dealt with in the way that the House would wish.After the refusal by the then Secretary of State for Transport to grant a public inquiry--the recess helped that--a former Director of Public Prosecutions brought a case. People thought that there would be action at last. It was a case about not keeping a proper lookout. In the courts, that meant that matters of liability, blame and factors other than failing to keep a lookout were not germane to the proceedings. I understand that the maximum fine for that offence was £2,000 or two years imprisonment. It meant that all other comments were sub judice. That went on for a long time. Unfortunately, the jury did not agree on the first case, and it had to be retried. The Marchioness action group, which I met, ironically, at a conference on river safety some two years after the event, opposed that prosecution. Why was it brought by the Director of Public Prosecutions, and why did not the Attorney General use his powers, under what lawyers call "nolle prosequi", to stop that prosecution taking place? Surely it was not in the public's interest. Time went on and the matter died down to an extent. It progressed only at an inquest by the Westminster coroner. I expressed concern about that at the previous debate on the matter, but I have had no satisfaction. Some of the hands of those who were drowned were removed by order of the coroner, who prevented, by some form of order, some of the next of kin from even identifying their loved ones and family.
When the case on keeping a look-out arose, the matter went sub judice and, when it was concluded some time later, despite requests from more than 30 familite at the Home Office told me :
"Under section 16(3) of the Act, the coroner may resume the adjourned inquest after the conclusion of the criminal proceedings if, in his opinion, there is sufficient cause to do so."--[ Official Report, 13 December 1993 ; Vol. 234, c. 439.]
That is usually when some other circumstances are connected with the death, but the coroner has an option to reconvene the case. In this case, he used the right not to do so, despite the clear need to take the matter further through the inquest.
Next, a private prosecution was brought by a relative of one of the deceased. Mr. Glogg's wife was drowned, and he brought a private prosecution against the owners of the Bowbelle, Ready Mixed Concrete, which is a large firm with strong links with this House, with both personnel and well-known financial connections.
The corporate case against RMC was against individual members of its management, but things went wrong. It would take too long for me to go into the complication, but the difficulty arose because the DPP intervened again. He has the power to take over a private prosecution if he thinks that it is wise to do so but, having taken it over, he can drop it.
There was an argument between him and the Marchioness action group about what was to happen. I understand that he said that he wanted to see all the group's evidence before taking a view on the matter. Members of the group thought it so outrageous that the DPP wanted to see the evidence before it was tried in court that they made
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the matter public and he then dropped it. I may not have got that absolutely right, but my description shows the difficulties that those people faced at least a year after the disaster.The prosecution went ahead, but further difficulties arose when the firm involved understanably applied for a judicial review and tried to stop the case going ahead. Although it went ahead, the magistrate--it was held in the Bow street court--said that, if it was a matter of corporate liability, the condition of the craft and how it was managed would not necessarily count. He questioned whether it could be proved that the Marchioness had turned to port, as the inquiry had showed.
In the same way, one might have an accident with a motor car that comes across one's front. He said that it was impossible to tell whether that had happened. If it had, it would have made no difference how well the ship was managed or how responsible the company was. That is my understanding of that matter.
That took us, after two years, to the report of the marine accident investigation branch. Although that report was completed and some of the material that it contained, including the recommendations, were published, the report itself--quite properly--was not due to be published.
If the Marchioness action group--I am taking this a little out of sequence- -wanted to pursue the corporate matter, as it did, it had a problem with the report, because it was about to be published. The action group went to the Attorney-General and said, "If the report is published at this time, the case that we are about to pursue based on the course of the Marchioness will be prejudiced. Please ask the Government to hold back the MAIB report, so that--as in all the other cases--the matter will be deemed sub judice, but this time on our terms, until that court case is finished." The Government did not agree.
The preface to the MAIB report is signed by Captain Marriott, who states :
"I submit my Report following the Inspector's inquiry into the collision between the passenger launch Marchioness and the aggregate dredger Bowebelle".
Although Captain Marriott was the senior man in the MAIB, it was not his inquiry. He refers to "the Inspector's inquiry". Who conducted the inquiry? That is not stated in the report. The inquiry was conducted by someone who may be known but who was not named, and was sent by his superior officer to the Secretary of State for Transport. We do not know who formally conducted the inquiry, although we might have some guesses about it.
How did that arise? Unlike a proper inquiry, if I may put it that way, a maritime inquiry of that nature comes under the Merchant Shipping Act 1979 and Statutory Instrument 1172, the Merchant Shipping (Accident Investigation) Regulations 1989, which were published only a month or two before the Marchioness disaster, and which are highly relevant. Regulation 8(2), regarding the conduct of investigations, states :
"An investigation may extend to cover all events and circumstances preceding the accident which in the opinion of the inspector may have been relevant to its cause or outcome, and also to cover the consequences of the accident and the inspector's powers shall apply accordingly."
Regulation 8(4) states :
"Upon completion of an investigation the inspector shall submit to the Chief Inspector his findings as to the facts of the accident and, where the facts cannot be certainly established, his opinion as to the most probable facts. He shall clearly distinguish
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between established facts and conjecture. He shall also submit his analysis and his conclusions together with such observations and recommendations as he thinks fit to make."The personality of the inspector who submitted his report to the Chief Inspector, Captain Marriott, is therefore most important. We are getting further and further away from what one would expect from a public inquiry in the form that one would expect, at which members of the public can volunteer information, and so on.
The MAIB report was well publicised at the time of its publication. Full summaries were sent to the press in August 1991, and it is true that it said some hard things about the way that Department of Transport officials and possibly Ministers handled safety on the Thames for a number of years. I will not quote those comments because they appear in the summaries and even more so in the Hayes report, to which I shall refer later.
It is interesting and important to note that not all the people who wanted to provide evidence did so. As I understand it, that happened without much knowledge of the victims who were on the boat or their families.
I am told that many of those who survived the traumatic incident gave statements to the police, and that was all they heard about it. One person of whom I know had to make great efforts to give evidence to the MAIB inquiry. Other people did not know that they had the opportunity to do so. Advertisements were placed in newspapers. Does that mean that the survivors' addresses were unknown? It was an extraordinary way to go about things.
I did not know the position at the time. I knew that the Bowbelle had been involved in several accidents before that disaster--neither the Bowbelle nor its sister ship was unknown on the river. As soon as the report was published, I looked to see what it could tell me about the accidents that I had seen in Lloyd's List. Out of seven or eight accidents of which I knew, only one was included in the report. I immediately wrote to the Secretary of State for Transport, who was then the right hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Mr. Rifkind). In my letter I stated that the Bowbelle had been involved in six accidents that were not mentioned in the report, and that there must be something wrong.
I found that many factors were wrong. I read the report and found that it raised as many questions as it answered. I wanted to know so many facts that were not included in the report. There were so many omissions and massive gaps that I could not regard it as a thorough or complete report. It was necessary to know the river to be able to identify them. I concentrated on the six accidents that were not reported. I corresponded with the hon. Member for Derbshire, West (Mr. McLoughlin), who was then a junior Transport Minister and we had a sort of tennis match in Hansard on complex issues.
On 12 December 1991, the Minister eventually told me that he had received no representations about omissions of relevant facts from the investigation. I said that I had sent him a letter asked questions only to be told that they were not relevant. The Minister's reply continued :
"The letter of 19 August from the hon. Member was received on 20 August : I replied on 19 September. That letter from the hon. Member was not considered to be a representation about relevant facts in the context of the Marchioness report. The marine accident investigation branch inspectors were aware of the number of incidents involving vessels, including Bowbelle, which had occurred prior to the tragic accident that they were
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investigating. Section 15 of the report discussed the reaction of the owners, PLA and the Department at some length. To have gone into detail on each incident would have greatly lengthened that section without adding to its value ; the reason for singling out the incidents described in annex 11 of the report is that they had particular similarities to the Marchioness case."--[ Official Report , 12 December 1991 ; Vol. 200, c. 511 .]One of the cases happened in Sydney harbour in 1927. The six that I had singled out were not mentioned. The answer also mentioned "detail on each incident"--I was not asking for detail ; I just wanted the matter listed.
Eventually, on 21 January 1992, the subject was placed on the record when I asked the Secretary of State for Transport whether he would draw the accidents to the attention of the Hayes inquiry established by him. The gaps in the report included the fact that it contained no account of the career or experience of both masters. There was no real investigation of the intensity of illumination--at least of the Bowbelle's lights. The inspector said that, if Captain Faldo had turned and the boat was in the line of vision, it was possible that he did not see it.
The report contained no description of the tidal sets--streams that run sideways across the river--which are important ; or the depth of the water at that time. Speed tests were not carried out on the Bowbelle. There was no transcript of the Thames navigation service radio, which transmitted messages from various boats at that time. The transcript that is now in the Library has the phrase "unknown vessel" against one of the key transmissions.
Later--I emphasise that--the report states that both boats went through the centre arches of Southwark bridge. That is what the report says, and everybody agrees with it. There was no discussion about convergence speeds or line of sight at that point.
Most important of all, because rumour was rampant on the river at that time, there was no reference to when police took statements from those who were mainly concerned. I do not repeat rumour, but I can ask questions. There was a rumour, not mentioned in the report or denied, that a representative of Ready Mixed Concrete was aboard Bowbelle before the police. That may not be true ; I do not know. All I am saying is that that was believed by some people. I ask the question : was that true or not true? Why was not it dealt with in the report as a matter of routine description?
We move to the next phase, when the Marchioness action group met the Secretary of State and asked for an inquiry. He had to do something about that, did he not? He then produced the Hayes report into river safety. That was trumpeted around, and resulted in headlines in the press. I shall quote the Department of Transport press release dated 19 December 1991. It was headed :
"Marchioness : river safety inquiry announced",
and said :
"An independent investigation is to take place of the Department of Transport's past and present handling of river safety, Malcolm Rifkind, Secretary of State for Transport announced today." I do not know who wrote the headline. We have problems of our own in the subbing of headlines.
In fact, the Hayes inquiry was not into the Marchioness disaster. Its terms of reference stated :
"In the light of the Marchioness/Bowbelle disaster to examine the handling since 1980 by the Department of Transport of its responsibility for the safety of vessels on rivers and inland waters and to report on the effectiveness of the present approach. The enquiry should take account of developments in the field of marine safety at the international level."
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In correspondence, Mr. Hayes made it quite clear that, while he could consider that disaster and take some lessons from it, he was not entitled either to investigate the disaster itself or still less to make an evaluation of the MAIB report. Those terms of reference were set out in Cm 1991, which is the Hayes report published by the Government.A remarkable statement was made in paragraph 1.7 of the report, when Mr. Hayes said :
"When the disaster occurred I understand that the decision not to order a public inquiry was taken at No. 10 Downing Street on advice from the Department."
I do not suppose that the Minister can tell us why that was the advice. I should very much like to know. The only reason that I have heard was that, as in the case of an air disaster, the technical people could deal with it rather better than a public inquiry. One of the principal recommendations of the Hayes report was : "There should be an early review of the rescue arrangements and equipment on the Thames which should take account of the Marchioness/Bowbelle disaster."
As the Hayes committee would not have been set up but for that disaster, we automatically expected that that would be accepted by the Department, because it was surely one of the principal recommendations.
I have lost count of the blockages that occurred in this sad story, but I shall cite another involving the present Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Norfolk, South (Mr. MacGregor). In his reply to the Hayes report, he said :
"The Government have given careful consideration to the recommendation but have concluded that a further review of this kind would not be justified. Action is, however, being taken to ensure that the lessons have been fully assimilated."--[ Official Report , 7 July 1992 ; Vol. 211, c. 101 .]
One of the prime reasons for setting up the Hayes committee, even if, contrary to public expectation, it did not consider the Marchioness disaster, as that misleading headline suggested it might, was not accepted. But it gets worse, if one can imagine that. On 19 July, a year later, the hon. Member for Romford (Sir M. Neubert) asked the Secretary of State for Transport :
"which recommendations in the marine accident investigation branch report into the collision between the Marchioness and the Bowbelle have now been implemented and what action has been taken on the recommendations in the report of the inquiry into river safety, the Hayes report."
I am sorry to say that the Minister for Transport in London, who is present in the Chamber, answered thus :
"The MAIB report into the loss of the Marchioness contained 27 recommendations. All have now been implemented. The Hayes report contained 22 recommendations, and action is in hand on all."--[ Official Report , 19 July 1993 ; Vol. 229, c. 78 .]
That is the nearest thing that I have seen to a falsehood in Hansard in my career. I hoped that I have phrased that correctly. That leads, I think, to block six. I have lost count. We have stopped at almost every point. Requests for further action and a public inquiry were rejected. It was said, "Ah, we have had two court cases and two reports and all the facts are known. What more is needed? You are up a gum tree."
That was more or less the position until the debate that I initiated a year ago, when the 10 questions that I posed were not answered and which, unfortunately, did not receive much media attention--at least, until last Wednesday when the "Despatches" programme on
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Channel 4 went into the subject in a big way. I shall not deal with that in detail, because videos are as readily available as newspapers these days.The programme did not spend much time on the disaster, except at the end, when it was very important, but it gave the background to the ships--alas, apparently badly managed--of Ready Mixed Concrete, a large organisation the characteristics of which I mentioned en passant a short while ago.
Several crew members of the vessels gave various accounts of what had happened. It may be that some will be questioned by the company ; no doubt they will. The programme dealt with many things, some of which hon. Members may wish to refer to, which cast light on the management of all the vessels in the concern involved. It also made it clear that the evidence and experiences of various witnesses and survivors of the incident had not been taken into account in the MAIB report.
The programme went on to show, as the MAIB report says, that the facts suggested that, under all the circumstances, it was probable that the Marchioness sank somewhere between Southwark bridge and Canon street railway bridge, perhaps nearer to the latter, and was probably turning to port when it was run down. That is broadly what the MAIB reports says. Most of the evidence not all of it--in the courts and taken by the MAIB suggested that that was so.
The programme suggested that at least there was some evidence the other way. But that evidence was not in the MAIB report, probably because, as I have said, it was not easy to give evidence to the inquiry. How could people know about it when details were not widely circulated, at least according to my information?
Yet time after time, Minister after Minister talked airily, as all Ministers do, about there having been a full and thorough inquiry, with all the facts having been made known. That was not so. They were brought out in the programme on Wednesday.
Therefore, I asked a question which was answered the day after the programme. I asked the Secretary of State for Transport
"if he will now reconsider the decisions made not to establish a public inquiry into the Marchioness disaster of comparable scope to those already conducted into the disasters at King's Cross and Clapham."
The reply was :
"When the then Secretary of State considered the need for a public inquiry he concluded that the holding of a formal investigation was unnecessary given that a full, thorough and comprehensive inquiry had been carried out by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch--MAIB. Subsequently, the view has remained that a formal investigation would be unlikely to add to the inspector's findings,"--
I suggest that it would be likely to do so--
"or to the 27 safety recommendations made in the MAIB report. The position was not changed by anything said in the Hayes report, which made no suggestion that a further inquiry into the accident was needed."
Of course, the report made a recommendation which was not taken up that an inquiry should be held into safety in general. The answer continues :
"I therefore remain of the view that the case for a formal inquiry has not been made."--[ Official Report, 9 December 1993 ; Vol. 234, c. 341. ]
That was the day after the broadcast.
Some people were stirred by the broadcast, including some survivors. I have received two letters since the broadcast which I should like to quote. One was from a lady called Gillian Moseley, who wrote :
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"I am a survivor of the disaster and was the first person to climb out of the Boat after the Bowbelle ran over us and once the Marchioness bobbed back up'. I was in shock at the time and my senses were heightened and I described to many people the open water I came up in. We were definitely on the west of Southwark bridge and I was horrified to learn from the programme that it was assumed otherwise, and that this assumption was the basis of false conclusions which closed the case."It is true that the river may have been running at 2 or 3 knots and people may have been swept up river, but what about the letter from Mr. Simon Hook? Mr. Hook was a survivor. He was in a WC cubicle at the time of the collision. He said :
"there was a window on my left which was square with curved edges. The bottom part of the window was blacked out. The top part of the window slid open to let the air in and it was possible to see out. The Marchioness was on a straight course and had not changed course in any way when there was an initial lurch to the side as if something had hit us. At the time my hand was in the open window and I used this to steady myself. As the Marchioness lurched over on one side I saw through the open window, the underside of a bridge overhead the boat. I now believe this was Southwark Bridge. I could see the bridge because as we tipped up there was some light coming from the Marchioness and then immediately afterwards the lights went out.
Before seeing the television programme I did not know that the official report and the prosecution had been based on the disaster occurring between Cannon Street and Southwark Bridge. I know from my own observation that this is not the case and that the Marchioness was under Southwark Bridge and can confirm what was said on the television programme by the eye witnesses on the Hurlingham." They were the people who did not speak--the Sherlock Holmes dogs who were not allowed to bark. The Hurlingham rescued many survivors from the terrible tragedy. The skipper and many passengers were aboard that boat, some of whom gave evidence on the television programme which was contrary to the conclusions of the official inquiry.
The House cannot judge what evidence was right. We are not an inquiry which can do that. All I am saying is that there is evidence contrary to that included in the official inquiry, and that witnesses were not heard and apparently were not sought.
I asked a question, answered today by the Minister for Transport in London- -the same person who answered previous questions, I make it plain, for the Secretary of State and previous Secretaries of State. I asked the Secretary of State :
"what relevant facts he now has in his possession, or have been drawn to his attention, which in his opinion are additional to those set out in the report of the Marine Accident Investigation Branch concerning the "Marchioness" disaster."
The answer was :
"None."
The witnesses may have got it wrong under cross-questioning, but can it really be said that the facts drawn to the Minister's attention are irrelevant ? I do not think so.
So my submission is that the official report on which so much has been based, including the evidence about the turn to port between the bridges rather than possibly being struck under the middle of Southwark bridge, is that the report is inept, inadequate, incomplete, incompetent, inefficient, probably incorrect and was taken in private in Orpington--by a unnamed inspector. It might have been Mr. Marriott or Captain DeCoverley--I do not know.
A decent inquiry would have been held not only in public but in Greenwich, Southwark or Westminster. There is an inquest court and a high court in Westminster, and
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this is the high court--Parliament, where we must question not only Ministers' handling of this matter but the Department's handling of marine matters and the handling by the Government, successive Secretaries of State, Attorneys-General and the past DPP. I put that point to the Leader of the House on Thursday, who, again reading his brief, said :"I am advised that no new evidence has been produced to warrant a further inquiry and that the evidence cited in the television programme covered no ground that was not examined during the MAIB investigation."--[ Official Report , 9 December 1993 ; Vol. 234, c. 488.]
Anyone who has seen that video and read the report could not go along with that. I do not think that the Lord President does so, but he said that the inquiry had covered the ground, and I hope that I have covered quite a lot of the water.
The MAIB is not an awfully well regarded organisation. It has been heavily criticised in relation to other matters, and the recent record on maritime safety has not been good. The Derbyshire incident has not been dealt with and questions remain unanswered about the Pescado and the Ocean Hound.
It is no good the Government saying, "Let us do it like aircraft inquiries," at which the interests of passengers and the financial interests of air companies are in harmony. At inquiries into incidents involving cargo vessels, the interests of the safety of the crew and the financial interests of owners are in conflict. I shall conclude by asking some questions. Why did the DPP initiate the case? Why did he then try to stop, in effect, a private prosecution? Why did not the coroner complete his investigation? Why were hands cut off? Why did the coroner deny identification? Why did not the Attorney-General apply nolle prosequi, and why did not he postpone the publication of the MAIB report so that the case could have got on? Why did not the Secretary of State have a Clapham or King's Cross style inquiry? Why did not he implement the recommendation of the Hayes report? Why are Ministers trying to say that they did, when they did not?
Every hon. Member whose constituent was drowned or who represents a grieving family or friend has a right to know why the Government do not want a public inquiry--and London wants to know, too.
1.2 am
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