House of Commons
Wednesday 3 July 1996
The House met at half-past Nine o'clock
PRAYERS
[Madam Speaker in the Chair]
MV Derbyshire
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. McLoughlin.]
9.34 am
Mr. Don Dixon (Jarrow): I thank you, Madam Speaker, for giving us the opportunity to raise this issue on the Floor of the House this morning.
Many of my hon. Friends and I are annoyed and disgusted at the cavalier way in which the Government have treated the investigation and the MV Derbyshire Family Association--people who lost their loved ones in the tragedy some 16 years ago. I shall come to the details later, but first I pay tribute to the many people and organisations that have kept the issue on the political agenda for many years, including my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Garston (Mr. Loyden), who has done more work than anyone in the House to keep the matter in the public eye. He has initiated emergency debates under Standing Order No. 20, tabled early-day motions, asked numerous questions, raised the matter in an Adjournment debate and presented a petition. He has been relentless in trying to get at the truth about this terrible disaster, as have other Members of Parliament whose constituents lost their relatives on the Derbyshire, not least my hon. Friends the Members for Stockton, North (Mr. Cook) and for Sunderland, North (Mr. Etherington).
I also pay tribute to my old comrade, Jim Slater, who was general secretary--later president--of the National Union of Seamen. Jim spent the last years of his life fighting to get at the truth about the Derbyshire. Indeed, I recall sitting one Sunday evening at Littlehaven harbour in South Shields, watching the ships coming into the Tyne--something my wife and I often do on a Sunday night after I have left this place and gone back to civilisation--when Jim came along, taking his youngster for a walk. Within minutes, we were talking about the Derbyshire. Jim always had it on his mind. Unfortunately, that was the last time I spoke to him, as he died shortly afterwards while attending a war veterans' rally in Liverpool.
I also pay tribute to Paul Lambert, chairman of the MV Derbyshire Family Association, who lost his brother on the ship, and to the rest of the association. Those people have fought so hard and shown such patience in their fight for the truth and natural justice for their relatives who perished on the Derbyshire.
Mr. Dafydd Wigley (Caernarfon):
My right hon. Friend will be aware that I lost two constituents, Peter Taylor and Griffith Wyn Williams, on the Derbyshire. In view of what he was saying about the rights of the
Mr. Dixon:
I totally agree with my hon. Friend, and I shall come to that point later. I appreciate that he has also taken an interest and attended our meetings in the House.
I also pay tribute to the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers--formally the National Union of Seamen--which has been involved ever since the sinking; to the International Transport Workers Federation, which located the wreck; and to Dave Ramwell and Tim Madge, authors of the book "A Ship Too Far--The Mystery of the Derbyshire". I would recommend that book to anyone, and I sincerely hope that the Minister has read it.
On 29 January this year, I received a letter from Paul Lambert, chairman of the MV Derbyshire Family Association, in which he informed me that, at a meeting 10 days earlier, he was told by Mr. Frank Wall, representing the Department of Transport, that there would be no nominated experts from the association on the forthcoming return to the wreck of the Derbyshire. Following those representations from Paul Lambert, I wrote to the Secretary of State for Transport on 6 February, requesting that nominated experts from the MV Derbyshire Family Association be allowed on the forthcoming return to the wreck. I received a reply on 4 April from the Minister for Aviation and Shipping, saying that careful consideration was being given to my request, that he hoped to reach a decision soon and that he would let me have a substantive reply as soon as he had done so.
On 10 June, the Minister for Aviation and Shipping wrote to me, saying:
Not until the loss of the Kowloon Bridge in 1986 did a formal investigation into the loss of the Derbyshire take place, six years after it sank. Had it not been for the efforts of those I have mentioned and the hon. Members who are here this morning, the Government probably would not have revealed the truth.
Let me give a few details of the tragedy. No doubt other hon. Members will elaborate on them. The Derbyshire was built by Swan Hunter at Haverton Hill, Teesside, in 1976. She was the last of the six Bridge class oil-bulk-ore combination carriers, which were the first of their kind to be built in the United Kingdom. The six ships were the Furness Bridge, later renamed the Marcona Pathfinder and launched in 1971; the Tynebridge, later renamed the East Bridge and launched in 1972; the English Bridge, later renamed the Kowloon Bridge and launched in 1973; the Sir John Hunter, later renamed Cast Kittiwake and
launched in 1974; the Sir Alexander Glen, launched in 1975; and the Liverpool Bridge, later renamed the Derbyshire, launched in 1976.
Of those six ships, only the first, the Furness Bridge, was built to the original design. Three of them had to undergo repairs at frame 65 to restore them to the original design and make them seaworthy. That left two, the Kowloon Bridge and the Derbyshire. The Derbyshire sank in September 1980, some 200 miles off Japan in the South China sea--amid waves, in a typhoon that she should easily have braved--while carrying iron ore concentrate from Canada to Japan, with the loss of 44 lives. She plunged two miles, so rapidly that there was no time to send a distress signal. There was not even time for an SOS.
The ship was 145 ft wide, the width of a six-lane motorway, and 1,000 ft long, the length of three football pitches. She was twice the size of the Titanic. She was only four years old--three working years old--and she remains the largest ship ever lost from the British register. Forty-four people died on the Derbyshire, of whom 42 were crew--officers and ratings--and two were wives of officers on board.
Despite the loss of so many lives, no formal investigation was carried out. Given such a massive loss of life, such an investigation should have been the norm rather than the exception; but, notwithstanding normal practice, the Minister announced in May 1981 that there was not enough evidence to justify an inquiry, although all the Derbyshire's sister ships had experienced problems.
On 11 March 1982, on a passage from Hamburg to Brazil, the Tynebridge--the second in the six-ship series--encountered a North sea storm, and started to split badly around frame 65. Such was the captain's concern that he arranged for most of the crew to be airlifted to safety. The ship, with a skeleton crew, was towed to Hamburg. Inspection of the ship in dry dock showed that she had not been built to design, and the damage was attributed to the change in the method of connecting the cargo section of the hull to the aft-end engine room section. The region affected was frame 65, which coincided with one of the ship's ribs. Let me explain to those who do not know the construction of ships that a ship's ribs that run horizontally are referred to as longitudinals, while those that run vertically are called frames. The frames are numbered from the aft rather than the forward end: frame 65 is near the aft end.
So alarmed were the surveyors of the damage to the Tynebridge that, unsolicited, they sent out warnings to the owners of similarly built sister ships. Two were given some strengthening treatment in the same year after similar damage was found in embryo form, and those repairs made the ships seaworthy for the first time. If actions speak louder than words, this is what the repairs said. First, the longitudinals--the spinal girders--should not have been terminated at and welded into the transverse bulkhead; they should have carried straight through the bulkhead.
"we have concluded that it would not be appropriate for the Derbyshire Family Association . . . to be represented on the return expeditions."
In January, an official from the Department of Transport told Paul Lambert that no member of the association would be represented. Six months later, after careful consideration, the Minister confirmed that. Like many other hon. Members who are present today, I do not believe that the Government ever intended to allow the association to be represented. That illustrates the shabby and disgraceful way in which they have treated the association.
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