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Dr. Godman: On the question of charges, what of charges relating to Coastguard duties? Why are the Secretary of State and his officials so--I nearly said hostile--so reluctant to address the concerns felt by many about vessels steaming through the Minch? In a recent two-month period, 450 ships passed through the Minch, of which 25 per cent. passed through improperly, that is, they failed to report in to the Coastguard. Why do we not have a compulsory Coastguard reporting scheme for the Minch?
Sir George Young: I shall look at the hon. Gentleman's suggestion and see whether we can respond positively to it. We do not propose to include charges for search and rescue under these facilities.
Mr. Eric Clarke: I thank the Secretary of State for giving way--I know that we may be trying his patience, but it is important that we know whether the ocean-going tugs that are stationed at strategic points around the United Kingdom will be covered by the insurance. There has been talk of some of them being withdrawn because no one can subsidise their provision. Will that be covered in the plan?
Sir George Young: The position is that, for the past three winters, there have been emergency tugs stationed by the Government in certain key places--on the Dover straits and up at Stornoway and, recently, one was
introduced on the south-west approach. Those are broadly the priorities that Donaldson recommends. When I spoke a moment ago about what the powers might cover, I said that they could include the standing costs of emergency response and emergency towing, so those could, indeed, be included in the charging regime that I have just touched on.
There are some other measures in the Bill. The opportunity is being taken to introduce a number of minor changes to merchant shipping legislation. For example, clause 23 provides for the Government to enter into international agreements concerning the protection of wrecks. Recent years have seen dramatic progress in underwater diving techniques and virtually all wrecks are now accessible to commercial salvors if they believe that there is an opportunity for commercial gain. We believe that we should take a reserve power to enable us to control those activities. We would use the power when necessary, to ensure that proper respect is paid to the final resting place of those who perished on a wreck. That would fill a gap left by the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973 and the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986.
Mr. Nigel Spearing (Newham, South):
Would it not be helpful if, in the miscellaneous areas that the right hon. Gentleman mentioned in respect of amending earlier merchant shipping Acts, there be added the contents of a private Member's Bill that was moved in the 1975 Session, which provided that where a Secretary of State does not order a public inquiry when lives have been lost, those affected can apply to the High Court, to ensure that the Secretary of State calls such an inquiry? Without that power, should such important matters be left only to a single brain?
Sir George Young:
I have every sympathy with the hon. Gentleman's point, which refers back to the Marchioness tragedy. In that case, there was a marine accident investigation branch inquiry and the jury accepted its findings. Despite the hon. Gentleman's powerful case, I am not persuaded that it would be right to have an additional power for a member of the victim's family to ask for a public inquiry in those cases.
Clause 19 excludes the Royal National Lifeboat Institution from the Coastguard's power to summon vessels to assist other ships that are wrecked, stranded or in distress. That has been done at the RNLI's request, to ensure that it retains control of its vessels at a local level. In addition, RNLI vessels are provided to save lives rather than property, but the existing legislation would allow them to be used for both. The Coastguard does not and would not use those powers in practice and we are happy to rule out the legal possibility. The RNLI and Her Majesty's Coastguard work together closely and the two organisations enjoy excellent relations between officers at all levels. I welcome this opportunity to pay tribute to the invaluable contribution that the RNLI makes to safety at sea.
The Bill contains a package of carefully designed measures, many of which originated from Lord Donaldson's thorough report and which have been the subject of extensive consultation with a wide range of interested parties. I am sure that the House will join me in wishing to see those measures implemented as quickly as possible, and I commend the Bill to the House.
Mr. Harry Barnes (North-East Derbyshire):
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I have waited until
I tabled a parliamentary question to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, asking him to supply information in the Library about electoral registration in each constituency, because the new registers come into operation on 16 February. That question was transferred to the chief executive of the Office for National Statistics, and the reply came from the ONS. The reply is that the ONS is preparing a monitor, detailing electors on the 1997 electoral register, by the new parliamentary constituencies. It will be published by early April 1997, and will be placed in the Library on publication date.
It is highly unacceptable that, although we can readily discover the numbers in our own constituency, we must wait until April--possibly after the general election--to see the national pattern, so that we may find out how many people are in each constituency and compare the number of people who may be missing from local electoral registers with the national figures.
I seek your assistance, Mr. Deputy Speaker, regarding ways in which the House may have placed before it essential information that will be in the hands of the Office for National Statistics by 16 February, so that it can be published early--for instance, in duplicated form. Thus we would not have to wait until it was printed in the monitor.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris):
The hon. Gentleman has been in the House for many years. As he points out, the official date is next week. It seems to me that that leaves several days for him to use his considerable ingenuity to ensure that that point, having been raised on the Floor of the House, is dealt with adequately.
Mr. Andrew Smith (Oxford, East):
This is a vital Bill, and it is no less important for being in many respects uncontentious.
Lives at sea and the security of our marine environment need better protection. I hope that there is general agreement on that. Further to the remark that my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) made about the time available for the debate, perhaps we have the answer in the disgraceful sparsity of Conservative Back Benchers. It is a great pity that more Conservative Members are not taking an interest in the debate.
Labour Members welcome the Bill in principle and in its implementation of many of the recommendations of Lord Donaldson's report. We join the Secretary of State in praising the work of Lord Donaldson and his colleagues. Their report is a work of tremendous authority, which has received international acclaim.
We know that there is no room for complacency on the action needed to improve both the prevention of shipping accidents and pollution and the procedures for tackling them effectively when they occur. But for extraordinary good fortune, the Braer disaster, which gave rise to the Donaldson inquiry, would have been many times worse. This coming Saturday, 15 February, will be the first
anniversary of the Sea Empress disaster, in which 72,000 tonnes of crude oil and 360 tonnes of heavy fuel oil were spilt, affecting much marine life, 7,000 birds and miles of the most beautiful coastline in Britain.
Only three weeks ago, there was a collision in the channel; 9,000 tonnes of unleaded petrol leaked, which caused airborne pollution to rain down on large parts of England. Today, we have had disturbing reports of an illegal discharge from a vessel in the English channel; already, nearly 200 oiled birds have been found near Portsmouth.
Those disasters are but a part of the wider problem of smaller maritime accidents and spillages. In 1985, there were 366 reported oil spills in United Kingdom waters; by 1995 that figure had increased by one third to 585, with 142 incidents requiring partial or total clean-up operations. The Library brief points out that members of Lord Donaldson's inquiry were kept informed of the more significant maritime incidents, and were moved to remark that they were
As both unions and shipowners have repeatedly warned, the high quality provided by the British merchant fleet and its seafarers is undermined by the growth of flagging out and competition from lower-quality carriers. The decline in the British merchant fleet is such that the number of UK-owned vessels registered in the United Kingdom and dependencies has fallen to a quarter of its 1979 level. Then, we were fourth in the world in gross tonnage, with 7 per cent. of the market; now, we are 29th with barely 1 per cent. Jobs and skills have been haemorrhaging from the industry. It is clear that we need not only action on Donaldson, but action to halt and reverse the decline in the British merchant fleet.
The wider considerations--the importance of the international context and the competitiveness of the British shipping industry--have an important bearing on our consideration of the Bill. They must be reasons for taking the right action, not excuses for inaction. I am confident that the public will overwhelmingly support the measures required to improve prevention and emergency action on shipping accidents and pollution.
We welcome the main provisions of the Bill. On prevention, we welcome, subject to questions of detail, the proposals on safety standards, inspection and detention of unseaworthy vessels in UK waters, the power to move vessels on, the application of safety standards to fish transhipment ships--the so-called klondykers--and measures to improve port waste facilities. We also welcome the inclusion in the Bill of enabling powers whereby the Government can require compulsory insurance or other security for liabilities.
We do well to keep in mind the two points that Lord Donaldson made in the other place. First, he said that some form of approved contract of insurance is needed if
the requirement is not to be worthless in practice. Secondly, he said that, through international agreement if necessary, there should be a means whereby those with claims against a ship can directly enforce them against the insurer, so that a shipowner cannot simply waltz off with the money.
On the provisions for dealing with emergencies, we support the establishment of exclusion zones on grounds of safety or pollution threat, the proposed stronger powers of intervention where significant pollution may arise, and their extension to the 200-mile limit. However, we have questions on a number of areas, which we will pursue in Committee.
Clause 13 and schedule 2 provide for charges for maritime functions, including the standing costs of tackling pollution and standard setting. We understand the fears voiced by the shipping industry that unilateral application of such charges could damage the competitiveness of British ports, and we note that Lord Donaldson recommended that the Government should consult their European Union partners and others to establish a common basis for them.
The principle that the polluter and the potential polluter should pay undoubtedly makes sense, and I understand that the Government support it, but how are we to implement that principle without causing unfair disadvantage to the UK shipping industry, which is already at a fiscal disadvantage compared with many of its competitors? It would be helpful if the Minister would tell us what progress the Government have made in international discussions on this matter. It would also be useful to know whether the Government have agreed that the income from such charges should be dedicated to the maritime services for which they were levied, and by what mechanism. That was another point that Lord Donaldson pressed in the other place.
Recommendation 59 of the Donaldson report called for the identification of a limited number of marine environmental high risk areas, or MEHRAs, that ships should routinely avoid because of their particular environmental sensitivity. Unless I missed it, I was surprised that the Secretary of State did not refer to that. When the issue was raised in the other place, the Government argued that amendments to the Bill were unnecessary as identification of MEHRAs was in progress and such a measure could be implemented without further legislation. It has been almost three years since the publication of the Donaldson report, and the Government have not yet produced specific proposals. The fact that it has been suggested that Skomer, which is off the Pembrokeshire coast and near the location of the grounding of the Sea Empress, should be identified as a MEHRA clearly shows the relevance of action on this issue.
The Secretary of State may be aware of the widespread support for the proposals that has been expressed by the general public and by a range of environmental organisations. I was disappointed to read the comments of the Minister in the other place, who said in Committee that agreement on the environmental criteria was still some way off. I should like to press the Minister to confirm whether the Government are committed to the establishment of MEHRAs, and what time scale is envisaged before they are in place.
Why cannot the identification of MEHRAs complement other, wider, international developments? The International Maritime Organisation's "particularly sensitive sea areas" and the European Union's "marine environmentally sensitive areas" would complement the establishment of MEHRAs. Indeed, the latter could be candidates for the former. I urge the Government to take the lead in the designation and protection of such sites by pressing for faster progress through the IMO and the EC.
Notwithstanding the reported success of the existing voluntary routing measures, I am sure that, more than four years after the Braer disaster, none of us would want to have to confront, at some time in the future, an environmental catastrophe that could have been averted by quicker and more effective action now.
I want to press the Minister on emergency towing vessels. As Lord Donaldson said, they are an important part of the precautions that can be taken to rescue and protect vessels in difficulty. It is a cruel irony that a tug was not placed in the western approaches until eight months after the Sea Empress disaster. What is more, Donaldson proposed year-round tug provision in three key areas, and winter-only provision as a purely interim measure. The current winter-only provision is on a trial basis. When does the Minister expect the review of that cover to be complete, and what provision has been made in the public expenditure forecast for cover in future years? Although the weather plays a large part in incidents of ships in difficulty, the problems do not arise solely because of the weather, and hazardous weather is not confined to the winter.
On the control of emergency salvage operations, we welcome clause 2, which strengthens the Secretary of State's power. The Donaldson report made it clear that the buck stops with the Secretary of State: a point that he stressed in the recent debates in the other place. We note that powers of intervention were not exercised in the case of the Sea Empress. My hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke (Mr. Ainger), whose expertise in these matters is a service to the House as well as to his constituents, has previously pointed out how crucial it is for the right level of expertise to be available to the Secretary of State, to enable him to step in effectively and early enough to safeguard the interests of the public, seafarers and the environment.
Will the Minister tell us, in response, what the contingency arrangements are, and what specialist advice and command structure stands ready at short notice to ensure the effective exercise of the powers in the Bill? It will be no good having the powers in clause 2 if they cannot be used properly.
On port waste reception facilities, we welcome the work that has already been done, and to which the Secretary of State referred, to address the problems of waste facilities and discharge requirements. I understand that about a third of the 350 UK ports and harbours have already forwarded their plans to the Marine Safety Agency.
4.36 pm
"shocked to discover just how many potentially serious incidents there were."
With 8,000 miles of coastline, heavily trafficked sea lanes and often hazardous weather conditions, Britain is particularly vulnerable to the dangers that substandard vessels and human error present in an industry in which ferocious international competition is not matched by sufficiently rigorous international enforcement of standards. It is profoundly disturbing that port state control inspections show that 60 per cent. of vessels are deficient in some respect, with 6 per cent. bad enough to warrant detention.
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