Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60
- 79)
WEDNESDAY 24 NOVEMBER 1999
MR DAVID
ROWLANDS, MR
ROY GRIFFINS
AND MR
DAVID COOKE
Miss McIntosh
60. Have they applied for permits, is my question?
(Mr Rowlands) The position is that all foreign airlines
apply for and receive permits for the winter season at the end
of October.
Chairman
61. So they have the permits.
(Mr Rowlands) Yes. What we have done for legal reasons
is, I believe, put a provision into their permits along the lines
described by Mr Griffins to allow for them to be suspended.
62. You do understand that, firstly, this is
an urgent situation. The Committee is not exaggerating. One thing
which is absolutely certain is that we all get older and time
is moving on. Frankly, I personally, and I can only speak for
myself, am very worried about these answers because I do not know
how long it will take after you get the information before you
decide whether somebody should have their permit suspended, I
do not know how many of these airlines are the sort which are
flying over central London—as I was told in a written answer
to a question—sometimes with empty tanks, I do not know
how I am going to get that information out into the public sector
on the kind of slightly leisurely responses we seem to get from
the Department.
(Mr Rowlands) I did not undertake to write to you
this week and I think in writing to you we will set out in full
the timetable associated with this and the other points that you
have raised.
Chairman: All right, Mr Rowlands, we shall definitely
want to keep you to that. Can we move on to some of the other
questions?
Miss McIntosh
63. Does the Department share my concern that
the Channel Tunnel will not be in a known state of preparedness
for the millennium compliance because they are only going to do
the shut-down tests during the millennium period?
(Mr Rowlands) Perhaps it would help if I described
what has happened with the Channel Tunnel. The millennium compliance
programme which is overseen by the Anglo-French Intergovernmental
Commission and the Channel Tunnel Safety Authority has been running
for some considerable time. That programme has involved systems
testing and systems verification as well as the production of
the necessary contingency planning which has finally been completed
after we produced the memorandum for the Committee, because I
think it suggests that a little bit of work still needs to be
done. What they will be doing when the Tunnel itself is shut over
the period from 10 o'clock at night on 31 December to, I think,
8 o'clock in the morning on the 1 January, although there is no
commercial service, as a final check, is running trains through
the Tunnel to ensure those steps they have taken actually do work.
So it is the final piece of the jigsaw. It is not as if they had
not tested anything hitherto and they were simply relying on a
test which would happen while the Tunnel was shut. Extensive testing
has taken place but the only time in the real world and in real
time when you can test what happens really over the date change
is at the time itself, and that is what they are using the ten
hour shut-down as an opportunity to do.
64. So are there contingency plans if failures
are shown to occur during that period?
(Mr Rowlands) Yes, they have got that as part of the
Business Continuity Planning. Perhaps I ought to say that in looking
at millennium compliance Euro Tunnel has also established, if
you like, end-to-end compliance because it is not just about the
tunnel itself, it is about the interfaces with Railtrack, SNCF
and SNCB. In that context they have furnished to the inter-governmental
commission the necessary compliance documentation and statements
for the three rail systems that they run over.
Chairman
65. They are not very good at supplying information,
Euro Tunnel and the companies that are involved, are they, Mr
Rowlands?
(Mr Rowlands) I think for these purposes they have
supplied all of the information that one would expect to see.
I suppose the test of that is that the inter-governmental commission
has been advised by the Channel Tunnel Safety Authority, which
again is an Anglo-French body, and the British side of it is the
HSE through the Railway Inspectorate, and they are satisfied with
the position that Eurotunnel has established.
Miss McIntosh
66. Can I ask what input the Department has
had on what the contingency plans are and on the fact that on
the Belgian side for the same period of time the railways are
going to shut down for tests? Obviously we might well be asked
by constituents and by users of that service what will happen
in the event of a failure on the Belgian side.
(Mr Rowlands) There is no expected failure on the
Belgian side. As I said, as part of this process it has been necessary
to secure a clear statement of the compliance position on Belgian
and French state railways as well as on Railtrack. That process
has produced an outcome where Eurotunnel and, through it, the
inter-governmental commission and Safety Authority are satisfied
with the position on French and Belgian railways as well.
Chairman
67. While we are told that the national rail
system is not at any significant risk, what size is any residual
risk?
(Mr Rowlands) On the national railway system in this
country I think the residual risks from millennium compliance
failures are effectively nil in terms of safety. Rail safety systems
are in the main not date dependent.
68. No, and luckily they are so old they have
not got around to putting silly things like computers in them.
(Mr Rowlands) They are designed to fail-safe in any
case if there is a failure. If there are any problems with the
national railway it would not be safety related, it may be in
terms of simply in the continuing of business there will be disruption.
If I can take one example: there are about 250 different customer
information services on the national railway and there has been
a cascade process with the critical big information systems at
the mainline stations dealt with first down to eventually the
smallest customer information systems. They have all been fixed
in terms of millennium compliance apart from one system which
is a Danish-built system which Mersey Electrics has which has
no problem for 31 December but it does not recognise 29 February
next year because in normal circumstances it would not be a leap
year but it is because it is the year 2000. That system is to
be replaced before 29 February next year.
69. I am very impressed with your grasp of detail
and the excellence of your memory in these transport matters.
I assume there are contingency plans, are there, to deal with
any problems that may arise?
(Mr Rowlands) Yes.
70. Are they co-ordinated at a national level?
(Mr Rowlands) Yes, they are. The arrangements that
have been put in place mean that the railways have created a separate
millennium command and control structure that is separate from
the normal arrangements on the railway.
71. Where is this magnificent unit to be based?
(Mr Rowlands) This magnificent unit operates at zonal
level and reports to a central millennium co-ordination office
in London which involves Railtrack and ATOC and British Transport
Police.
72. Gosh.
(Mr Rowlands) That is there in case there are any
unforeseen difficulties arising over the millennium either from
the operation of the railway in millennium terms itself or arising,
for example, in London out of the celebrations that will be taking
place. This is a set of arrangements intended to deal not merely,
if you like, with the physical infrastructure of the railway but
issues that might arise from crowd control for example.
Chairman: I look forward to seeing how efficiently
that works.
Mr Donohoe
73. Can you tell us how in a practical sense
you are going to oversee the situation as far as seafaring is
concerned and ships are concerned that are of a foreign flag sailing
through our waters on or around that time? In a practical sense,
if they are not millennium compliant, how are you going to stop
them?
(Mr Rowlands) Can I ask Mr Cooke to answer that one.
(Mr Cooke) The first point is that overseeing this
in the UK will be around the clock operation by our Maritime and
Coastguard Agency. They operate around the clock all the time
anyway and they will be operating around the clock then. So the
information flows on what is happening will be there. Should a
foreign flagged vessel appear and we are doubtful about its millennium
compliance it will be directed to an anchorage area unless it
is admitted to a port. Many of our ports over the millennium period
itself will not be operating on a commercial basis but will be
directing vessels to anchorages. To put it in context, we do not
expect many, if any, of these vessels to be around because they
operate on long timescales. The fact that many ports will be operating
at reduced levels, indeed all major ports will be operating at
reduced levels, is known and has been known for some considerable
time to the trade. We do not expect much, if anything, in the
way of vessels appearing in that way off our coast but if one
did and appears in UK waters seeking to get into a UK port it
will be held until we are satisfied of its millennium compliance.
Is it useful to add, Chairman, that already the port state control
authorities in the European area, together with our Canadian colleagues,
are operating a millennium system. They have been doing that at
a formal level since 1 September and they had been advertising
what will be happening for quite a while before then. The masters
of vessels know that if a vessel appears in the run-up to the
millennium and we are not happy with its millennium compliance
it will not be allowed to sail over the period. Already information
is being gathered and shared amongst the port state control authorities
in our area on foreign vessels.
74. So you have a list then of the vessels that
will comply in an international sense and you have exchanged information
with other countries?
(Mr Cooke) There is already a list held centrally
of vessels in what we call the Paris Memorandum of Understanding
Group. It is a group of port state control authorities, 18 states.
There is a list of vessels which have appeared in their ports
and about which port state control inspectors have not been satisfied
as to millennium preparations on the vessel. It may be that simply
the documentation is not there but, for whatever reason, if they
have not been satisfied that millennium compliance has been demonstrated
these vessels are already on a database and that is accessible
to the port state control inspectors of each of these 18 port
state control authorities.
75. What about the compliance of all British-registered
ships? Are you confident they are going to be millennium compliant?
(Mr Cooke) British-registered ships, that is to say
UK and other members of the Red Ensign Group, were examined as
part of the general process, the Action 2000 process. We are satisfied
both that where there had been or might have been Y2K problems
with machinery, for instance, those have been rectified. More
particularly, we are also satisfied that where there could be,
despite all preparations, some failure of some sort or another,
there are adequate contingency plans so that there are, in short,
manual work-arounds for electronic systems on board those ships.
76. Ships which are planning to be at sea during
the time of the date change which are not compliant may be detained
in UK ports. How many vessels are expected to fall into this category?
(Mr Cooke) I do not know. The best indication I can
give to the Committee is that it would be very small, if any,
but we have the means of dealing with them if they do appear.
77. I am not as conversant as I might be but
I have enough knowledge of shipping to be aware that ships or
boats can appear all of a sudden on the horizon which you would
never have thought in a million years would be coming through,
particularly up in the Orkneys area, and we have had fairly disastrous
results in the past when something like that has happened. Are
you telling me that that will be, first of all, policed on that
day and that in the event you have a circumstance as I explained
that that particular ship will be put at anchor or taken to a
port? Who is going to receive that if it decides to run through?
(Mr Cooke) No, Madam Chairman, I am not saying that
we are going to police every vessel that is simply passing through
waters adjacent to our coasts. What we will certainly be policing
is vessels making for our ports.
Chairman
78. But you have been telling us that a lot
of the ports will be closed. How many ports will be closed?
(Mr Cooke) When we use the term "closure"
that is perhaps over-dramatic. There will be restrictions on vessel
movements at all our major ports for—
79. Yes, but, with respect, we do not have to
trade in English, do we? If a ship cannot get into a port because
there is restricted movement control within the port, which may
arise for a number of different reasons—because I have to
say that some of the problems may arise from the Marine Coastguard
Agency itself—what are you going to do? Mr Donohoe in effect
has put to you what is a practical problem. Ships could appear
at short notice. How many ports do you expect to have restricted
access?
(Mr Cooke) When I say "closure and restricted
access", it is restricted access for commercial operations.
They can still come into the port area and they will be told to
stand-off and they will be told where to stand-off and they will
not be allowed to move.
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