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28 Feb 2003 : Column 543—continued
1.45 pm
Mr. Keith Simpson: I shall speak briefly, because another hon. Member wishes to speak on his Bill.
I am much heartened by the support of a number of hon. Members. I thank the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Mr. Wright) for his support, and for what he said about the impact of charities on his constituency. The hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) rightly raised points about the future of the national lottery, as did my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss), who also raised technical issues that I hope will be dealt with in Committee if I am lucky enough to secure a Second Reading. I thank him for his generous support. My hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Mr. Fabricant) provided strong support; we shall probably never know about the giant guinea pigs in Peru, but they may be the subject of a future Adjournment debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Leominster (Mr. Wiggin) was also very supportive.
I thank the Minister for his comments and his general support. I was grateful for the technical help that I received from officials in his Department. He mentioned the former Member for North Norfolk, my friend David Prior. I know that, despite his slightly chiding comment, the Minister will accept that David Prior raised thousands of pounds for the Eastern Daily Press "We Care 2000" campaign. I also know that Members on both sides of the House believe he will be a great success as chairman of the Norwich and Norfolk hospital trust.
Bill read a Second time, and committed to a Standing Committee, pursuant to Standing Order No. 63 (Committal of Bills).
Marine Safety Bill
Order for Second Reading read.
1.47 pm
Dr. Brian Iddon (Bolton, South-East): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The Bill principally concerns merchant vessels. It contains exclusions for naval vessels and Government ships. I was assisted in its preparation by the Secretary of State's representative Robin Middleton—of whom more later—and John Mairs of the Department of Transport, as well as their staff. I thank them all for their advice, and for their hard work in drafting the Bill.
I have always been fascinated by the sea. Although I now live inland and represent an inland constituency, I was born on the banks of the River Douglas, which flows into the Ribble and out to sea in an estuary between Southport and Lytham St. Anne's. I was once quite familiar with the Lancashire coastline, including the dangerous Ribble marshes. My secondary school education was in Southport, and I also attended the local technical college. My father's business interests often took him to Liverpool and he let me travel with him—usually by lorry—to the docks to pick up cattle food for a mill in our village, Tarleton, on the west Lancashire plain.
In those days, the Liverpool docks were extremely busy with the transatlantic trade. The largest ships in the world visited them—both merchant ships and cruise liners owned by famous companies such as Cunard and P&O. Liverpool had an overhead railway—long since demolished, sadly—which ran the full length of the docks. My father and I often took a return trip on the railways just to get a glimpse of those impressively large ships.
I have had few regrets in my life, but one is that I never learned to sail. Another is that I have never owned a boat, although one of the happiest times in my life was spent crewing a catamaran hired in Teignmouth along the French coast and around the Channel islands.
Even though nearly all my constituents are land-lubbers, many of them—possibly all—are dependent on the sea in one way or another, so the Bill is as relevant to them as to any coastal constituent. Some of us use cruise ships; others cross the seas using ro-ro ferries, hovercraft or other means of marine transport. In any case, most of us are reliant on goods transported by merchant vessels. I am told that worldwide trade by sea has increased significantly and is still increasing. At the same time, fortunately, the number of incidents at sea is going down. Nevertheless there are still far too many accidents involving shipping, and many lives are still lost at sea.
When I was elected to Parliament in 1997, my attention was drawn to the existence of the all-party parliamentary MV Derbyshire group. Like the existing members of the group at that time, I was astonished by how long it had taken to get justice for those who had sailed on that ship, lost their lives and, in the case of the crew, even been accused of negligence; but that is another story, which we have placed on the record previously.
Nevertheless, it is a sad fact that bulk carriers are still going down at the rate of one a month worldwide. Since the Derbyshire sank in 1980, 3,000 seafarers have lost their lives on bulk carriers alone. The MV Derbyshire group now concentrates on improvements in marine safety. That is why I have decided to take charge of this Bill, which I truly hope will have the Government's support and that of all the Opposition parties.
We are never far away from a major disaster at sea. The most recent incidents best known to us are the sinking of the Tricolor and the loss of the Prestige, noteworthy for the fact that the Spanish authorities refused to give the Prestige a place of refuge, which might have allowed most of its oil to be offloaded. Of course, pollution is a common consequence of sea disasters, and that is what the Bill is partly about: avoiding pollution and dealing with it when it occurs.
A national contingency plan for marine pollution from shipping and offshore installations exists. Command and control of the tasks associated with a major maritime incident involving pollution, both marine and terrestrial, is divided into four distinct theatres of operation: search and rescue, salvage, clean-up of the sea and clean-up of the shoreline.
Let me give the House some statistics, because no debate in this place is complete without them. Currently the Maritime and Coastguard Agency—MCA—receives more than 1,000 reports of pollution incidents a year. Between 6 October 1999 and 31 December 2002, the SOSREP was involved in a total of 262 incidents and was required to give directions in 30 of those. In 30 of those incidents that he was involved in, there was a spillage of oil greater than half a litre. The incidents are almost equally spread between summer and winter seasons. They involve all kinds of ships, most commonly general cargo vessels, 53 incidents; fishing vessels, 45 incidents; tankers, 34 incidents; and bulk carriers, 23 incidents. There were 65 engine failures, 52 groundings of vessels, 38 collisions and 25 fires amongst the incidents involving the SOSREP during that period.
In the 10 years from 1991 to 2001, there were 347 fires on vessels within the United Kingdom 12-mile limit. On 21 December 1997, for example, the Kukawa, a ro-ro cargo vessel, developed an engine room fire 25 miles north-west of Guernsey, which spread into the accommodation. The fire services of both Guernsey and Cornwall were involved. The ship was towed into Falmouth and the fire extinguished, an incident that lasted three days. This is the important point. A court ruling declared that the fire services could not recover their costs, which was a serious blow to offshore firefighting provision in the UK.
The Suffolk fire service's last offshore incident was extinguishing a fire in the engine room of the passenger ferry Norsea, off Norfolk on 2 September 2002. Firemen were airlifted to the ship to assist the crew. Funding problems have caused them to revoke their declared facility status today.
Public attention in the UK focused on the impact of major oil pollution in March 1967 when the tanker Torrey Canyon hit the Seven Stones rocks between the Scilly Isles and Land's End.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield): Sounds like Tory Canyon.
Dr. Iddon: I beg the House's pardon.
Michael Fabricant: Do not blame us.
Dr. Iddon: I am fixated on Tories. The pace of interest quickened with the 1993 Braer disaster in the Shetlands, which led to a report by Lord Donaldson that resulted in the strategic placement around our coast of the first Government emergency towing vessels. Today, those number four. Then came the Sea Empress disaster, as recently as 1996.
Between 1967 and 1996, a statutory basis for the Government's powers of intervention in such incidents was created. Those are enshrined in the Merchant Shipping Act 1995, which was amended by the Merchant Shipping and Maritime Security Act 1997. Following the Sea Empress incident at Milford Haven, Lord Donaldson conducted a review of salvage and intervention, and of their command and control. His report was published in March 1999, and one of its recommendations was the establishment of a Secretary of State's representative, or SOSREP, as the post has become known.
The holder of that post, Robin Middleton, is based at the MCA's headquarters in Southampton. The MCA came into being on 1 April 1998 as a result of the merger between the Marine Safety Agency and the Coastguard Agency. Lord Donaldson recommended that the
- "SOSREP must be a considerable, and, preferably, charismatic, personality".
I emphasise that the SOSREP's intervention powers are regarded as ones to be used only in exceptional circumstances. Provided that the control of an incident at sea is going well, the SOSREP merely monitors that incident. Only in cases that appear to be getting out of hand will he take over control and command of the incident.
Although our coastal waters extend for 12 miles around the UK coastline, the UK's pollution zone—the zone of responsibility for dealing with marine pollution or even the threat of it—extends 200 miles seaward, save where it meets the pollution zone of another state. That happens in the English channel, the North sea and the Irish sea.
Since the post of SOSREP was established, two gaps have been identified in his powers, which the Bill is intended to rectify. Clause 1 would give the SOSREP powers to make directions when he takes over an incident, which he does not possess. The 1995 Act would be amended by the insertion of proposed new section 108A in part 4. The safety directions that clause 1 refers to are set out in schedule 1, which would become new schedule 3A to the Act.
One of the greatest difficulties for those who deal with such incidents is finding a place of refuge for a stricken vessel. Under section 137 of the 1995 Act, as amended,
the SOSREP may give directions to the owner, master or pilot of a vessel, the salvor and the harbourmaster, or the harbour authority where the vessel is in waters that are regulated or managed by a harbour authority. However, in an incident, the SOSREP cannot issue a direction to the riparian owners and managers of facilities such as berths, wharves and jetties to require them to make their facilities available to help to deal with that incident.My Bill would empower the SOSREP to commandeer such facilities, as and when they are required, to deal much more effectively with a stricken vessel. Let me illustrate that through an important real-life example. In July last year, a fully laden oil tanker was approaching a jetty to unload its cargo when it suffered an engine fault. The master did not want to shut down his engines at sea in case he could not restart them and lost control of the ship. For purely economic reasons, a leading oil company would not allow that tanker to berth at its jetty to offload the oil. That might have prevented other tankers berthing while the ship's engines were being repaired. Instead the ship was sent out to sea again in the eye of a gale. Clearly, that was an unsafe practice that could have had serious consequences. My Bill would give the SOSREP the powers to direct that such ships should be berthed in order to offload their cargoes of oil. Fortunately, the SOSREP in that case was able to issue a direction to the ship's master for him to re-enter fresh water in Milford Haven and a tug was placed on standby.
Lord Donaldson recommended in his report, on page 13, paragraph 29 and again on page 26, paragraph 2.9, that the Government be given the powers to require the aid of
- "the riparian owners or managers of facilities, such as berths, wharfs and jetties, which may well be required to moor a stricken vessel whilst a potentially polluting cargo is discharged."
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