Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-119)
2 DECEMBER 2003
MR STEVE
CUTHBERT, MR
JOHN DEMPSTER
CB, MR NIGEL
PRYKE, MR
DAVID WHITEHEAD
AND MS
NICOLA CLAY
Q100 Mr Mitchell: Developments cannot
be embarked on without a long period of uncertainty.
Mr Cuthbert: That is right.
Q101 Mr Mitchell: In which you do not
know whether you are going to get it or not.
Mr Cuthbert: That is right; yes.
Q102 Mr Mitchell: In which various conservation
groups—politicians should never speak ill of the RSPB because
it can be fatal to political careers—various organisations
like the RSPB can make objections and do make objections because
they always have to cover their own backs in these matters, which
will hold up developments.
Mr Cuthbert: That is right; that
is true. We do not object to holding up a development until you
get it right, as long as it is on a streamlined process. The more
dangerous issue is of maintenance dredging, where DEFRA are now
saying that maintenance dredging is a project under the Habitats
Directive, which until two years ago they did not. Maintenance
dredging sometimes has to be done quickly and the safety of ships
and access in and out of ports actually matters. I would suggest
that it is far more important to the environment to make sure
that all tankers have a piece of channel to come through to discharge
their cargoes at an oil refinery or at a gasoline station than
waiting and going through all these hoops to be allowed to do
your maintenance dredging. We have, hopefully, managed to persuade
DEFRA that we ought to have a pilot project. We are very close
to agreeing with DEFRA now that we ought to find a protocol for
doing this rather than going through it. Otherwise, that is a
step putting the whole thing in reverse.
Q103 Mr Mitchell: It also puts the conservation
groups in a position to blackmail you, does it not, because you
have to buy them off?
Mr Cuthbert: I do not like using
that term.
Q104 Mr Mitchell: No, but I am using
it; you do not have to be associated with "blackmail".
You have to buy them off by offering them some alternative. Even
then it does not guarantee that the development will be allowed
to go ahead. You give the instance of Felixstowe and the same
thing happened on the Humber and port facilities development there.
In a sense, they are put in a stronger position to make your life
more difficult.
Mr Cuthbert: They are, but the
answer to that, the practical answer for us, is that we have to
employ our own environmental scientists, which we now do at most
of the major ports and try to develop the environmental science
to argue the case from a scientific basis with scientific facts
and data as opposed to emotional assertion. That is why I do not
want to get involved in the term "blackmail". It is
a young science, but what we have to do is get at the scientific
facts and make the judgments. We are quite happy as ports to take
part in that process and engage the agencies and engage the conservation
groups.
Q105 Mr Mitchell: Given the fact that
designation can have such a major effect on both dredging and
development, what part do the ports and their needs play in the
designation process?
Mr Cuthbert: The ports were consulted
to my knowledge.
Q106 Mr Mitchell: In the designations?
Mr Cuthbert: In the designation
process. I suspect what we have ended up with is different people
in different parts of the country in the conservation agencies
involved and different port managements ending up with different
understandings. On the Thames we did point out that one of the
SAC boundaries was incorrect and it was actually moved. It was
in the wrong place. It was not where the sand bank stopped and
was several hundred metres in the wrong position. We actually
got that moved and we have marked it with buoys, so we all know
where it is and what we have to do. I would not want to leave
you with the impression that this was just a diktat handed down
from on high. It depends on different areas of the country and
how successful people are in coming to a meeting of minds and
accepting what needs to be done.
Q107 Mr Mitchell: Was the fact that there
are differences between designation in Europe, which you instanced,
and here, where it is much more universal and takes little account
of the development needs or the jobs in a port, due to the fact
that no areas were designated there or due to the fact that the
ports there objected to designation? Was it a government decision
or was it port power?
Mr Cuthbert: One of the difficulties
we do feel in the ports industry is that we have a tendency to
gold-plate a number of these European directives, whereas a lot
of the governments and agencies and ports in the north-west continent
tend to take a much more pragmatic view.
Q108 So we are kinder to birds than they
are in Europe.
Mr Cuthbert: I think we probably
are overall.
Q109 Chairman: Before we leave this line
of questioning, could you be a little more specific about the
point you were making a second ago, about different agencies interpreting
the designation practice in different ways in different parts
of the country.
Mr Cuthbert: If I did say "different
agencies" I did not mean to. In a sense what I was trying
to say was that on the Thames we did not have a great difficulty
in agreeing with English Nature where the SAC boundaries should
be. Clearly that has not been the case on the Humber and in the
Bristol Channel.
Q110 Chairman: The same English Nature
is involved in each of those places then.
Mr Cuthbert: It will be a different
region.
Q111 Chairman: Do you sense in the fact
that by definition there are the different regions, that they
have their own worked out ways of interpreting?
Mr Cuthbert: No, I would not say
that. As far as English Nature is concerned, we regard them as
a highly professional organisation. We probably have one of the
better regions in the Thames area. We work with them very, very
well.
Q112 Chairman: Is that a comment on the
quality of the people?
Mr Cuthbert: I do not want to
go too far. I cannot criticise people in other regions of the
country because I do not know them. From picking up hearsay, I
think the English Nature people in the region on the Thames are
very professional and we work well with them. I would not want
to go any further than that.
Mr Whitehead: Perhaps I can go
a little bit further. There are differences between the way local
English Nature officers interpret the law and the policy and it
is partly inevitable because these sites are so different. You
are protecting different things; there are different economic
dynamics within the sites. Inevitably, this makes for differences
of approach. This issue of maintenance dredging was mentioned
earlier and what it actually is within the Habitats Directive.
In the early days that had led to some differing interpretations
and we now have a grip on that and are trying to get a national
approach to it. There are issues here of different interpretations
and it is almost inevitable that there will be.
Mr Pryke: May I just explain to
the Committee exactly why dredging is so important?
Chairman: May I be very rude and interrupt
you a second? I know that my colleague Joan Ruddock wants to ask
you perhaps one or two more specific questions on dredging issues
which may just give you the opportunity in your response to talk
about what you were going to do.
Q113 Joan Ruddock: First of all, before
I go to some of the questions we thought of, I just want to refer
to what Ms Clay said. I believe she spoke about dredging in the
sense of a new channel being created by a developer. In that context
she was saying that so little is known that it would be necessary
to start a whole scientific investigation. Your evidence suggests
that routine and maintenance dredging should be considered just
routine, no special interests. I wonder why you are so confident
that you can keep on dredging in the same places without the impact
we might be concerned about in relation to the Habitats Directive,
because when it is a new channel there needs to be a major investigation.
Why is there a difference and you are so confident that it does
not matter?
Mr Pryke: In my port 10,000 tonnes
of silt comes into the Haven every day. That is an awful lot of
silt. The southern North Sea is a great big mixture of silt and
water coming from all the big rivers, the Thames, the Rhine and
the Maas. This silt is all in the mixer and it comes in and it
drains out and on its way in and out it deposits on these habitat
sites. When you talk about maintenance dredging, we used to take
out all of this silt about four times a year, many, many thousands
of tonnes and dump it back in the North Sea where it came from.
Now we know a little bit more about how it works, we take it up
the estuaries as well. Where it would have finished up, we are
putting it there anyway. We do understand quite a lot about the
effect of maintenance dredging and we are studying it all the
time. We are absolutely confident that with this recharge process
our regular maintenance dredging is doing no great harm to anything.
May I just come back to the point I was going to make?
Q114 Joan Ruddock: May I just say to
you that I want to ask Ms Clay if she concurs with that view?
Ms Clay: I do want to say that
it is not at all that we do not care about the effects of maintenance
dredging; it is just that it has been handled in a different way.
For the majority of the estuaries around the country, you have
estuary management groups and the ports are involved in many of
them and fund many of them as well. Maintenance dredging has been
treated as an ongoing activity which was in place when the sites
were designated and has been dealt with through those groups.
For example, on the Thames, we have a group called the dredging
liaison group, where ourselves, English Nature, the RSPB, Environment
Agency, fisheries people, anybody who has an interest in maintenance
dredging, sit together three or four times a year and we talk
about the effects and we talk about their concerns and we talk
about how we are going to deal with it. Through that process,
which has been going on around the countries in many different
ways for many years, maintenance dredging effects have been looked
at, considered and dealt with. The concern from the ports industry
now is the change to having to look at them every single time
we make a new licence application rather than the way we were
dealing with them, which we certainly felt and the estuary management
group felt was working.
Q115 Joan Ruddock: If it is so benign,
why do you think DEFRA proposed a change?
Ms Clay: DEFRA have received legal
advice which is different to the position they were taking, so
from their position, they have really no other opportunity other
than to ensure they have complied with their legal advice and
are in a position which complies with the EC's laws. However,
as one of my colleagues pointed out, maintenance dredging throughout
the rest of Europe is not considered as a plan or project and
other national governments do not feel that they are getting legal
advice which puts them in a position of perhaps not complying
with the Habitats Directive.
Mr Pryke: The importance of capital
dredging at the moment, in connection with all new container port
projects is simply the fact that these ships are getting bigger
and if we want to be on the main line of the world's trade, we
have to have a number of ports which these ships can enter. If
we do not have that, we will be on the branch line. It is absolutely
as simple as that. There are 30 ships in service now of 8,000
TEU-plus, that is 20-foot container units and there are 100 such
ships on order. They are replacing smaller ships so the main trade
routes are being serviced by these much bigger ships. Therefore,
if you want to be in the container handling business, on the main
line, you have to have an entry channel which copes with the bigger
ships.
Q116 Joan Ruddock: Which suggests something
is changing. It is not business as usual.
Mr Pryke: It is obviously the
shipping lines which are driving this and it is not something
we can influence either as the ports industry or as the UK Government.
It is a fact that they are seeking to make economies of scale
in their operations and the ships are necessarily getting bigger.
Ms Clay: Just to clarify, where
maintenance dredging is associated with a capital development,
you have dredged your deeper channel and you then need to maintain
it, we are not arguing that has been ongoing and we are not saying
that should be considered through the management plan route. That
would be considered as part of the environmental impact assessment
and the appropriate assessment as necessary.
Q117 Joan Ruddock: How many ports are
affected?
Mr Pryke: In terms of major container
developments, at the moment we have one on the Thames, two proposed
in the Harwich Haven, one at Felixstowe, one at Harwich and one
at Dibden Bay in Southampton. Those are the major projects which
either have had a public inquiry or are about to have a public
inquiry at the moment.
Q118 Joan Ruddock: Those are where it
is quite clear that something new is happening. I presume maintenance
dredging affects every port.
Mr Pryke: No, not every port and
it affects some more than others. Certainly on the east coast
generally with all this North Sea mud sloshing around it is necessary.
Mr Whitehead: The majority of
ports have to dredge.
Q119 Joan Ruddock: You indicated earlier
that representations had been made to DEFRA and that there was
some response suggesting possibly a pilot project. Would you elaborate
a bit on that?
Mr Whitehead: In fact we have
a meeting tomorrow with DEFRA to set up the pilot projects: there
are three, two on the south coast and one in the Humber. They
will take about a year. What they will actually do is test out
a draft protocol which was agreed which is a whole approach to
how we are going to deal with maintenance dredging within these
sites. It is measuring significant impact and so forth and basing
a lot of the decisions on using existing data rather than having
to go through extremely costly and lengthy new work. We are edging
towards a practical accommodation here and we hope that about
a year from now we will have a document we can go forward on and
carry on with maintenance dredging.
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