Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-132)
2 DECEMBER 2003
MR STEVE
CUTHBERT, MR
JOHN DEMPSTER
CB, MR NIGEL
PRYKE, MR
DAVID WHITEHEAD
AND MS
NICOLA CLAY
Q120 Mr Breed: My personal experience
is somewhat different because the port which is closest to me,
just by my constituency, is Devonport in Plymouth. There the silt
comes down from the rivers; it does not come in from the sea.
There has been a certain number of problems in terms of what you
do with all this dredged material. I understand that if it comes
from the sea and comes up to you, you are allowed to go and pump
it back in again, because that is where it came from, so you are
not subject to any of the dumping at sea convention.
Mr Pryke: Oh, yes, it is. Every
time we do it we have to have a licence to dump and we have actually
exhausted our capital dump site and we are finding it very difficult
to get a new site and this is one of the problems.
Q121 Mr Breed: That is what I was coming
onto. Exactly the same thing has happened here. There has been
an existing site which is now totally and utterly overloaded and
is now causing a huge amount of environmental damage but they
cannot go anywhere else because of this particular convention.
You are finding exactly the same problem. If we are going to have
continued maintenance dredging and indeed if we are going to have
bigger channels, there is going to be even more material, which
is going to have to be dredged out every year. What efforts are
being made by you and DEFRA to look at these sorts of sites to
disperse this material in a more environmentally friendly way?
Mr Pryke: We completed our capital
spoil ground when we did the last big dredge, but I hasten to
add that it is not an environmental nightmare. We have capped
it with rock and shingle and made it into a lobster habitat. In
the terms of our consent to dredge we are required to check up
that their habitat creation is working and it is working. In fact
it is working beyond our wildest dreams and is extremely populated
with lobster. The next situation is that you have to find a dead
spot on the ocean bed where nothing of any value exists to then
apply for an area to dump again. We have not been able to do this
with our maintenance dredgings at the moment. We have a dispersal
site, so we are dispersing this silt back in the North Sea, but
it literally disperses on the tide and it does not make a pile
on the seabed. When and if we ever do any more capital dredging,
we will clearly have to agree a new site with DEFRA. It does not
end there, because there are navigation issues and there are also
cost implications because the further away from the port you go,
clearly the more expensive it is because the dredger has to travel
further every time it goes out.
Q122 Mr Breed: This might be a slightly
loaded question and it may provoke us to think about having some
more witnesses. Obviously Devonport is administered by the MoD,
through the Queen's Harbourmaster, and they seem to be able to
do almost what they want, with it being Europe's largest shipyard
with nuclear submarines and very large warships coming in and
out. Do you believe from your ports experience that the commercial
concerns of your ports are treated somewhat differently as opposed
to ports which are open for warships?
Mr Pryke: Yes. The difficulty
is that we are kept on tenterhooks all the time. It is frankly
absurd to have to go for a licence every time we want to clear
the channel into Felixstowe. Forty per cent of our trade in containers
comes in and out of Felixstowe. It is a nonsense that we are kept
on tenterhooks as to whether we can keep the channel clear or
not. There should be a much longer term, for example a ten-year,
consent on the basis that the regulators agree that you are doing
the right thing.[1]
Q123 Mr Breed: We might well ask somebody
from the MOD at some stage to come and explain their particular
policy.
Ms Clay: I actually used to work
for DEFRA in the team which deals with disposal at sea. I feel
just a slight need to defend them there. In my experience they
do treat everybody the same, regardless of whether it is a government
body making an application or not.
Mr Cuthbert: I have just taken
a glance at an ex Queen's Harbourmaster sitting at the back and
he sent me a signal to say that no, Queen's Harbourmasters are
treated exactly the same as everybody else.
Q124 Mr Lepper: You have drawn the contrast
between the way in which European directives are interpreted and
implemented here and in other parts of Europe. You have also drawn
our attention to the changing nature of the container business.
Where do our ports stand in relation to that changing trade? Are
we keeping up with things? We are concerned with environmental
issues mainly, but what are the commercial problems?
Mr Cuthbert: We are running out
of container capacity in the UK at the moment and probably by
2006 we will have done so. Even at key periods now the very large
ships, the ones Mr Pryke was mentioning earlier, only two berths
in the UK can actually take them at the moment; there will be
one more next year at Felixstowe. We do need extra capacity. There
are two schemes: the public inquiries are over and two more are
about to start very soon now. Provided adequate additional capacity
is given consent within the next year or so, we shall be okay.
However, there is some great urgency about this. Our container
ports are virtually full.
Mr Pryke: Southampton is the number
two container port in Britain. The turnaround time for a lorry
in Southampton is averaging over six hours and that is a sign
that the place is overloaded completely.
Q125 Mr Lepper: Give me some comparison.
Mr Pryke: In Felixstowe it is
40 minutes. If you look at continental ports, the building which
is going on in Rotterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg, Le Havre, the capacity
in our continental partners' ports is far, far greater than ours.
Q126 Paddy Tipping: You told us earlier
on that you like to get the balance between economics, environment
and social. You also told us that it was important not to gold-plate
the European directive. There is a European directive coming up,
the Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive. What do you
think about that?
Mr Dempster: The Directive on
Strategic Environmental Assessment comes into force in the middle
of next year. The government have not yet produced their regulations
to implement it, but we are advised by the Department for Transport
that they do not envisage that it will affect the port industry
because it is concerned with programmes and there is no programme
for investing in ports. We do not anticipate that it will have
any immediate effect on our industry.
Q127 Paddy Tipping: You are talking to
people about this directive. Have you ever been to DEFRA to have
a discussion about this directive?
Mr Dempster: I have not had a
discussion with DEFRA. I have had a discussion with ODPM and with
the Department for Transport.
Q128 Paddy Tipping: This again highlights
the issue that a number of different departments are involved.
Mr Dempster: Yes. I think ODPM
are in the lead on the implementation of the directive and Transport
are our normal point of contact.
Ms Clay: Although we are not at
the moment particularly concerned about the SEA Directive, we
are very concerned about the water framework directive. I can
give you a specific example. Suspended solids, which are a natural
part of all estuaries, they form the mud, are listed as contaminants
in the water framework directive. That is something which is going
to be very, very difficult for the ports industry to have to deal
with and other industries if we get to the point where that becomes
the law and we have to try to argue that suspended solids are
not a contaminant, they are natural. There are several concerns
about interdepartmental liaison over the implementation of the
water framework directive.
Paddy Tipping: We agree.
Chairman: We did actually produce a report
which indicated some of that.
Q129 Paddy Tipping: So the SEA is not
going to affect the ports.
Mr Dempster: No direct effect
on the port industry, as I understand it.
Q130 Paddy Tipping: The notion of a national
port plan would affect you and that is knocking around at the
moment. David Jamieson says we might have one. That would sort
all your planning problems out, would it not?
Mr Cuthbert: We do not think so.
The ports industry is privately financed and we are probably one
of the most advanced countries in that sense in the world. The
rest of the infrastructure, road and rail, thinking about cargo
in particular at the moment, is state financed. If you are going
to have private investment backing projects, then you must expect
entrepreneurs and financiers to come forward with projects they
believe actually will make a return for them. Indeed, as I have
already implied, we are in a very fortunate position at the moment
in the UK. We have actually got three or four of these guys queuing
up to spend big money on these container terminals which bring
in the goods we want to import and export our goods and have a
direct bearing on the living standards of everyone in this country.
If you are going to encourage private investment, then I do not
think that lends itself to central planning. It does not have
to be rocket science; there are not that many places you can actually
put these ports in the UK, these terminals. With a little bit
of sense, the private industry and the Department for Transport
can actually work these things out together. I do not see this
as a great need. I know Mrs Dunwoody's committee reported ten
days ago and it was one of her recommendations. Of the recommendations,
it is perhaps the only one which I did not agree with. I do not
really think it gets us very far, if you are going to create a
climate which encourages private industry and private finance
to invest in part of the nation's infrastructure, which is the
system we have here.
Q131 Paddy Tipping: What the private
sector say to me is that they want development certainty, they
do not want to be trying to invest where they do not know what
the ground rules are. The notion of a national plan would be to
say that is a possibility, that one is definitely out. You are
then in a position to look at the wider infrastructure of questions
around that. Presumably you are not buying this argument.
Mr Cuthbert: No, we do not buy
that argument.
Q132 Paddy Tipping: Just explain why
again.
Mr Cuthbert: The ports industry
is now largely international. They all go where they can see they
can make the return, where they can get permission for the port
developments that they believe there is a market return to be
made from. That is best done through the application and a public
inquiry process for a specific development that a private entrepreneur
identifies as being something they wish to develop rather than
it being part of a national plan. It depends. In many countries
ports are still owned and organised by the state with individual
terminals being under private ownership and private investment
to a greater or lesser extent. Everything has to be fitted into
the spectrum. Having privatised the industry a relatively short
time ago, to go back to a national plan you are in danger of interfering
with the right of investors to make a return, provided they comply
with the planning and environmental laws.
Mr Pryke: It must not be lost
sight of, that all of these potential developments would have
to pass the test of the overriding public interest anyway. They
would have to pass that test and then they would all have to pass
the test of attracting a commercial operator notwithstanding that
it is a private port developer, they would have to attract commercial
ship operators as cusotmers. Those two things make it very difficult
to have a central policy.[2]
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
I think everybody managed to make their contribution and for that
we are very grateful. If, in the light of anything you have said
or the questions the Committee have asked, you feel you want to
put anything else in writing, we would obviously be very happy
to receive that. The only thing you cannot do is to undo that
which you have said. Thank you very much indeed for your evidence
and for coming to join us this afternoon.
1 Note by Witness: My answer here was indicating
my belief that in time of national emergency the Navy would not
wait around for a FEPA licence before getting its nuclear submarines
out. In peacetime I am sure that the rules are the same. Back
2
Note by Witness: My answer here was rather hastily spoken
at the end of the session. What I was attempting to clarify was
that the market must inevitably decide where the best logistical
solution lies. So even if all four of the current container port
schemes were given planning approval in the "overriding public
interest" the four developers would be chasing the same handful
of major shipping lines to occupy their new terminal. Inevitably
the developers would not all be instant winners. On the other
hand if Government were to decide up front to favour one project
above another they would almost certainly get it wrong. Back
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