Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
14 JULY 2004
MR TONY
JUNIPER, MR
MIKE CHILDS
AND MR
PHIL MICHAELS
Q80 Mr Mitchell: I had better change
the tack of the questioning, I see I have driven the entire audience
away in protest about being naughty to the Friends of the Earth!
You have called for a UK strategy for ship recycling which, given
your concerns about the environment, seems somewhat contradictory—you
do not want to do it but, on the other hand, you want a strategy
for doing it.
Mr Childs: No, we have always
said we want to do it; we have always said that we want to see
ships—
Q81 Mr Mitchell: But you do not want
them to be sent to third world countries to be dumped there, do
you?
Mr Childs: No, absolutely, and
this is where we have been clear all along, when we have been
saying in numerous media interviews around this, and spoken to
numerous people, that we think each country should deal with their
own waste, which means that the UK should deal with its own waste
and we need to develop ship scrapping facilities in the UK.
Q82 Mr Mitchell: And when they do we
make it impossible for them to do so.
Mr Childs: No, not at all. We
would support a good application coming forward for ship scrapping
in the UK. I think this is exactly where we are working, in terms
of saying that the rich countries should deal with their own waste,
America should deal with its own waste, and we will proactively
go out and help a good facility come forward in the UK that would
not damage the wildlife site, where we can be sure that the waste
disposal facilities were of a high enough standard, and to involve
the public in the discussions. We absolutely want it and we were
happy to go to a meeting together with other NGOs, with Greenpeace,
with RSPB, to meet the Minister, Elliot Morley, and very much
press the point that we should have a UK ship recycling strategy.
Q83 Mr Mitchell: So your aim would be
that country recycles its own ships?
Mr Juniper: Developed countries.
Q84 Mr Mitchell: We have a big mercantile
fleet, have we not, so we have a big job?
Mr Juniper: Indeed, and the job
will get bigger as time goes by, which is why it is very timely
that this Committee and others are now looking at this issue because
it is a neglected piece of public policy in respect of environmental
questions and it is something that needs to be resolved in a strategic
way. Evidently the case of the "ghost ships" has raised
all sorts of issues that have revealed the fact that there is
no Government strategy, so this is a good starting point now in
which to develop one. As Mike said, we have spoken to the Minister
about this already, and our point essentially is that the Government
can make some steps now in respect of ships that it owns, Royal
Navy vessels being the obvious ones, and the same in the United
States. In fact the fact that we were receiving these Government
owned vessels from the USA shows that there evidently is not a
policy there yet reflecting the kind of points that Mike has made
about rich countries accepting responsibility for their own waste
disposal.
Q85 Mr Mitchell: That still leaves the
big PLCs.
Mr Juniper: Absolutely. You are
right. The vast majority of vessels that will need to be disposed
of in the coming years are owned by private corporations and one
area where we think the British Government should be taking a
lead, both domestically and inside the United Nations, is in respect
of corporate accountability and establishing legal frameworks
that will require companies to take effective responsibility for
disposal, in this case of ships, other environmental liabilities
and responsibilities too. In fact there was a Private Members
Bill promoted in Parliament at the end of last year and early
this year, backed by CORE, Corporate Responsibility Coalition,
of which Friends of the Earth is a member, calling for three measures
to be put into UK law. One is to require companies to report on
their environmental impacts and responsibilities, and that would
include ships for those relevant companies; it would require company
directors to have legal duties in respect of taking reasonable
steps to minimise the environmental impact of their operations
and would grant access in the British courts to people affected
by British companies overseas. So, for example, Bangladeshi communities
that are polluted by the disposal of a British ship would have
the right to come and bring an action in the British court. We
think that is a necessary piece of legislation; it is in the Johannesburg
Declaration of Action that came from the Earth Summit in 2002.
There is every reason to do this and the ghost ships case is another
reason why we think it should be pursued vigorously by the British
Government, both domestically and internationally.
Q86 Mr Lazarowicz: If ship dismantling
facilities in a developing country could be upgraded to an environmentally
acceptable standard in terms of the dismantling exercise, why
are you, as you appear to be in principle, opposed to the export
of ships for dismantling in that way? If the yard can do it in
an acceptable way why should it not?
Mr Juniper: You are right, it
is a matter of principle and it is about countries taking responsibility
for the waste that they generate, and ships are obviously a complex
subject in this regard as they are, by definition, things that
move around, and the question the Chairman raised about when do
they become waste or not? There are quite a lot of technicalities
in there that need to be pursued to some kind of conclusion and
some kind of agreement. The starting point is a principle which
should incentivise countries to minimise the waste they generate
and to put in place facilities to look after the waste that they
do generate. That is the point. If you are having to deal with
your own mess at home you will take it more seriously than if
it is sailing over the horizon to be disposed of somewhere where
nobody can see it. That is the matter of principle. Then of course
there are questions about what are the exceptions? There will
be many of them. At that point it then becomes a question of what
confidence do we have that these facilities are as good as we
are told they are, which is then about accountability and having
decent information, which takes us back to the last point on corporate
accountability, and having confidence that claims made, for example,
by BP about its shipping scrapping facilities on the other side
of the world, that we can have decent information to know that
what they are saying is truthful, and if it is not truthful that
there is some means of pursuing a claim against the company. Right
now we do not have that.
Q87 Mr Lazarowicz: So it is an absolute
principle, but let us look at one factor which should allow for
an exception. It has been suggested that in a developing country
it might well be that the recycling enterprise would be more comprehensive
because there would be waste material which would be more likely
to be used in that developing country because of market prices
or whatever for that particular material than it would if it was
recycled in a developed country. So overall there would be more
effective recycling in a developing country; how do you respond
to that?
Mr Juniper: That is a fair point,
but there is a difference between exporting something that can
be recycled in the form of scrap steel than exporting something
that is highly toxic.
Q88 Mr Lazarowicz: It depends upon the
constituent elements effectively and how they are assessed, is
that more the case?
Mr Juniper: That would be part
of the answer and, as I understand it, some developing countries
would be willing to accept ships if they were stripped of the
toxic materials that they contained, but this is a very different
job practically when you have PCBs and asbestos embedded in the
fabric of vessels.
Q89 Mr Lazarowicz: What we were told
by BP Shipping was that they can meet their health, safety and
environmental standards, so we are told, by using yards in China
under the supervision of their own staff. What is developing here?
Some developing countries are obviously in a different economic
stage than other developing countries; how do we define this?
Mr Childs: I think it is partly
about confidence, about regulatory oversight as well. I do not
think in the UK we would accept BP to have a ship-scrapping yard,
that it monitored itself, that it had regulatory oversight of
itself without the Environment Agency. If BP come to us and say,
"We have developed this site in China, it is fantastic and
we are monitoring it well and we have oversight of it, you should
trust and believe in us that that is right," we find that
very difficult to believe, especially when the evidence we get
generally in Asia is that ship scrapping is carried out in an
appalling way. I think our principle would be that the economic
gains from BP's activities have come to the UK and the UK should
therefore accept the responsibility of the waste that is generated
through those activities in terms of its shipping, for example.
So I think there is a real sense that it is easy to say that we
will develop a facility in Asia or China and we will do it there
to high standards, but how can you have the confidence that the
public are involved in the decision-making around a Chinese shipyard,
or that you have a regulatory oversight to a high enough standard
that will give you absolute confidence that the shipyard is of
equal standard that you would expect to be operating within the
European Union. So it is a matter of principles and practicality.
Q90 Mr Lazarowicz: What is the basis
for your opposition, as I understand it, to exports for dismantling,
even between developed countries? If we are talking about a high
quality dismantling facility, not every country is going to be
able to provide that, so is it not better to have a ship exported
to be dismantled in a high quality facility than to be dismantled
within a developed country but not within a very good facility?
Mr Juniper: This of course brings
us back to the question of the ghost ships and the developed country
to developed country transfer, and one of the questions we have
talked a little about already is the local community's concerns
in terms of impact on the local environment inside Hartlepool.
Another set of concerns, which were located very much inside the
United States, probably bear a little explanation because there
were two things going on there, at least, which are very important
in understanding the background to your question. One is the extent
to which this represented a change in policy by the American Government.
President Clinton had ruled that there would be no ship exports
from the United States' naval vessels because of the appalling
health and environmental impacts that had occurred and been documented
in countries like India and Bangladesh. So there was a ruling
that none of these ships would be taken out of the United States
for breaking. At the same time huge pressure inside the USA for
these vessels to be broken up; as ever cost concerns about the
public finances and the money needed to dispose of them. The Bush
Administration chose to reverse the Clinton policy and to say
that there would no longer be a moratorium on ship exports. It
would perhaps look difficult presentationally if the first batch
of ships went to Bangladesh. If the first batch of 12 ships goes
to England, then it looks rather different. But then where are
the next several hundred going to go? This was the point being
raised by the American groups. This is a precedent, they said,
and it needs to be seen in the wider context of discussions being
pursued by MARAD and the Chinese and Mexican Governments, which
were going on in parallel. So Britain was not the only destination
for vessels that needed breaking up in the United States; it was
the first destination, and it needs to be seen in the context
of a dramatic change in policy, which is why the American NGOs
in part were so concerned to highlight this issue. The other point
that was being pursued and is still being pursued by the American
NGOs was the effective overriding of Environmental Protection
Agency laws in the United States, which effectively banned the
export of PCBs. This was ultimately pursued to the point where
MARAD sought assurances from the Environmental Protection Agency
in the United States that they would not prosecute or bring an
action against MARAD for exporting these PCBs. Again, the American
NGOs saw this as quite a dramatic shift in policy. It is okay
to shift out these PCBs so where the end of this particular policy
change? What PCBs will be going where? So there were some bigger
issues embedded in what looked like quite a respectable developed
country to developed country transfer, and the United States groups
and we believed that there was a bigger picture to be explored
here, which is one of the reasons why we became so concerned about
this issue, and those questions remain in the legal process now,
do they not, Phil?
Mr Michaels: Absolutely, they
are still going through the court process at the moment.
Mr Juniper: Of course, the developed
country to developed country transfer of ships, we would all agree,
should be done to the highest possible standards and should at
least comply with the law of the countries receiving the ships
as well as the countries exporting the ships.
Q91 Joan Ruddock: You have made a lot
of the fact that developed countries should deal with their own
ships and their own mess at home should be cleaned up, but is
it not a fact that many UK-owned ships—and this was evidence
given to us by the Chamber of Shipping—actually spend their
lives in other parts of the world altogether and may in fact never,
ever come to the UK? So you could have a situation where defunct
ships in a poor state could be towed back to the UK under the
scenario that you propose, just because the company that owns
them happens to be a UK-based company, albeit that the ships have
essentially never been UK-based?
Mr Childs: It is a tricky one,
is it not, and it is clearly very complex? It is very different
from, for example, a computer made in China that comes over here
and we have concerns when computers go back to China for scrapping
in appalling facilities. I think in terms of this those communities
are essentially facing a double-whammy; they are facing a double-whammy
in producing the ship in the first place and disposing it, but
the economic gain from that ship has all come to the UK.
Q92 Joan Ruddock: I suspect the companies
would probably argue that case and would say that much of the
economic benefit does come to the countries in which they are
working as well.
Mr Childs: Yes, but they are housed
here.
Mr Juniper: And pay tax here,
and pay dividends to their shareholders. Enormous amounts of financial
flow are coming to this country because of economic activities
being carried out by British companies elsewhere. So the point
is a valid one, but it could be argued—and argued fairly—that
there is also an economic benefit in countries where these firms
are operating, and that is something that varies between the operation
and the company. The fact that BP has its shareholders here and
pays British corporation tax cannot be avoided.
Mr Childs: The bottom line is
really about the environmental and worker safety standards where
things are getting scrapped, and from the evidence that we have
seen—and we have yet to see any other evidence—the
environmental standards and the worker safety in ship scrapping
operations throughout Asia is extremely low. If we were then to
say that it is absolutely fine, you build your ships in Japan
and you scrap them in India, and it is nothing to do with us,
even though you are a British corporation that is bringing profits
back to this country and paying shareholders back in this country,
I think we would find it very difficult to say that. What we would
say is that you have to have responsibilities and that is where
the corporate responsibility legislation is so powerful.
Q93 Joan Ruddock: What can the UK Government
as such do to promote the scenario that you have advocated, bringing
back our own ships?
Mr Childs: I am sure there are
measures in terms of the International Maritime Organisation where
they can be very active in terms of trying to raise the standard
of ship scrapping across the world, but ultimately for us the
corporate responsibility legislation will be very powerful, and
could be very powerful in terms of making it difficult for companies
to act environmentally irresponsibly by dumping these ships in
Bangladeshi companies, and making the directors responsibility.
I think that is a very powerful mechanism. Also, I think the UK
Government does need to come forward with a ship recycling strategy;
it does need to step back and look around the UK, probably together
with the European Union, and say, "Where do we need facilities?
What size facilities? How do we help those facilities off the
ground and how do we make sure that at least the ships that we
own are going to these facilities?" As well as trying to
incentivise through legislation the corporations' ships.
Q94 Joan Ruddock: If that happened is
it not likely that companies would just flag out their ships so
that they no longer appeared to be British-owned ships?
Mr Childs: That is why I think
it is about the company that owns the ship and the corporate responsibility
legislation.
Q95 Chairman: Just to add to that point,
one of the things that slightly concerns me about the line that
you put forward is that these international shipping companies
could set up ownership companies outside the United Kingdom, and
if you ask the blunt question, "Who owns this ship?"
it could be the Panamanian ABC shipping company.
Mr Juniper: We already have this
problem, which is why often it is difficult to pursue liability
claims in respect of oil spills, for example. There are some wider
issues here that evidently Governments need to explore. I think
in the short-term, and to show some commitment to this issue,
perhaps it would be encouraging to hear a statement from the British
Government to the effect that no Royal Navy Ships will be exported
for disposal overseas from henceforth, and that we will be looking
to build an industry in this country that is capable of breaking
up British company ships as well as we go forward, and there will
be incentives for doing that, corporate accountability being one
route that we have explored already. But some leadership and some
commitment backed by some action would be a good way to begin.
Q96 Mr Lazarowicz: Why should it just
be with Britain? You quote in your evidence from an EU study which
suggests that a single, high volume, fast turnaround facility
is proposed just for the EU. Your position would presumably imply
that every EU country with a sizeable fleet would have to construct
its own facility, and there is a suggestion here that you could
have a facility in—I think one suggestion was Poland, or
the Ukraine, which is not in the EU but in Europe. What would
be wrong with that? If the facility was in another EU country
why should it be in the UK particularly?
Mr Juniper: There is nothing wrong
with that but one of the things we think Governments should do
is to try and identify synergies between industrial policy and
environmental policy, such that we can capture jobs and economic
benefits in this country at the same time as doing some good for
the environment. That does not mean that an EU facility would
be a bad thing, it just strikes us as being politically and economically
more sensible to look for benefits that we can develop at home
at the same time. That is part of the sustainable development
equation, is it not, looking for synergies between environmental-social
and environmental goals at the same time, rather than trading
them off against each other? For other countries, there are environmental
groups making this very same point in the United States; there
are other groups making the same point across the EU. We are not
against an EU-wide facility but we would encourage the British
Government to look at British facilities as a means of developing
expertise in this important field in this country and, at the
same time, showing leadership and willingness to be proactive.
Q97 Mr Lazarowicz: So we could have an
EU facility based in the UK, which could be taking ships from
Greece, Finland, Latvia, Poland, Italy, presumably coming in to
be dismantled, under your scenario?
Mr Juniper: That could be one
possibility under the scenario we have just explored.
Q98 Mr Lepper: I was interested in Tony
Juniper setting this in the context of the change in US policy
that you outlined. It is interesting to think of this as another
option to the Ralph Nader effect in the presidential elections—I
wonder if Mr Nader anticipated anything like this happening. Nevertheless,
one of the things that you talk about in terms of corporate responsibility
is providing effective communities overseas in developing countries,
with rights of redress in UK courts. Is there any precedent for
this happening in any other field that you are aware of?
Mr Juniper: Phil may know more
details, but there is one case I know of, the Cape Asbestos case,
where there was an action brought by people who were living in
South Africa, who were affected by this company's operations—very
severe health impacts. There was no effective route to justice
in the country concerned so ultimately the case was heard here.
We have recently been in contact with colleagues from Friends
of the Earth Nigeria; they were in London a couple of weeks ago
highlighting how the failure of justice for them is leading to
some very grave environmental and human rights abuses in their
country, and towards their communities, and there is nowhere where
they can bring an action with confidence inside Nigeria. So we
have been suggesting that it might be logical for this British
company to be able to be challenged by communities who were affected
by its operations elsewhere in this country. So there are examples
of where it needs to happen. There is one example of where it
has happened and clearly it would be better to pursue this at
an international level, but we see no reason why it cannot be
pursued firstly at the UK level, again as an act of leadership
if nothing else.
Mr Michaels: As Tony said, it
is possible to bring cases in some very, very limited situations
by overseas directly affected communities against a British registered
company, but those circumstances are extremely proscribed and
do not provide the sort of remedies or the opportunities for justice
that Tony was talking about.
Q99 Mr Lepper: So it does need something
brought into legislation to make this possible?
Mr Juniper: Absolutely.
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