Examination of Witnesses (Questions 104-119)
14 JULY 2004
MR MARK
STRUTT AND
MR SIMON
REDDY
Q104 Chairman: Gentlemen, welcome to
our proceedings. Apologies that we are a little behind schedule.
We have before us on behalf of Greenpeace Mr Mark Strutt, who
is a Senior Campaigner, and Mr Simon Reddy, Policy and Solutions
Director. Gentlemen, can I thank you for the written evidence
that you sent[7]I
thought it was quite significant in the written evidence that
the Committee have received from Able UK, they offered and prayed
in aid of some of the arguments that they put your quite disturbing
paper entitled Steel and Toxic Wastes for Asia[8]Can
you tell us when that was written?
Mr Strutt: I have it here; it
was June 2001.
Q105 Chairman: You have a pretty picture
on the front page of yours, ours lacks the visuals, at least on
the outside, but it does have some graphic pictures on the inside.
Have you done a parallel exercise in China?
Mr Strutt: Yes, we have. In fact
the volume I have here is for China, so the June 2001 was for
China.
Q106 Chairman: There was some mention,
but not in the same degree of detail as India and Bangladesh and,
as you will have gathered from some of the other evidence we have
received, so far China has been prayed in aid as "good"
as opposed to India and Bangladesh, which is deemed to be "bad".
Before I ask you some specific questions about Asia in general
and the environmental conditions under which ships are dismantled,
can I seek your overall views of the effectiveness of the
International Marine Organisation because, from the evidence that
we have had, work between the IMO and the International Labour
Organisation appears to be the only way that you can get some
kind of binding agreement amongst big international shipping companies
and amongst nations who are the maritime nations of the world,
to follow what they might collectively agree as best practice
for ship dismantling. I think one of the things that we are grappling
with is, how do you get the right balance between what an individual
country can do or a collective like the European Union, in legislative
terms, to make good practice and policy stick as opposed to the
alternative view that the only way you are going to get solutions
is internationally via IMO, ILO agreements. What is your own take
on that?
Mr Reddy: Globally we need the
support of the IMO in terms of a global solution to the issue
of ship scrapping. However, the IMO is a very slow process and
sometimes I think it needs a country or a number of countries
maybe to take the initiative in order to drive this process forward.
This is one of the reasons why Greenpeace got together with Peter
Mandelson and the GMB earlier this year, to announce this state
of the art ship breaking idea that we had, about creating a state
of the art facility in the UK and also calling for state of the
art facilities to be set up around the world in order to address
the issue of ship breaking. We see an opportunity for the UK to
be able to take a lead on this issue and an opportunity for the
UK to work within Europe, to encourage the European Commission
also to introduce policies so that Europe can take the lead. Once
you have a bloc such as the European Union basically taking forward
an initiative to address the global issue of ship scrapping, then
I think that would encourage the IMO as much as possible to move
fast on this issue.
Q107 Chairman: The IMO seem to have certainly
formed the view that they ought to be the only show in town, yet
we have had discussions about the Stockholm Convention and, as
I understand it, the IMO, ILO, Basel Convention, Stockholm Convention,
they are all supposed to be trying to work together to try to
find a way forward. If you then introduce national governments,
the European Union, are we not in danger of having too many players
who might individually be developing approaches which are ever
so slightly different but which do not actually encapsulate what
colleagues have described as this mobile problem because ships
move from nation to nation?
Mr Reddy: I think the global solution
and so many players involved in the discussion towards that global
solution, you are always in danger of the lowest common denominator
basically leading the debate and leading the solution. I think
there is always room within the negotiations of international
organisations for individual states or groups of individual states
to take a lead and try to drive the process forward in order to
work towards a more holistic and encompassing solution, that something
like the IMO could then learn from or maybe be able to share in
its development.
Q108 Chairman: Let us turn to Asia and
perhaps have your observations about the facilities in places
like Bangladesh—India versus China, because as you will
again have gathered from the evidence that we heard, companies
like BP have made a clear move to go to China because they think
China is "better", more responsible in dismantling and
disposal particularly of PCBs, asbestos and other materials, than
the very crude beaching conditions which they found in India and
Bangladesh. In fact your own report in those parts which do touch
on China give the impression that it is a bit better but it still
is not as good as it should be. So your thoughts on that would
be appreciated.
Mr Reddy: We actually have offices
in India and China and we have researched the ship scrapping facilities
in those areas, and you will probably be aware of some of the
reports, or you have seen copies of some of the reports that we
have put out. Also, I would like to submit some additional information
regarding the sort of conditions that we have in Alang, in terms
of ship scrapping where British ships and also British military
ships are currently on the beach. Mark can probably follow up
more on the issues in relation to China in more detail.
Mr Strutt: I think China is a
bit better but it is nowhere near what we would call state of
the art, although there have been some improvements over the past
few years, the Chinese Government has intervened and it is trying
to bring up standards. However, generally ships are not dismantled
in dry docks, they are still generally dismantled in the water.
Worker protection in terms of equipment and in terms of working
procedures are still not all that they should be. There is some
variation between yards, but it is still very common to find workers
wearing only straw hats, for example. Greenpeace has visited four
yards in China and we have seen open burning of cables that will
contain PCBs; we have seen hot torch cutting of metals where there
will potentially be a danger of explosion from the fuels, et cetera.
So while China, I would say, is improving and at least the dismantling
is done on the quayside rather than simply on a beach where the
ship has been beached up, it is by no means approaching what we
would call high environmental or health and safety standards.
However, I think the underlying point here is that China is still
receiving hazardous wastes from other countries and what actually
happens to those hazardous wastes is far from certain. They tend
to disappear from view once the ship has been dismantled; the
official policy is that they should be land filled and they are
probably land filled but why are these materials from UK ships
ending up in Chinese landfills rather than UK landfills?
Q109 Chairman: Is there any danger that
as you (for understandable reasons) argue for improved circumstances
somebody else next down the dismantling chain will say, "We
will open up a yard and we will do the job cheaper now that the
Chinese are having to increase the costs to respond to the line
that you have taken?" It could be a sort of a forever chasing
your tail situation?
Mr Strutt: I think that is what
has happened historically.
Mr Reddy: That is the situation
that we have now, in that countries, developed countries, introduced
health and safety regulations, the costs went up and, lo and behold,
the ship scrapping has ended up in Alang and in Bangladesh, and
this is exactly the situation that we have to deal with. We need
an international standard, we need global network of state of
the art facilities that meet the right environmental and the right
human health and safety criteria so that we can deal with this
issue properly.
Q110 Chairman: You make it very clear
in the document to which I referred in my introductory remarks,
you said ship-breaking should be subject to a global regulatory
regime rather than a matter of unilateral measures. Do I conclude
from that that inevitably you put as the number one objective
getting the IMO, ILO, Stockholm Convention, Basel Convention all
working together try and provide that regime?
Mr Reddy: Internationally, yes,
that is what our number one objective is, but I still think that
the actions of a single government or group of governments could
initiate that happening. I do think that there is a possibility
here that a group of countries pushing the agenda on this, and
I would hope to see the UK do that and Europe do that, could force
this issue into getting us an international agreement and a global
solution.
Q111 Chairman: You mentioned in your
comments about a Centre of Excellence in the United Kingdom. Have
you done any preliminary work to calculate what the environmental
impact would be on the United Kingdom of having such a facility?
Mr Strutt: Any industrial activity
has an environmental impact, but what we are calling for is .
. . Some impact is inevitable, because we have these ships and
these materials on them. We are looking long-term, if you like.
One of the reasons we are calling for ship scrapping facilities
in the UK and in Europe is because we strongly believe that in
the "proximity principle" for hazardous waste and in
the "producer pays principle" of hazardous waste and
because we believe that those measures will drive, if you like,
or discourage the use of hazardous materials, in the long-term
you are reducing the whole range of environmental impacts that
comes with using those materials in the first place. We also believe
that the UK has the regulatory infrastructure, the health and
safety infrastructure and the medical infrastructure to be best
placed, or one of the best placed countries, to make sure that
environmental impacts are minimised. We have the technology and
we have the know-how. So as long as this industry is properly
regulated using state of the art technologies, we believe that
environmental impacts should be minimal. The environmental impacts
such as there are, the potentially most serious ones, come from
the hazardous materials, like PCBs and asbestos, and they need
to be dealt with in special circumstances. As we have laws now
for dealing with PCBs, they should be subjected to those laws,
and, as long as you export to places that do not have those laws
and regulations, you are going to have more severe environmental
impact.
Q112 Chairman: Let me ask you the key
question. Where would you put them in the UK?
Mr Strutt: The PCBs?
Q113 Chairman: No, the dismantling facilities?
Mr Strutt: I cannot answer that
question, because I think there are a number of potential sites,
and the obvious ones are places that have the facilities through
having a history of ship-building, but you would need to do a
full Environmental Impact Assessment at each site to decide whether
that was going to be a suitable place.
Chairman: What you have actually put
before us is a theoretical construct, an ideal state, but you
have not actually evaluated locations, because clearly there are
limitations on the number of ports, sea-based locations, that
can, for example, handle a 250,000 tonne dead-weight tanker, but
I presume we are talking about Tyneside, Clydeside, Teesside?
Mr Mitchell: Humberside too.
Q114 Chairman: And Humberside. Those
are the kinds of places that you would want to see evaluated?
Mr Strutt: I think they are the
places you look at first, yes.
Q115 Chairman: What about the economics
of the operation: because clearly there is a trade-off between
the costs of dismantling and how much the vessel is worth or how
much, if you like, the owner gets back from the dismantling exercise.
Inevitably, it would be cost-plus in the UK verses Bangladesh,
India or China. What inducement would there be to the ship owner
to use this state of the art facility?
Mr Reddy: Initially we wanted
to lead with the UK Government ships, insisting that all UK Government
ships are decommissioned in the UK.
Q116 Chairman: Can I stop you there?
I tried to find out the answer to how many of these UK Government
ships there are. So far the only intelligence I can glean is that
there is one that might be the subject of being broken up in the
near future; the rest appear to be flogged off to somebody else?
Mr Reddy: This is something that
needs to be addressed as well. There are 107 large ships currently
owned by the Government. We have had a meeting with Adam Ingram
on this issue, a very positive meeting, I may add, and there also
is the issue of . . . For instance, the Olwen and the Olna—they
have reached the end of their useful life. These were two British
military ships. They were then sold to a third-party in Germany
which sold them to another company in Greece which then sold them
to India, basically. Obviously you cannot have a situation—this
comes back to points made earlier about the country of origin
of a ship, where it is used, where the money is raised. Obviously
with military ships it is different, but these were military vessels
that served in our military fleet.
Q117 Chairman: The reason I am asking
that is we have to work in the real world, and you made a very
clear statement: 107 ships?
Mr Reddy: Yes.
Q118 Chairman: If you are going to have
critical mass of vessels, the Government of the day is going to
have a policy about scrapping and the way it is going to do it.
As I say, so far I can only find evidence that there is one ship
that they are currently considering dismantling?
Mr Reddy: Yes.
Q119 Chairman: Did your discussions with
Mr Ingram reveal more? Are these part of the defence cuts that
we keep hearing talked about?
Mr Reddy: There were four type
22 frigates, I believe, that are due to be decommissioned in the
near future.
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