Examination of Witnesses (Questions 187-199)
21 JULY 2004
BARONESS YOUNG
OF OLD
SCONE, MR
DAVID JORDAN
AND MR
ROY WATKINSON
Q187 Chairman: Good afternoon, ladies
and gentlemen. My apologies that we are a little late on parade.
It was entirely my fault, due to the fact that I was in the Defence
statement with strong constituency interest. My apologies for
keeping you waiting. We are doing our inquiry into defunct ships.
Baroness Young, you are well-known to us in terms of the Environment
Agency, welcome again. You have brought Mr Jordan, your Director
of operations, with you and Mr Watkinson, whose face is familiar,
but what title do you presently have, Mr Watkinson?
Mr Watkinson: I am called the
Hazardous Waste Policy Manager.
Q188 Chairman: I want to start off with
one short simple question to you. I am sure you will have read
the report dated 30th April by Mr John Ballard, formerly of Defra[1]I
wanted you to (a) confirm that you have read it and (b) do you
agree with its contents, findings and recommendations?
http:/www.defra.gov.uk/environment/waste/topics/hazwaste/usnavalships-reviews/pdf/ballard-review.pdf
and covering letter:
http:/www.defra.gov.uk/environment/waste/topics/hazwaste/usnavalships-reviews/pdf/ballard-letter.pdf
Baroness Young of Old Scone: First
of all, just for the record, could I say that David Jordan is
the Deputy Director of Operations. I would hate to promote him,
though he deserves it.
Q189 Chairman: You are on lower pay grades
since you got here!
Baroness Young of Old Scone: We
do broadly support the John Ballard review. It was very much done
in full discussion with all of the interests that he investigated.
We have, I think, two areas where we are in further discussion
with government. One is some of the issues about the period before
we receive a transfrontier ship notification and trying to get
pre-work done. We have had to make the point that we will try
to do that wherever possible, but if the first thing we know about
a transfrontier shipment being notified is the notification arriving
on our desk, there is no legal requirement for a pre-notification
period; so that is something that we raised with him. The second
area we raised was the issue of how quickly we kept ministers
informed, because we certainly had from the middle of the summer
discussed the issue with Defra officials and assumed that Defra
officials were in the process of keeping ministers informed. We
know that they raised it during the early part of the summer with
ministers. We assumed that that further information would continue.
Those are, I think, the two main issues where we have had further
discussions with government.
Chairman: That is helpful.
Q190 Diana Organ: Obviously you are aware
of the fact that there has been quite a lot of discussion and
argument about where ships for dismantling should be sent. Part
of this hinges on where they come from in the first place. It
may be, as you know, with ships having flags that are nothing
to do with where they operate, it might be a UK based company
that owns them but the ship has never been anywhere near UK waters,
it may derive economic benefit in the Pacific, or whatever. The
whole issue I would like to look at is how do we decide on what
basis and where ships should be sent? Is it right morally, environmentally
and from a health and safety point of view that the developed
world should be sending ships to be dismantled to the less developed
world? Should there be an onus that nations or regions should
become self-sufficient? If we are going to say that we are going
to make regions or the developed world self-sufficient in its
dismantling, how are we going to put that into place and ban ships
being dumped in Bangladesh or taken to China for dismantling?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: Perhaps
I could start and then pass over to Roy Watkinson. Certainly our
worry about trying to get regional agreements is that the whole
system, as you say, is very complex. Ships are flagged in one
country; they may come to port in a whole range of countries;
they may be re-flagged; they may change flags virtually as they
travel round the world; and therefore understanding where the
home country or the home region of a ship is is almost impossible.
I do not think there is such a concept. Our concern is that if
this is going to work it is going to have to work on a global
basis: there needs to be an international agreement that is binding
on ship owners and dismantlers and there needs to be an international
system and network of ship dismantling facilities that do provide
the proper standards rather than, either on a UK basis or a Europe
basis or on another regional basis, trying to corral these ships,
which are actually global players; they are stateless to some
extent because they change flags fairly frequently. That is the
primary thing we would like to see. The discussions that are currently
about to begin between the International Labour Organisation and
the International Maritime Organisation and the Basel Convention
working group, we believe, is the key to getting a global system.
Q191 Diana Organ: So have you had any
discussions with, say within the EU, similar agencies in nation
states, similar sorts of environmental agencies? Have you been
talking to them, saying, "Actually the EU could take a stand.
We could make a policy on this and work together and we might
pick out certain factors that would be acceptable or not acceptable
to us"? Have you done any work on this?
Mr Watkinson: Of course, we are
the agency and we are not responsible for making the Government
policy in this area, but we do, of course, talk to our brother
and sister regulators across Europe, and we know that it is of
interest, particularly in view of the fact that there has been
the recent enlargement of the EU which has meant that there are
now more ships, if you like, flagged to the new EU states. So
that is something that, for instance, when it comes to the point
of acting as a competent authority and where we are working as
a competent authority—that is in connection with our transboundary
shipments responsibilities—we do, for example, talk quite
frequently with them about what kind of wastes are being accepted,
the notification process, and so on; but the issue of how it is
going to be developed, as I think you rightly said at the outset,
into a solution that is going to work probably cannot even work
within the EU itself. The EU could provide a bit of leadership
in that area if it chose to work as a group on that particular
issue and, I believe, through meetings of the working groups of
the subsidiary bodies of the Basel Convention, for example, and
the IMO, those sorts of discussions are already underway. I think
the difficulty is that the outcome is liable to take time because
it involves the international negotiation process, there is not
a quick fix; but it is clear also from the discussions that have
already been held, for example, a few years ago there were no
guidelines in place by the IMO on Green Passports, and so on,
there were no guidelines in place for the Basel Convention, there
were no guidelines in place in relation to labour issues, and
all of these have an impact on them. Of course, we are mostly
concerned with the Basel Convention. So those things have now
happened. It is moving forward with those and turning them into
something concrete as an actual, if you like, binding instrument
that will be the important thing to achieve. The EU, I think,
can help in that if it chose to tackle it.
Q192 Diana Organ: Lastly, we came to
this inquiry because we started off looking at the situation with
ghost ships (which now seem to be called defunct ships) that were
going to Hartlepool for dismantling. As the Environment Agency
of the United Kingdom, do you have any problems with a company
setting up and saying on an environmental basis, "We would
like to look at a certain government facility for dismantling
large ships"?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: We
certainly believe that there needs to be a network of facilities
available, both in the UK and elsewhere, for the environmentally
safe dismantling of ships. There is clearly a business there and
we are interested in seeing the recycling of a maximum amount
of material from these ships for a useful future purpose and the
safe scrapping of the residual amounts that cannot be used as
new materials. So that is a really important issue for us. Providing
we can have well-conducted sites that are properly licensed and
they conduct their business in accord with the domestic waste
management licensing provisions and the other provisions that
surrounded their business and the transfrontier shipment provisions,
which are the arrangements for bringing ships from elsewhere,
we believe that is something we want to see. There is substantial
business to be had, I believe, in the future, even with UK based
ships, for example ships either owned by government, for example
Ministry of Defence ships, or ships in which government plays
a role, the trawler decommissioning programme, for example. So
even if you took all the commercially available business out of
the way, there is still a modest business from government-owned
or influenced ships, if I can use that term. So we would like
to see a network of facilities, but we would like to see it world-wide,
because we believe that wherever a ship goes we would want to
see a similar standard of breaking happening.
Q193 Chairman: You are clearly being
what I might call very correct in your aspirations, but it is
not quite clear to me how you are trying to make those things
happen. You referred earlier in your remarks to the joint efforts
on the ILO, the IMO and the Basel Convention. Do you actually
have any input to their deliberations on trying to move the world
agenda forward on the dismantling of ships?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: This
is a subject where Defra will take the lead and, in fact, Defra
will be involved, but my memory is that the Department of Transport
are actually the lead in IMO.
Mr Watkinson: The Maritime Coastguard
Agency, but we support Defra, for example, in relation to the
Basel Convention work.
Q194 Chairman: Can we dwell on that for
a minute, because this adds a new dimension to our considerations?
You are saying that part of the Department of Transport is the
lead organisation for representing our interests on this through
the meeting of those three bodies. Am I right or wrong?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: Certainly
Defra will be involved with the Basel Convention, but if we do
have this joint working group between the ILO, IMO and the Basel
Convention, there will be MCA involvement, or Department of
Transport involvement on behalf of the marine interests.
Q195 Chairman: Can you tell us then if
there is any coordinatory body that is currently existing within
the United Kingdom Government to pull together the sum total of
knowledge on these matters so that all of your expertise is pooled
in a single stream of consciousness?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: I
think probably that is one you should ask the Minister about.
Q196 Chairman: I am asking you. If there
was a problem, you, I am sure, would be part of it?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: I
do not think there is a single body, I think this is an example—
Q197 Chairman: So the answer is no?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: I
think this is an example of an issue which, in common with many
issues, are dealt with via a number of government departments
and agencies shaking hands.
Q198 Chairman: I am trying to establish
where you fit into the architecture of this, and the message I
am getting is that you think something is happening but you are
not directly plugged in either to the Department of Transport,
you are, I presume, giving support to Defra?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: We
will be advising Defra as their agency, but I think the thing
that we have to be clear about is what our role is. Our role is
not to make policy, our role is as the regulator of the facility
and the regimes, the transfrontier shipment regime and the waste
management licence regime.
Q199 Chairman: You described to Mrs Organ
in terms of responding to her questions, very correctly, a number
of the key ingredients that make for good dismantling practice
and policy. You have said that on the record to us. I was interested
to know, as the aware agency, the aware body, on what were the
good requirements for ship dismantling, how you were trying to
input that to the discussions to which the United Kingdom is a
party to the three organisations, Basel, IMO, ILO, which you also
mentioned in your evidence[2]The
impression I am getting is that you are not actually plugged into
any of that?
Baroness Young of Old Scone: We
are plugged into the Basel Convention discussions, but Roy will
be able to describe in what way.
1 Full report: Back
2
Ev 46 Back
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