Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Eighteenth Report

5 Action at the United Kingdom level

The Government's ship recycling strategy

55. The Government announced in response to our request for evidence that it will produce a ship recycling strategy:

[the strategy] will consider, in detail, the economic and environmental impacts of establishing high quality facilities in the UK and look at potential means (economic and/or regulatory) to encourage the establishment of such facilities in the UK. It will also set out the Government's policy on the dismantling of UK government vessels.[64]

56. We welcome the Government's decision to produce a ship recycling strategy. The strategy's scope, as outlined by Defra, is commendable. We recommend that it also set out how UK Government policy will interact with and push forward the international agenda.

57. The need to eradicate irresponsible ship dismantling is urgent, all the more so because all remaining single-hulled tankers must be dismantled before 2015, many before 2010 and the oldest by the end of 2005. In this context, the Government should tell us how it will use its forthcoming presidency of the European Union and chairmanship of the G8 to encourage rapid international action to ensure these tankers are dismantled in a responsible way.

A United Kingdom ship recycling industry

58. Government has most direct control over the ships it owns, namely naval vessels. These should be dismantled in a way that does not harm the environment or people. We would welcome the development of a thriving ship dismantling industry in the United Kingdom, which dismantled all defunct state-owned vessels to the highest standards of health, safety and environmental protection.

59. We expect that the presence of such facilities would act as a catalyst to enable UK-based ship owners to have their commercial vessels dismantled here. However, we recognise that responsible recycling will impose a cost on ship owners and recommend that the Government explore ways of mitigating that cost.

60. We recommend that, pending greater international regulation of ship recycling, the Government consider how best to persuade UK-based ship owners to adhere to the IMO guidelines and ensure that their vessels are dismantled, and seen to be dismantled, with the minimum impact on human health and the environment.

---

64   Ev 62 [Defra], para 27 Back

---

Prepared 11 November 2004