Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-139)
DR STEPHEN
LADYMAN, IAN
PEARSON, MR
JOHN GRUBB
AND MR
DAVID ROBERTS
29 MARCH 2006
Q120 Clive Efford: That too.
Dr Ladyman: Mr Grubb might have
more information on that.
Q121 Chairman: Do you know about
the work of TNO, Mr Grubb, and the seminars they have held in
the Netherlands?
Mr Grubb: I have heard of them,
I have not been directly involved in that. On counter-terrorism
one has a field of intelligence and one can build up pictures.
The difficulty with piracy, as Stephen said earlier, is that it
is often opportunistic, it is in different parts of the world
and is not necessarily linked. If there is some advantage to be
gained from corporate approaches, I could quite see why bodies
like that are thinking about it.
Q122 Clive Efford: Do you think there
is a problem in the reporting of incidents which makes it very
difficult to gather this information?
Mr Grubb: The anecdotal information
I have had on reporting piracy does suggest it is under-reported
because it does have consequences sometimes when you report; it
has consequences in terms of insurance liability, it has consequences
in terms of delays you may have in certain ports when you enter
a piracy situation. So it would suggest it is under-reported.
Q123 Clive Efford: Is there any duty
on a flag state to report incidents of piracy to the IMO? If not,
should there be?
Mr Grubb: I am not aware of a
duty to do so. It is something we, of course, ask for of UK flagged
ships; we ask and encourage that to happen. There could be advantages
in countries, probably through the offices of the IMO, being asked
to do that.
Dr Ladyman: It would of course
be for the IMO to decide they wanted to create that sort of rule,
but certainly it would be best practice to have that level of
reporting. I would imagine that the vast majority of flags do
encourage it and we would certainly work towards that end.
Q124 Clive Efford: We have had evidence
that suggests there have been incidents where a ship has reported
an incident and that has resulted in quite considerable delay
and cost to the shipping company. Has the Government been involved
in any discussions about trying to iron out some of those problems,
to remove the disincentive to report?
Ian Pearson: This is a problem
with UK flagged ships or an international problem?
Q125 Clive Efford: I presume the
UK flagged ships would be the primary concern of the Government.
If this is a general problem, that other ships are not reporting
the problem, then other people are not going to be aware of it,
so I assume generally we are concerned about disincentives for
ships wanting to report.
Dr Ladyman: Out duty as a flag
state is to try and make the handling of Red Ensign ships as efficient
as possible. Were we to become aware that because people were
reporting acts of criminality against them they were being unfairly
delayed, certainly we would want to take that up. That would be
an issue we would try and address.
Q126 Clive Efford: Is the Government
aware of any incidents where reports have been made and they have
been subject to intimidation from corrupt port officials?
Dr Ladyman: I personally am not
aware of that. Mr Grubb may have further information on that.
I think it is important to say that attitudes to piracy in different
parts of the world change from time to time. Twenty years ago
there were many parts of the world where that might have been
the case and international action has improved the situation in
many parts of the world. If anybody has specific information of
ports where British flagged vessels have been put through that
sort of intimidation or difficulty, then we would certainly want
to investigate it. Whether Mr Grubb has any details of specific
occurrences of that kind, I do not know.
Mr Grubb: No, I do not. I think
Stephen has put it extremely well.
Q127 Clive Efford: We have also been
asking questions about specific types of cargo which may be attractive
to terrorist attack. Does the Government have any specific guidelines
about security for such cargoes?
Dr Ladyman: We provided a range
of guidelines about how ships should protect themselves. That
includes security in respect of different types of cargo, the
security of the vessels, security in ports, the journeys people
should make, the areas people should avoid. There is a range of
advice provided.
Q128 Clive Efford: Is there any additional
security which the Government provides on ships or accompanying
ships in areas which are considered to be high risk?
Mr Grubb: I think it depends.
If you are talking about terrorism, which you have just mentioned,
the answer is yes, because we set the security level. So where
there are areas of the world which we have identified—mainly
most of the sea channels, particularly the choke points—where
ships are likely to be at risk, they have to operate at security
level two, which means they have a more intense range of security
measures than is the normal security level around the world. So
there is a degree of advice and protection they can put in place,
and they also have to respond to that.
Q129 Clive Efford: We have had described
to us end-to-end security for certain types of cargo and shipping
routes. Do you have any concept of what end-to-end security means?
Mr Grubb: Yes. What we do at the
moment is provide protective security measures for the cargo in
the ship regardless of what it is. When you talk about end-to-end,
you are talking about the supply chain, where is this cargo starting
from, what controls have there been on that before it reached
the ship, and then when it is on the ship what are the protective
security measures there. If it is particularly sensitive, that
would be marked in a different way from some other cargo. One
has to think here of the world movement of cargo vessels and the
vast amounts one is talking about. But one is talking about what
protective security measures might be put on in port and what
you do about the supply chain before it has reached there.
Q130 Clive Efford: NUMAST has suggested
the Government is failing to take the issue of maritime security
seriously in effect, and it has described it as the Achilles heel
post-9/11. Would you care to comment on that?
Mr Grubb: The comment would be
that we refute it. If you look at the evidence of what has taken
place since 9/11, we now have ship security plans for all the
ships, port security plans for all the ports, we have set security
levels world-wide, we give advice and guidance. I think it is
taken extremely seriously.
Dr Ladyman: Were NUMAST suggesting
in some way the UK Government was particularly culpable in ignoring
this issue, or were they suggesting it is a world-wide problem?
Q131 Clive Efford: They did say "governments"
plural.
Dr Ladyman: It may well be governments,
plural, are not taking this seriously, but Government, singular,
the UK Government, certainly is.
Q132 Mr Goodwill: Is it true that
current advice given to merchant vessels when approached by pirates
who may be armed with AK-47s or rocket-propelled grenades is to
deploy their fire hoses to try and deter them?
Mr Grubb: It is one of a range
of things you can do. You have speed, you have manoeuvrability,
you have fire hoses, you have whatever is at hand. It is one of
the things.
Q133 Mr Goodwill: What advice would
you give to merchant companies who may be considering either employing
security personnel, maybe ex-forces—we have heard of Ghurkhas
possibly being on ships—or actually providing arms to the
crew? What advice would you give to those?
Mr Grubb: Our line has always
been that we have not encouraged the presence of fire arms because
of the risk that brings of escalating situations which have not
so far happened.
Q134 Mr Goodwill: Are you aware of
British flagged vessels, or maybe other vessels, which are taking
these sorts of measures?
Mr Grubb: I am not aware British
vessels are taking those measures.
Dr Ladyman: I think it pretty
unlikely that anybody would communicate to the UK Government they
were doing something that the UK Government does not advise them
to do.
Q135 Mr Goodwill: If these vessels
were to dock in UK ports, we would then have our own security
issues with weapons being portside?
Dr Ladyman: Absolutely.
Q136 Chairman: The Egyptian Embassy
in Denmark issued a warning about a possible attack by elements
affiliated to al-Qaeda on ships passing through the Suez Canal.
Do we have any information about that?
Mr Grubb: We do have intelligence
information on the situation in the Suez Canal which led us to
raise our security level to two not that long ago. We have a lot
of discussions with the Egyptian authorities as to what measures
they can take to help protect our ships when they are in that
canal or in ports nearby.
Q137 Chairman: Has there been any
discussion between the two departments about this question of
how you really provide the best level of security? Because if
the advice really is to use fire hoses against an armed man, it
is not perhaps as imaginative as it might be.
Dr Ladyman: We provide a range
of advice that people can consider and then use their commonsense
to decide which is the appropriate way to respond. Using a fire
hose might be one of a range of tools, the primary one, I would
suggest, if I can quote Monty Python, is "run away".
That is what we tell people to do, if they can do it and then—
Q138 Chairman: It is not always very
easy to run away on a vast vessel which is moving quite slowly
and which is being approached by a fast, small boat.
Dr Ladyman: If they are unable
to run away then there is a range of other things they can do,
including passive resistance. What we do not recommend people
do is carry weapons.
Q139 Chairman: Did you get piracy
raised under the presidency of the United Kingdom?
Ian Pearson: There was a discussion
at the UN Security Council on piracy.
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