A. GENERAL POLICY QUESTIONS
8. DRAFT DIRECTIVE ON THE REGISTRATION OF PERSONS SAILING
ON BOARD PASSENGER SHIPS (12395/96)
Letter from the Rt Hon Dr Gavin Strang MP, Minister
for Transport, Department of the Environment, Transport and the
Regions to Lord Tordoff, Chairman of the Committee
Your Committee considered an Explanatory Memorandum (EM)
on this proposal (12395/96), supplied by this Department on 21
January. Your letter of 5 March[6]
to the then Minister for Shipping, Lord Goschen, lifted your scrutiny
reserve and asked that you be kept informed of progress. In his
reply, Lord Goschen promised to send you a compliance cost assessment
of the proposal.
The Council of Ministers reached agreement on a Common Position
on 18 June. An unofficial text of the Articles of the Directive
is enclosed. The Directive is designed both to improve safety
and the effectiveness of search and rescue, and to assist aspects
of post-accident administration. It will require, from January
1999, all persons on board passenger ships to be counted and their
number reported to the master and to a person ashore before departure.
For voyages of over 20 miles it will also require (Article 6),
as from 31 December 1999, the recording of the name, age and gender
of everybody aboard and, where proffered, information as to the
need for special care or assistance during an emergency. This
information must be collected before departure; communicated to
the shore no later than 30 minutes after departure, and be readily
available to the designated search and rescue authority in the
event of an emergency or after an accident. Recorded personal
data must not, however, be kept longer than necessary for the
purposes of the Directive.
Member states may exempt services from the Article 6 requirements
in accordance with specified criteria set out in Article 9. For
services not meeting those criteria, Article 9 provides that a
member state may also seek a derogation through a Committee procedure
governed by qualified majority voting.
All international services to and from the United Kingdom
will comply with the full requirements of the Directive. Some
domestic services will qualify for exemption from the requirements
of Article 6. My Department will also be considering, on a case
by case basis, the merits of seeking derogation for other domestic
services.
In agreeing to a Common Position, which had the support of
all other member states, I judged that the safety aspects of the
measure as a whole outweighed the United Kingdom's earlier reservations
about the practical issues raised by Article 6. In making that
judgement, I gave consideration to the Commission's suggestion
of a later implementation date than that originally proposed for
Article 6; the provisions for exemption and derogation; and the
possible benefits of Article 6 requirements in the (albeit rare)
cases where they could be useful, including those which related
to the safety of disabled passengers. I commend this outcome to
your Committee, and seek its endorsement of my agreement to a
Common Position.
3 July 1997
Letter from Lord Tordoff, Chairman of the Committee,
to the Rt Hon Dr Gavin Strang MP, Minister for Transport, Department
of the Environment, Transport and the Regions
Thank you for your letter of 3 July in which you provide
a helpful explanation of why the Government agreed to the Common
Position of 18 June. Since, as you know, Sub-Committee B has a
considerable interest in this proposal, I have passed your letter
to Lord Geddes, the Chairman of the Sub-Committee, for consideration.
8 July 1997
6 Printed in Correspondence with Ministers, 12th
Report, Session 1996-97, p21. Back
|
