Merchant Shipping (Port State Control) Regulations 2026

Baroness Pidgeon Excerpts

Monday 27th April 2026 Grand Committee

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, port state control is the system used by the United Kingdom and other countries to inspect foreign-registered visiting ships to ensure that they meet the necessary international safety and pollution prevention standards. These regulations apply not to British ships but only to foreign-registered ones, to ensure that they meet the expected standards to operate safely in our waters.

The United Kingdom is a party to the Paris memorandum of understanding, the well-established collaborative regional agreement to co-ordinate this activity, with the aim of ensuring that international standards that reduce the risks to health, safety and the environment are met. It allows us to information-share and work with our neighbours to ensure the effective targeting of vessels to identify those that are substandard. The purpose of the proposed regulations is to replace and update the existing 2011 United Kingdom regulations on this subject and to reaffirm our commitment to the Paris memorandum of understanding requirements by giving effect to them in UK law.

A four-week public consultation was carried out, during which responders expressed support for the implementation of the proposed regulations. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency published a consultation report, including responses to comments received. Before the regulations were laid in draft, they were sent to the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments for informal pre-laying scrutiny. The JCSI provided drafting comments on the regulations at that stage and then formally considered them after they were laid and noted them without further comment. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has not drawn this instrument to the attention of the House.

The background to this statutory instrument is the Paris memorandum of understanding, which I understand dates from 1978 and is one of a number of collaborative regional agreements setting out a framework for carrying out port state control inspections globally. It is not a European Union agreement, although some parties are EU member states.

At the time when the 2011 regulations were made, the United Kingdom was a member of the European Union and the regulations were required to implement the relevant EU directive on port state control in accordance with the UK’s obligations as a member state. However, the UK remains a party to the Paris MoU and continues to maintain its commitments under the agreement as a non-EU member. The proposed regulations give effect to the Paris memorandum of understanding requirements in UK law and update the list of conventions against which inspections are undertaken to include those to which the UK has become a party since the 2011 regulations were written, and which the UK will now also enforce against foreign ships visiting the UK.

These regulations also remove references to EU legislation, instead referencing the Paris MoU directly. This has had the effect of making the regulations longer than the 2011 regulations, but the relevant legislation is now contained just in a UK instrument. Following the repeal of the European Communities Act 1972, the proposed regulations also remove reliance on this power. While Merchant Shipping Act powers are also used to the fullest extent possible, it has been necessary to use the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 powers to fill some gaps before those powers expire next month.

I have set out the purpose and scope of these regulations: to update merchant shipping legislation and ensure it reflects the UK’s commitment to the Paris MoU. These regulations reflect our continued commitment to uphold international standards, not only for UK-registered ships but for all ships using UK ports, while tailoring the legislative framework to the UK’s post-EU exit context. I hope noble Lords will join me in supporting these measures and I beg to move.

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister and his officials for their helpful briefing last week. As we have heard, this instrument revokes and replaces the Merchant Shipping (Port State Control) Regulations 2011, which implemented the UK’s commitment under the Paris memorandum of understanding and the associated EU directive. As I learned from last week’s briefing, the Paris MoU obligates the UK to operate a regime of port state control for the monitoring, inspection and control of foreign-flagged ships calling at UK ports, to reduce the risks that such ships may pose to health, safety or the environment by ensuring that they meet relevant international standards. We have been part of the Paris MoU and its predecessor since the 1970s.

The MCA has around 100 inspectors and inspects around 1,300 ships a year. This instrument will mean that new maritime conventions are properly referenced and reports will be written in the international context, which will improve shipping safety. However, this SI shows just how much work there still is to amend legislation a decade after Brexit. Does the Minister agree that the time and effort that have to go into technical tweaks and amendments such as this distract from tackling other important issues and take up resource?

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I am very sorry to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, say that making laws for our own country, through our own processes, is somehow a distraction from what we should be doing, and that it would be better, presumably, if we were to hand this responsibility over to unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. I cannot say how much I would want to distance myself from such a position.

Since I have very little to say about the instrument, I shall add a little local colour. I did on one occasion seize an unseaworthy ship. When I was the third secretary in the British embassy in South Africa, I was the duty officer one weekend. In those days without mobile phones, that meant I had to stay home all weekend, very close to the telephone. Nothing ever happened but to my astonishment, I got a telephone call from the harbourmaster at Durban, saying that there was a British-registered vessel—or, rather, I think it was registered in some territory, dominion or whatever in the Caribbean that none the less fell under the Crown—in his port. It was so unseaworthy that he intended to seize and immobilise it but, apparently, he needed the permission of Her Majesty’s consul-general. I knew nothing about consular services, but there we were: I was the representative, for that weekend, of Her Majesty’s consul-general in South Africa. After a moment’s thought, I reached the conclusion that, on the whole, it was probably safer all round for me to say, “Yes, you have my authority to seize this vessel”, than to say no or prevaricate in any way—so that is what I did.

It has not happened since, but I am therefore not wholly unfamiliar with the idea that there is a degree of port inspection going on and that vessels not meeting appropriate standards are appropriately dealt with. This instrument affects no change whatever in current arrangements. It advertises itself as achieving no change in current arrangements, and that is absolutely fine. I have no objection to this instrument.

However, I will raise the same point that I raised when we discussed a statutory instrument—I think on aviation safety—a week or two ago. This instrument is made—the Minister said “in part”—using powers under the retained EU law Act. By common agreement, that Act expires in June. From that date onwards, we have no capacity to amend regulations of this sort, which are crucial in the world of transport. Statutory instruments are the normal means by which these regulations are made in the field of transport, but this spreads across the whole of Whitehall and many other departments as well. I say that we have no power to change them—we have no power to do so other than by primary legislation and Act of Parliament; we cannot use statutory instruments.

This failure of foresight on the part of the Government seems a massive dereliction of duty. Even if the Minister was able to assure us today that there will be legislation in the King’s Speech to correct this oversight—I fully appreciate it is unlikely that he can tell us today what will be in the King’s Speech—it is most unlikely that it will possible to pass it in both Houses and enact it by the end of June, when it will be necessary. As I say, I regard this as a massive dereliction of responsibility on the part of the Government, and I expect there to be serious potential consequences unless something is done.