Marine Navigation (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Earl of Caithness and Lord Greenway

Friday 1st February 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I did not take part in the earlier debate, because quite clearly it was of a species known as the “Berkeley herring”, which is a close relative of its cousin, the red. I wanted to get on and talk about the Bill.

Let me first chide the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, again—I do so with the best of intentions—for his discourtesy to the House in having every single amendment starred. We had Second Reading two weeks ago. It was not beyond the bounds of possibility to have the amendments so that we could consider them before coming in on a Friday and finding them there on the Marshalled List.

On the noble Lord’s request for a definition, he mentioned that there would be different harbour authorities, that there might even be competing ports and a commercial benefit for one port. He forgot to mention, of course, that there would be pilotage error as well, sadly. We cannot get rid of human error. That is one of those things; we saw it with the “Sea Empress”. The only way of having totally safe waters is to ban every single vessel from them, which of course is a totally impractical way of proceeding. Human error will always be a factor, both on land and particularly at sea. I know that full well from my experiences as a Shipping Minister.

The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, came up with a definition. It was given to him by the Minister. It happened to be the definition that I quoted at Second Reading. As a result of quoting it at Second Reading, a circular letter was produced by the pilots condemning me for quoting it. I suppose it is not entirely appropriate that any Member of this House should quote a Secretary of State or a Minister from another place. It did not add to the pilots’ arguments one bit. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, was very brave to quote it. Doubtless he will also get a letter condemning him for doing so.

I suggest that the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, looks again at the Explanatory Notes. The definition is helped by the words there, which I also quoted at col. 915 on 18 January. The key words are:

“capable of piloting one or more specified ships”.

I know that the Government will have taken full legal advice; no Minister would dare go to that Dispatch Box without having done so. The wording in the Bill is safe. It will work. I commend the Bill as it stands, and do not support the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley.

[Lord Greenway]

My Lords, I follow the same line as the noble Earl. In the previous debate, a noble Lord referred to the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, as a “diamond” and “dogged”. Well, the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is certainly dogged. If he is as good as his word and lets this Bill go through, I might even describe him as a diamond.

We have been talking semantics here about “deck officer”. “Deck officer” is a term that has been used for many years, as the noble Lord, Lord MacKenzie, said. Everybody at sea knows what a deck officer is.

My worry is about the future. I attended the City of London maritime dinner last night, where the lord mayor and the noble Lord, Lord Green, the Trade Minister, made excellent speeches about the great importance of our maritime business right across the board, from shipping to insurance to arbitration to lawyers, and in maintaining the City of London as the world centre for these operations.

On the issue of pilotage exemption certificates, a real problem is looming, certainly in the ferry industry. The demographic graph shows that a lot of the officers are within five years of retirement. Where are the younger officers going to come from? The Bill would enable young and upcoming officers to advance up the tree perhaps rather more quickly by gaining pilotage exemption certificates. It will not happen across the board. There will be a few here and a few there; it will not be widespread. They are our seed corn for manning our ships in future. More importantly, we hope that some of these people will in time become pilots, so it will benefit the pilotage business in the longer term. That is a very important point to make.