Marine Navigation Aids Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Friday 21st January 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved By

[Lord Berkeley]

That the Bill be read a second time.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, before the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is able to make his speech, it falls to me to make the following statement. I see one or two puzzled faces opposite, but this is very much a normal matter.

I have it in command from Her Majesty the Queen and His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales to acquaint the House that they, having been informed of the purport of the Marine Navigation Aids Bill, have consented to place their prerogative and interest, so far as they are affected by the Bill, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Chief Whip for that introduction. The predecessor to this Bill had its Second Reading nearly a year ago, on 5 February 2010, and I refer noble Lords who are interested to col. 432 of Hansard for that date. In its present form, this Bill is in exactly the same format as the Bill that I introduced then and noble Lords will be pleased to hear that I do not intend to make the same Second Reading speech.

[Noble Lords]

Hear, hear!

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[Lord Berkeley]

I am grateful for that show of support. However, in many ways things have moved on on the navigation aids front. There has been progress, with developments, and I believe that it is a good idea to bring the Bill forward again.

I remind noble Lords that I introduced the Bill last year because, in the previous year, the Government of the time had increased light dues—the dues that ships pay to enter any British port—by 67 per cent, which in the middle of a recession I thought was a bit steep, to say the least. I can go through all the reasons for that, but I think that it is enough to say that they can be found in the Hansard of a year ago. I maintained then, and still do, that such an increase is frankly unaffordable. We are talking about a unique structure, where the Government set the charges for ships based on what the three general lighthouse authorities say that they need, and the ship owners have to pay up.

The main problem arises when you compare that with all the cost-cutting that the Government are making at the moment. There have been some enormous cost-cutting measures, which we have been debating here and will continue to debate, particularly in the Public Bodies Bill. Basically, the Government are saying, “You have to cut the costs. Do it how you like but this is the way that it is going to end up”. Uniquely, I think, in this case, the Government still set the charges but the taxpayer does not pay; the ship owner pays. I shall repeat just one quotation that I read out a year ago from Stephen Bracewell, the chief executive of the Harwich Haven Port Authority. He said that, as a result of the increase in the light dues,

“no less than four major container services have ceased calling at the Haven Ports”.

That is a pretty serious change to ship movements, involving a loss of revenue and a loss to the economy.

In the ensuing year, I have consulted a number of people and organisations about this light dues issue. The problem is still as bad, but I believe that there are simpler solutions. I have come across a number of examples elsewhere of how costs have been slashed for maintaining the lights, which of course has resulted in lower charges. The best example that I found was in Australia. A couple of weeks after my Second Reading speech last year, I received an e-mail from someone in Australia whom I did not know saying that he had been reading Hansard the previous night. I felt chuffed about it but I wondered why someone in Australia would be reading my speech in Hansard. However, the person concerned had been the director of the Australian lights authorities and, over the past 10 years, had achieved a saving of 50 per cent in the maintenance of the lights all the way round Australia. I went to Australia in April and arranged to meet him. I was extremely impressed with him because he also knows the UK waters very well. He was adamant that similar savings could be made here and a number of his articles were published in Lloyd’s List. One of the elder brethren at Trinity House, Michael Grey, wrote in saying that Australia was nothing like the UK. He said that it was a square country and needed only a lighthouse at all four corners. I am exaggerating slightly, but it was that kind of thing. Mr Davidson responded by saying that he knew all about the UK waters and that he stuck by his arguments.

I also heard more recently that the Hong Kong authorities are reducing light dues by 20 per cent. They are bringing in similar efficiencies. I understand that in many of the old colonies, shall we say—they are now independent—where a similar structure of lights occurs, there is the potential to make similar reductions.

Since last year, the new Government have made a lot of progress and I am pleased that they have. First, they have made progress on what we have come to call the Irish question. Since 1922—or since for ever, actually—ships entering UK ports have contributed to the cost of maintaining the lights around the Republic of Ireland. I remember putting down a Starred Question about that a few years ago. The noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, answered it by saying that the Irish Government were not keen to negotiate. Well, they wouldn’t be, would they, if they would have to spend somewhere between £15 million and £20 million more because ships coming into British ports no longer had to contribute to the maintenance of the lights around Ireland. After all, they do not contribute to the lights around France, Belgium, Germany or anywhere else.

The present Shipping Minister, Mike Penning MP, has reached agreement with the Irish Government to stop this transfer of funding by the end of this Parliament. I certainly welcome that. He will need all the support that he can get given the state of the Irish economy. I believe that the Irish Minister whom he met a week or two ago resigned yesterday, so I hope that the agreement will still stand.

The Government have also finally started to tackle the costs of running the three lighthouse authorities around the coast. I understand from a letter from the Lights Advisory Committee that the Government have set the GLA the target of making cuts of 17 per cent over the next five years. That is welcome—it is a major step forward—but they could go further. Anyone in the position of being a monopoly supplier, effectively government-funded in the way that it operates, could cut costs a lot more.

I have already written to the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, and other speakers whose names were on the list when I wrote the letters to tell them that, if the Bill is given a Second Reading by the House today, I will introduce amendments to make it much simpler. These amendments would do two things. They would require the Government to reduce light dues for ships entering the UK ports by codified reduction targets annually for a five-year period—probably by 50 per cent in five years, which is achievable. I would also support the present Shipping Minister in his work in dealing with the Irish Government by requiring the Government to cease payments by a certain date.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

My Lords, I know from my time at the receiving end as Transport Minister that my noble friend is extremely knowledgeable and an assiduous campaigner on these issues—rightly so, given their importance to a seafaring and trading nation. Is he in a position to estimate the deleterious effect on trade of such a large increase over a short period of time, even if only in very round figures?

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[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, that is an interesting question. When I quoted the chief executive of the Harwich Haven Port Authority, I quoted only part of what he said. He also said:

“This action by four major carriers has already deprived the General Lighthouse Fund of £2.4M in annual light dues”.

He did not estimate the reduction in business for the Haven ports, but the noble Lord will appreciate that, if four major container lines cease coming into the UK but go to the continent—Rotterdam, Antwerp or Hamburg—and feeder across, there will be a serious and significant reduction in jobs. Of course, shipping lines take extremely seriously even small changes to the amount that they have to pay.

[The Earl of Caithness]

The noble Lord mentioned making amendments. Will he tell us in precise detail what parts of the Bill he proposes to remove?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, the noble Lord is entitled to make his Second Reading speech without interruption at this stage of the debate.

[Lord Berkeley]

I am grateful to noble Lords. I was about to come to what I intend to remove, which will be a significant part of the Bill. I will replace it with what I would call an output specification, which, as I said a moment ago, would be a clause that would require the Government to reduce light dues, to codify reduction targets by probably 50 per cent over five years and to cease providing the Irish subsidy.

I was proposing to leave in the clause on pensions, because that came from the draft Marine Navigation Bill, for which the previous Government did not get round to finding parliamentary time. I wrote to the Shipping Minister asking whether he thought that it was a good idea to leave it in or whether he wanted anything else to be put in. As the noble Lord will know, there is already a Commons Private Member’s Bill, promoted by Therese Coffey, on wreck removal. So it is for me to have further discussions with the Minister, and a substantial reduction in the Bill’s scope will be proposed. However, I have checked with the Clerks and they seem happy with that. I have also been advised that in Private Members’ Bills in your Lordships’ House we can propose reductions in charges, costs or anything else, but we are not allowed to propose increases. That is the advice that I have had from the Clerks. Again, however, we can debate that.

All organisations that are under pressure will say that they have squeezed their efficiencies as far as they can and that they cannot do any more without compromising safety. However, we have seen in many areas that, when push comes to shove, they can do it. I believe that a bit more pushing on the GLAs will enable them to reduce costs. They will have to reduce costs and it will not compromise safety.

I welcome the Government’s action in particular in respect of the Irish question. However, I think that it would be useful for the Government to have some legal support in the shape of this Bill in case the Irish want to change their mind at any time. I have talked to many people in the shipping industry, as I said, who have confirmed the view that Mr Davidson has suggested—that reducing the costs of the GLAs by 50 per cent is reasonable and achievable and that, if the costs come down, the charges will come down. I very much look forward to noble Lords’ comments and, no doubt, if the Bill is given a Second Reading, to further discussions. I beg to move.

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[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to the Bill. I am also grateful for one or two interventions, because it was a slightly unusual way of proceeding after I decided to change it. However, I thought very carefully and consulted quite widely on this. I was advised that it was quite in order to do it like this. I felt it was therefore important to inform as many noble Lords as I could see on the list beforehand of my intentions. I am sorry that the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, did not receive it; I sent them all by e-mail but I could not find his e-mail address. Perhaps that is an opportunity for thinking again. I am very sorry; I apologise for that.

[The Earl of Caithness]

If the noble Lord had scrolled down to “Caithness” he would have found my e-mail address.

[Lord Berkeley]

We can have a talk about that afterwards.

We have had a great variety of comments, some of them complimentary, some of them not. I have learnt a great deal from different people’s views today. I should of course have mentioned the Atkins report in my opening remarks. It has made progress. I still believe that more progress could be made. If one reflects on this, the key issue, when one is talking about RPI-X, is probably what X is. We can debate that, and I am sure that we will.

The key is what the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, suggested as the answer to having two concurrent Private Member’s Bills and the draft Marine Navigation Aids Bill. The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, did not really comment on the Government’s intentions on that in his summing up.

I could go through and thank all noble Lords who have spoken and comment on what they have said, but it would take a little bit of time. I know that one or two colleagues are waiting to get on with the next debate. However, I cannot resist responding to my noble friend Lord MacKenzie who complained, quite rightly, that we have got the date wrong for the Bill. If it had been on 1 February, it would have been 200 years from the start of the Bell Rock Lighthouse, which was a fantastic piece of civil engineering construction in its time.

Whether I want to take the Bill forward is really a question of whether we can somehow incorporate, or get moving on, the navigation aids Bill that the previous Parliament was unable to take forward. I have been talking to some people, and Clerks, about whether much or some of the content of that Bill could be incorporated into a Private Member’s Bill. It could be within the Long Title. I am advised of that for this Bill, but I do not think that it could be with the one in the Commons, because that is called the Wreck Removal Convention Bill—apart from the “wreck” bit of it.

There has been much discussion of how much the present Government want the Bill to go ahead, but in draft form it had a lot of support in the previous Parliament. As the Bill stands, I do not think it is appropriate to take it forward, even with the amendments I have tabled and much further thought. We have progressed and I have heard many useful comments today. However, it would be useful to keep it open for Committee stage to see whether the contents of the Marine Navigation Aids Bill could be incorporated. That is in the absence of any commitment from the Government to find time for it; I would not expect them to do so anyway.

My inclination, therefore, is to ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading but, clearly, I would not take it forward in its present form or with these amendments without a discussion as to what else could go in and whether it is necessary to take it forward at all. On that basis, I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.