Shipping: Passenger Safety

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Berkeley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact on passenger safety of their application to the Committee on Safe Seas and the Prevention of Pollution from Ships for exemption for certain ships and areas of operation from European safety requirements in order to substitute life rings for life rafts.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Kramer) (LD)]

My Lords, Her Majesty’s Government require all vessels to carry enough life rafts to meet the risk to those on board in an emergency. The proposal submitted to the Committee on Safe Seas and the Prevention of Pollution from Ships is based on UK regulations for domestic passenger ships and is supported by the department’s formal safety assessment of domestic passenger ships carried out between 2002 and 2004 in response to Lord Justice Clarke’s formal inquiry into the “Marchioness”/“Bowbelle” collision.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for that response. My understanding is that this exemption application applies to passenger ships with up to 130 people on them, which, under directive 2009/45, article 4, allows them to go 15 miles from the place of refuge or five miles from the coast in the summer. The idea is to reduce the number of life rafts to the maximum number of passengers—not allowing, of course, for the fact that you cannot always launch life rafts if a ship is heeling—and to replace the rafts removed with life rings. Does the Minister really think that it is a good idea for people who might be wrecked in an accident in the North Sea or off the Hebrides to have to get into a life ring rather than a life raft?

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, my understanding is that this exemption is for up to five miles and therefore would not apply in most of the circumstances that the noble Lord has just described. It is for small craft of less than 24 metres which have to be travelling in daylight and in summer only. They are required to have sufficient life rafts for all passengers but additional safety can be provided by buoyancy apparatus.