Merchant Shipping (Counting and Registration of Persons on board Passenger Ships) (Amendment) Regulations 2023

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Greenway

Monday 4th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to move this Motion to Regret tonight. Effectively, I am trying to probe some of the issues that are raised in these draft regulations. I must say to start with that I support everything that is in them, because they have very serious and helpful safety implications.

I suppose my first question for the Minister is the usual one with such regulations. Why has it taken 24 years from the original 1999 regulations for this new draft to be brought before your Lordships’ House?

I think it is really important that there is a requirement to record the number and details of the passengers on passenger ships, both going around the UK or going to or from the UK, but I have a number of questions on the way these regulations are drafted. It may be because I am too stupid to understand them, but it may be that other people share that concern, and I shall be pleased to hear the Minister’s answers.

My first question, which also applies to the regulations of 24 years ago, is why these regulations appear to apply only to passenger ships? Many people go on journeys in freight ships; sometimes they are long, probably going internationally, and sometimes they are around the coast. I rather too regularly use a freight ship that goes from the Isles of Scilly to Penzance, which is beyond 20 miles and so comes within that limit. It is a freight ship, and it is quite good for taking freight. It is not particularly comfortable, but it will take up to 12 passengers—and of course the number 12 is quite critical for many other safety rules. I think it has seats for about six, and it is very nice that, when the crew are having a good fry-up on their four or five-hour journey, they will not make you a cup of tea either.

That is irrelevant, but what appears odd is that there seems to be no requirement of the operator to report who the passengers are. In other words, if something happens to that ship and we all drown, I do not know how the authorities will know who we are. If it had been a passenger ship, the names would have gone to the coastguards or wherever, which would have helped with identifying the bodies and everybody else. I hope none of that happens, but it seems extraordinary to me that, on a freight ship, the operator apparently does not have to do report who is on it and their names and addresses.

I suppose the biggest question I have concerns Regulation 9, on “exemptions”. I am not quite sure what “exemptions” means. Again, I may just be being ignorant and stupid, but are they exemptions from actual reporting or exemptions relating to how you report? We are moving into the electronic age, and it is quite right that the quicker the passenger list can be transmitted off the ship, the faster the ship can leave, which is a good thing. But it is a bit odd that, having brought in these regulations, we have so many exemptions, which means that, basically, anybody can be given an exemption.

Regulation 9(2) says that

“the Secretary of State may exempt any passenger ship … if the scheduled voyages of such ship, class of ship or group of ships render it impracticable for that ship, class of ship or group of ships, to comply with those requirements”.

I cannot see what circumstances would prevent the master or owner of the ship telling the coastguard who is on the ship and giving their names and addresses; they will have provided them before they get on the ship. Maybe the Minister can help me with that. If these exemptions are important, the whole point of this regulation is almost lost. If there are so many ways that the Minister can wriggle out of it, for good or bad reasons, what is the point of it?

In its 49th report, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, in answer to question 4, has a good list of comments. It says that the restrictions came from the original directive, and that:

“The exemption provisions were complex and restricted the scope of the exemption power to just certain vessels on certain types of routes with restrictive conditions”.


It goes on to say that, basically, the Secretary of State can decide to change whatever these restrictions are. Question 5 asks:

“What makes it ‘impractical for the shipowner to comply?’”


The Minister’s answer is:

“This would depend on the circumstances … on a case-by-case basis”.


I know a lot of work has gone into this document and I am sure it is very good overall, but whether shipowners and skippers understand what they have to do, and whether it was worth all the effort, I am not sure. Can the Minister perhaps explain to a landlubber like me what it is all about, why it is so important and who can wriggle out of giving him any information? I beg to move.

[Lord Greenway (CB)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for allowing us to discuss these regulations. Before I go further, I would like to welcome the Minister to his new maritime role. He has a steep learning curve, and I can only wish him well.

We are moving more and more to computers, left, right and centre; everything is computerised. In a way that is a good thing and I welcome it, but we all know that computers go wrong so I am slightly worried that systems that are meant to work will not always do so. What is the back-up position if that happens?

Merchant Shipping (Fire Protection) Regulations 2023

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Greenway

Tuesday 2nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, and the points she made. I too emphasise that this is not a criticism of the present Minister, who I know is trying very hard to catch up with these regulations; the problem goes back many years before she was appointed.

Today, the issue of fires on ships is very topical, because, as noble Lords will have seen, the ferry “Pentalina” caught fire near Orkney at the weekend and was grounded. I do not think that we know what the cause was, but, luckily, nobody was hurt. It indicates the importance that must be attached to fire prevention on ships. Its sister ship, MV “Alfred”, managed to hit a rock off the Orkney islands last summer—luckily, in broad daylight. Again, nobody was hurt, but these accidents happen, for whatever reason.

It is interesting to reflect that, while the noble Baroness’s amendment mentions a 20-year delay, the issue of lifejackets and bulkheads in river steamers was raised last year, which was 33 years after the “Marchioness” accident, in which a lot of people died. I appreciate that the Government are trying to catch up, but we have to comply with international regulations, and I hope that this work carries on. I am sure that we will all be monitoring the progress that the Minister outlined when she introduced the regulations.

I have one or two questions on some of the issues that the Minister outlined and on things in the Explanatory Memorandum. As we found when we were talking about seafarers’ wages, it is quite difficult and complicated. We are talking here, if I read paragraph 6.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum correctly, about

“passenger ships engaged on international voyages”,

which I think means being registered in the UK, and

“a small class of passenger ships engaged on domestic voyages”.

I suppose that includes the ships I have been talking about in the Orkneys. Does it include the ferries to and from the Isle of Wight? Where is the cut-off? It probably includes the “Scillonian III” going to the Isles of Scilly. I have no problem with this; I would just like to know what it applies to and what it does not. If you get a foreign-registered ship operating within the UK, I trust that the regulations still apply to it. It is terribly important that they do, of course.

I was interested to see in paragraph 6.2 the exceptions to the small ships regulations are that

“government ships and naval ships are not within scope of that instrument”.

Does that mean that it does not matter if naval ships catch fire or is there some other reason for not including them? Is there some alternative regulation? Naval ships, like any other ships, have had the habit of catching fire in the past and, clearly, preserving not only the lives of the seafarers but the government asset is pretty important.

I believe there is a sort of boundary between the 500-tonne ships included here and earlier regulations for smaller ships. I think the Minister has mentioned this before, but it would be nice to have some clarity on that.

My final point is on paragraph 7.2 of the Explanatory Memorandum. In her introduction, the Minister mentioned

“fire protection, prevention of fire and explosion, detection and suppression of fire, escape from fire, operational requirements, alternative design and arrangements and other requirements”.

That is a pretty wide-ranging definition. Presumably when the MCA gets round to the detail of this everybody will know what it is talking about but it is not very clear from this. It clearly has the right intention of reducing the risk and the scope of fire.

I suppose the issue that came up in the Explanatory Memorandum, which again the Minister referred to, is the fact that there are 19 different changes under paragraph 7. This indicates that the MCA is keeping up with different changes. That is very good but perhaps she could also explain what “ambulatory” means in relation to fire on ships. I look forward to her responses and again I congratulate her on bringing this forward because it is very difficult, very complicated and going to do good when it becomes legislation. I have posed a few questions and I look forward to her responses.

[Lord Greenway (CB)]

My Lords, I think this is the first occasion we have had to welcome the Minister to her new post as Shipping Minister. My mind goes back nearly 40 years to when it was almost de rigueur for the Shipping Minister to reside in this House, so it is extremely welcome to have a Shipping Minister back with us again.

These draft resolutions are extremely important, as has been pointed out by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott. Fire, as she said, remains one of the major areas of disaster at sea. Ships, thank God, are not usually built of wood any more but they carry all sorts of noxious substances that burn like hell if they catch fire and there have been a number of notable examples recently even of car batteries catching fire and sinking ships.

I should say we are almost here again. Every time we have one of these regulations coming forward, we say the same thing: why has it taken so long for this to be incorporated into British law? The original fire protection regulations were in 2003 and almost immediately there was a change in 2004. As we have heard, there have been about 20 such changes since then. Why has it all suddenly come into one thing nearly 20 years later? It hints, dare I say it, at a certain amount of sloppiness in the department that these things have not been dealt with more promptly.

Our standing is still, thank goodness, very high in the International Maritime Organization but things like this cannot help in due course. I know we do not have the merchant fleet we had many years ago but we are still an important player in the maritime scene and I think we should be acting more promptly to agree new regulations.

The “ambulatory reference” provision is most welcome because I hope it will put an end to all this complaining about delay because when new regulations come out of the International Maritime Organization it will be automatic in future.

I certainly have a lot of sympathy with the noble Baroness, Lady Scott. The performance of this country has not been up to scratch in these maritime matters, but I welcome the fact that everything should be sorted out by the end of this year.

Merchant Shipping (Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping) Regulations 2022

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Greenway

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Greenway (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for outlining these new regulations that, as she has explained, implement amendments made to the STCW convention. I think we were all taken aback by the size of these regulations; in fact, if I took time to read right through them, it might take almost as long as these regulations have taken to reach this House. We are playing catch up again, but I am pleased that we are now getting on with it, and I have no real queries with the regulations.

I see that pleasure craft are included, and I think there are limits. I cannot remember what the length and tonnage is for pleasure craft, and I have not had the time to work it out, but could the Minister tell me if it brings the Thames Clippers operating on the Thames here into the remit of these regulations?

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I also congratulate the Minister and her officials. I think I should also congratulate the MCA, which has probably done most of the work and produced some amazing documentation; I think we are all very grateful to it. As the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, says, it has taken a lot of reading and I will not go through many of these things, but I have a couple of questions for the Minister.

First, concerning the heading “Application” in Part 2, the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, asked about the Thames Clippers. I saw that the minimum weight was 80 gross tonnes and the length 24 metres. Which ships on the Thames does this apply to, as he asked? We debated life jackets on ships some time ago and I trust that has all been sorted out.

I have another question on this section. We see that it does not apply to foreign- registered vessels, which we know, but in Regulation 5(2)(e) we get an exclusion for

“wooden ships of primitive build”.

Can the Minister say what a wooden ship of primitive build is? Does it have to be over or under 24 metres? Is it powered by sail or motor, and where does it go? The only criterion seems to be that it should have a UK flag, if it ever had one. I do not know about that, but I suppose my concern is that these regulations go into great detail. I notice that only 25 UK-registered ships are owned by small businesses, and you can understand why: if they have to plough through all this and comply with it, the answer is they probably will not. That is quite a worry.

I am not sure how much of these provisions will apply to foreign-registered ships in UK waters. Does anybody check on those? Do the other ports of registry for ships have similar requirements to this—let us hope they do—or will we have one law for the British ones and one law for the rest of the world? As the Minister said, we want to encourage UK-registered ships but if this is the only country of registration that requires 200 pages of documents to be gone through, that is hardly an incentive.

Finally, I have often raised the question of enforcement before on different things. The Minister mentioned human error in her introduction. There have been a couple of interesting accidents with ships this summer, including the MV “Alfred”, which seemed to hit an island in Orkney on 5 July. One has to question how, in broad daylight, that happened with safe manning. I am sure we will see the results of an inquiry into that. I hope that in implementing and enforcing these regulations, the MCA will be given enough staff and resources to do it properly—it will be largely down to them—so that we have a good reputation for following these regulations, rather than just publishing more bits of paper.

Merchant Shipping (Control and Management of Ships’ Ballast Water and Sediments) Order 2022

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Greenway

Thursday 13th January 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for introducing this fascinating draft order. It is interesting that the Government blame everything on things coming from the Far East, be they Chinese or Japanese knotweed or Japanese oysters. I expect that equal blame goes in the opposite direction.

This needs doing—I have no problem with ensuring that ballast water is sampled and tested—but I wonder whether the Minister can just help me. How is this sampling done? It is presumably done when the ship is in port, then sent away for analysis—that seems quite clear to me—but what happens if some of the samples are found to be non-compliant with whatever regulations we are coming up with? Will they nail a writ to the mast of the ship, the next time it comes in? Will they send our Navy out on to the high seas? How will these things actually be enforced?

It is wonderful having regulations. These have been coming for a long time. The IMO worked very fast to get them ready by 2017. It probably takes 10 years to do these things, and now we are taking another five. It is important to understand how these regulations will be enforced. They need to be enforced around the world. We can do only our bit, but we can set an example. I hope there is a way of doing it without us spending too much money on it.

[Lord Greenway (CB)]

My Lords, I too am grateful to the Minister for introducing this order. As she said, the convention dates from 2004 and was not ratified until September 2016 by 30 states, representing 35% of the world’s merchant tonnage. By the time it came into force a year after that, over 60 countries had ratified it, representing over 70% of the world’s shipping.

The Minister mentioned the delay in bringing forward this order. I am not certain that I entirely buy her explanation. It seems to me that when so many other countries, representing so much of the world’s shipping, have already ratified it, it does not do our reputation as a so-called maritime nation much good when we are seen to be dragging our feet over these conventions.

She also mentioned in passing the Chinese mitten crabs. When I went through the list, it read more like something out of a science-horror movie, since we also have round goby, North American comb jelly, zebra mussels, toxic algae and even cholera, which has been transported on micro-organisms such as plankton. There are some very nasty things going around, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, just said, and this convention was brought in for very good reasons.

There is one thing I would like to ask the Minister. What has been the position with our ships? This measure does not mean that an awful lot of ships, in the general sense of the word, would be affected because our Merchant Navy is a shadow of what it used to be. But what has happened to those ships to enable them to continue trading? Have they been, on their own accord, taking the actions necessary to comply with the convention in order to trade? If they were seen to be operating under the flag of a country that had not ratified, they would quickly be picked up by port state control around the world and forbidden to trade. I would be grateful if the Minister could shed some light on that.

International Organization for Marine Aids to Navigation (Legal Capacities) Order 2022

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Greenway

Thursday 13th January 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Greenway (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for introducing this order. I declare a non-pecuniary interest as an Elder Brother of Trinity House, the general lighthouse authority for England, Wales, the Channel Islands and Gibraltar. As the Minister said, Trinity House has been closely involved with the International Association of Marine Aids to Navigation since its formation in 1957 under its previous name, the International Association of Lighthouse Authorities, which is where the acronym IALA comes from.

At a meeting in Spain in 2014, IALA agreed that the best way forward to develop and improve marine aids to navigation for the benefit of the maritime community and the protection of the environment would be to seek international intergovernmental organisation status as soon as possible through the development of an international convention. Three subsequent diplomatic conferences were held to thrash out a draft convention, and it was finalised and adopted at a fourth conference held in Kuala Lumpur in February 2020. Just under a year later, the convention was opened for signature in Paris, where IALA is headquartered, and some 20 countries have now signed. Five of these—Singapore, Norway, Japan, Malaysia and India—have since ratified.

The convention will lead to increased international acceptance of standards, enhancing harmonisation, and will raise IALA’s status at the International Maritime Organization from merely consultative to equal partner, facilitating direct links with the experts working at the sharp end of research and development and thereby obviating difficulties that have arisen in the past when dealing with some governmental bodies.

Despite the huge technological strides that have been made in the aids-to-navigation sector over the past 20 or so years—here Trinity House has played a major role—the importance of such aids is as great now as it ever was, arguably more so due to the greater emphasis being given to environmental concerns. Bearing in mind our close association with IALA, I sincerely hope that the Government will see their way to ratifying the new convention at the earliest opportunity.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome this order. As the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, said, it is well overdue but is certainly going to happen. It appears to be going at a faster rate than on ballast water, perhaps because it will be based in France; we can conjecture on that. However, that is not really what I want to ask the Minister about.

As the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, said, Trinity House is responsible for the lights and other navigation aids in England. It must have been more than 10 years ago that the shipping industry got very upset because it was paying its light dues for when ships use British ports—the light dues go to maintaining the lights—and we discovered that the lights being maintained included all the lights around the Irish Republic as well as those around England and Scotland. I recall that at the time my noble friend Lady Crawley, who was a Minister, was having great trouble negotiating with the Irish Government on the rather simple idea that they should pay for the maintenance of their own lights. She said, “They’re not very keen to negotiate”. That was not a very good answer from the Irish Government.

It was finally sorted out, and the other thing that was sorted out was that Trinity House and the Government together found a way of becoming much more efficient, as they are now, and therefore reducing the light dues applied to ships coming into this country. I am very pleased with the way it has gone, but can the Minister confirm, if not today then in writing, that there is no question that any of the money from ships coming into UK ports and paying light dues goes towards funding anything to do with lights in the Irish Republic?