Marine Navigation (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Rosser

Friday 1st February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I do not intend to repeat what I said at Second Reading, or what I said on my earlier amendment, as we have had a good debate on the issue in Clause 2. My concern remains only with the inclusion in the clause of the phrase “deck officer” without a definition of the qualifications and experience of a deck officer and a recognition of the importance of being high up in the management tree of the ship.

My noble friend mentioned junior ratings. With his knowledge and experience, I am sure that he has a good point but I feel that nowadays, and in line with the EU regulations that we talked about earlier, it is important to have a definition of who can and cannot be given a PEC as a deck officer. It is very easy to say that a competent harbour authority will not give someone a PEC unless he is qualified, but it is like so many of these things—on a good day, when everything is going well, it will work out all right, but, sadly, we have all had experience of when things do not go quite right and sometimes a harbour authority is less competent than it might be. Where two ports are sited reasonably close together and are competing for trade, there must be a temptation for one of them to offer a PEC to somebody on a particular shipping line if that will attract the ship into that port and bring in probably much needed revenue. I would like to try to persuade the Minister to be as generous as he can in giving a tighter definition to the meaning of “deck officer” as applied in this Bill. If it can be related to the IMO deck officer that we discussed earlier, that would tie everything together and would probably also reduce the number of future court cases, which we all wish to avoid.

I could go on for a lot longer. I do not want to delay things too much and I still want to see this Bill pass. However, it would be very helpful if the Minister could give an assurance on that issue and then we can move on. My other concerns about the Bill are very small compared with that one.

[Lord Rosser]

I repeat what we said at Second Reading. We support the Bill and want it to succeed, not least because many of its provisions were contained in a draft Bill that we produced when we were in government. However, I am not sure that the Government are being as helpful as they might be as regards some of the detail. Clearly, the most contentious issue is that of the exemption certificate. My noble friend Lord Berkeley referred to the definition of “deck officer”.

I am grateful to the Minister for sending me a reply to a number of questions that I asked at Second Reading. I was given the letter—dated yesterday—only this morning. I have had a look at it although, obviously, not as long a look as I might have wished. However, I am genuinely grateful to the Minister for the reply and for responding to the points that I made in our previous debate. The Minister has given a definition of “deck officer” in that letter and said that it enjoys the dictionary definition of,

“an officer in charge of the above-deck workings and manoeuvres at sea of a ship or boat”.

However, I do not think that that definition covers the issue of the minimum level of experience for,

“an officer in charge of the above-deck workings and manoeuvres at sea of a ship or boat”,

particularly as regards the pilotage operation. This comes back to the issue raised by my noble friend Lord Berkeley on the standard of experience that is to be required. It would be extremely helpful if the Minister, when he responds, could give an assurance on that point.

I also asked about the role of the competent harbour authorities. The Minister said in his reply:

“It is a matter for Competent Harbour Authorities to decide who has the skill, experience and local knowledge sufficient to be capable of piloting the ship, and for shipping operators to develop and implement a Safety Management System to provide clarity on the roles and responsibilities of the bridge team when a Pilotage Exemption Certificate holder is acting as a pilot”.

Saying that it is a matter for the competent harbour authorities to decide who has the skill, experience and local knowledge does not address in particularly clear terms how much training it would take to obtain a pilotage exemption certificate in a place such as Liverpool.