Marine Navigation (No. 2) Bill

Lord Greenway Excerpts

Friday 18th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenway]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. We have crossed swords many times on these matters. I am delighted, in declaring an interest as an older brother of Trinity House, to hear him say something complimentary about the lighthouse authorities. He is normally on the opposite tack.

One of the delights of marine Bills—which, let us face it, do not come up very often—is that we go off on different tacks in all sorts of different directions, and we have some very interesting history lessons from various noble Lords. I was most interested to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey said, because I live just over the hill from Watchet and I know it well. It is probably not realised that Watchet was a commercial port until just a few years ago. There was a local shipping line called the Willie line—I hasten to say that it was spelt with an “ie”—that regularly ran a large vessel in and out of Watchet. You never know what is going to come out of the woodwork in these debates. Accordingly, my noble friend Lord Selsdon always entertains us in a most delightful way.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, for introducing the Bill, which, as she and others have said, relates to matters that have been sculling around for some considerable time. This gives us an opportunity at least to put these various measures on the statute book.

I will not say much about the general lighthouse authority provisions because they have been exceedingly well covered by the noble Lord, Lord MacKenzie of Culkein. Needless to say, they are very much welcomed. I think that the original right of the general lighthouse authorities to use vessels for commercial purposes, when time allowed and they were not required for their statutory purposes, goes back to when the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, was Shipping Minister in this House. I was in a meeting with him and he suddenly came up with this out of the blue, which delighted me and indeed the general lighthouse authorities. That was in 1997, so the GLAs have been able to do that for some time. This extends that right and allows them to act as consultants and to use various moneys out of the General Lighthouse Fund, if required, if they need to buy some specific equipment that is going to assist their ships being hired out to someone else. As I understand it, the proviso is that there still has to be a profit for the General Lighthouse Fund in the longer term. That will certainly please the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, because I am sure that he will greatly welcome anything that will lessen the burden of ship owners.

With regard to the wreck-marking side, even this week one of the Trinity House ships had to steam at high speed down the Channel to Torbay, where a Greek tug was towing a dead ship to Turkey for demolition. The tow overtook the tug and holed her, and she was leaking oil. Eventually the larger ship sank so Trinity House had to go and mark that wreck, which it has now done with four buoys just off Torbay.

The Bill is welcomed by a wide range of people, including the British Ports Association, the UK Major Ports Group and the UK Chamber of Shipping. The two bones of contention, if I may refer to them as such, concern yachtsmen’s fears about the new harbour directions and pilots’ fears about extending the licensing of pilotage exemption certificates. I have spoken on behalf the Royal Yachting Association and the British Marine Federation in this House over many years. Consultations with the yachting fraternity have been going on widely since the Bill started in the Commons. As we have heard, there is a new code of conduct on harbour directions, which I understand will be more or less completed next week. This will be overseen by a national directions panel which is made up of representatives from the two major ports organisations, the UK Chamber of Shipping, the Royal Yachting Association and various fishery organisations. It is expected to meet at least once a year—or more if necessary—and to oversee this whole business of harbour directions, which are a great step forward from the old, expensive and time-consuming process of harbour revision orders.

Pilots play a vital part in marine safety. They are rightly proud of their profession. I can remember deliberations here on the Pilotage Act 1987, which I think was one of the first occasions when the Moses Room was used for Grand Committee. That removed pilotage from the pilotage associations, one of which was Trinity House, which was responsible for some 40% of pilotage in the country. Since then, it has been a bit of a curate’s egg: good in parts, some not so good. We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, about the sacking of all the Humber pilots. My understanding was that the pilots, who completely ran their own show, were demanding too much money which was making is commercially difficult for the port authority to operate. Pilots are not infallible. I have only to remind the House of the “Sea Empress” incident off Milford Haven, where the initial cause of the accident was pilot error, which led to the grounding.

Pilots have to move with the times, as do we all. Today, shipping is very different from what it was 15 or 20 years ago. Some ships—for instance, ferries—now have three crews. They are used 24 hours a day. It is not like the old situation where a ship had a master and a first mate, and they stayed there, often for some considerable time. Regrettably, I am afraid that manning standards have also been a huge cause of concern. Ships are operating with fewer and fewer people. This means that those officers who have pilotage exemption certificates may have been on watch for God knows how many hours, and they have, statutorily, to take rest from time to time, so somebody else may be required when the ship is coming into harbour.

When this first arose, there was a lot of hoo-hah and stories that cooks could put themselves forward to get pilotage exemption. Of course, that could never happen. It is up to the ports to issue these certificates There is absolutely no way that a port is going to issue an exemption certificate to someone who is not properly qualified. I remind your Lordships that it has been common practice in the Merchant Navy for years for younger officers to be overqualified for the actual job they are doing on a ship. On some ships, you may have a third officer who actually has a master’s—or certainly a mate’s—ticket. They are also operating on ships which come in and out of harbour regularly, so they know the waters of the harbour. The pilots’ fear is perhaps slightly overstated on this. It will not result in fewer jobs for pilots. They should be far more concerned over something that is coming up in 2015 when, under new EU regulations, the sulphur limits allowed in fuel will be reduced even further, to the point where, fuel being as expensive as it is—around 30% of the overall costs of a ship’s operation—it will be impossible for them to remain in business. There may therefore be fewer ships around, especially on these regular routes and particularly those going up into the Baltic.

Concerns have been raised and that is absolutely right. They have been discussed and looked at, and some concessions have been made. However, I detect from most corners of the House—perhaps not the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley—that this is a welcome Bill. It should be given a fair wind.