National Policy Statement for Ports
Lord Greenway Excerpts(3 weeks, 2 days ago)
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Lord Greenway (CB)
My Lords, for domestic reasons, I was unable to put my name down to speak today. I should like to make just a couple of quick observations. Much has been talked about electricity, both for powering ships and transport within ports. I agree entirely with the noble Lord who spoke about this. The grid is the problem; there simply is not the capacity in it. Remember that if we are going to get ships to turn off their generators in port to stop pollution, they will have to plug into the normal electricity supply. How many other people are going to be adding to that supply? We have electric cars, electric this and electric that. AI, of course, is going to use more electricity than anybody has even thought of. It is not going to be easy.
Southampton, our largest cruise port, has been looking at shore supply of electricity for it for some time. It probably has one provision operating now, but if five large cruise ships were in port, as they are today, with 150,000 tonne ships all plugging in, Southampton would lose its electricity. It is as simple as that. So we have a long way to go there.
My other observation is slightly tongue in cheek. We have a robust ports industry. We are an island. In general, the ports do a good job. I remind the Committee that it was largely due to two Members of this House that the ports are in that position today. The noble Lord, Lord Fowler, who was Secretary of State in the Commons at the time, and Lord Brabazon, who was Shipping Minister, were two of the only six people who knew that the iniquitous dock labour scheme was going to be abolished. The unions were caught on the hop; they called a token strike, which lasted two or three weeks then fizzled out. It is largely due to those two Members of this House that our ports are in the pretty good position that they are in today.
Hovercraft (Application of Enactments) (Amendment) Order 2025
Lord Greenway Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Greenway (CB)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this order, on which I have no complaint— I think it is all very sensible, but I would say that, as a mariner. Following on from what the noble Lord who has just spoken said, I shall be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about this movement of hovercraft from sea to land. The RNLI already uses small hovercraft for dealing with waters where the tide goes out a long way and there are a lot of mudflats, where they find them very useful.
However, in terms of general passenger carriage, as the Minister referred to, the service between Southsea and Ryde is in fact the last all-year-round service in the world that uses hovercraft for carrying passengers. In some ways, it is very welcome that it uses hovercraft—as we have heard, invented by Christopher Cockerell—but it is also rather sad because, in many ways, the hovercraft was a brief flash in the pan in maritime history. It developed quite considerably from small hovercraft, such as the SRN6, up to the SRN4, which was quite a large hovercraft—in fact, it was even lengthened for service across the channel from Dover to Calais.
However, hovercraft were not without their problems, and in fact there were at least two fatal accidents. One of the smaller SRN hovercraft flipped over in a gale just off Southsea and nine people were drowned. One of the larger ones, also in a gale, hit the breakwater coming into Dover, which put a 60-foot gash in its side, and a number of people fell out, four of whom, sadly, were pronounced dead.
The hovercraft was, in many ways, an interesting and wonderful invention, but I am afraid that it was overtaken, first, by the huge fuel-price hikes in the 1960s and 1970s and, then, of course, by the introduction of the Channel Tunnel, which really killed off the larger hovercraft that crossed the channel. They went out of action in the year 2000.
As I said, I have no complaints about this order, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, first, I congratulate the Minister on retaining his place in the recent reshuffle.
Following my noble friend Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate’s speech, which I thought was fascinating, it may be that, as a result of that speech and the points made by him and, to some extent, by the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, the Minister might now prefer to withdraw this statutory instrument on the grounds that the department has probably miscategorised hovercraft as properly falling under maritime law and come back with an instrument that acknowledges the richer context in which hovercraft are increasingly used and—if we are to believe my noble friend and the noble Lord, who have some expertise—are likely to be increasingly used, so that the statutory instrument can be pertinent, robust and what is called future-proof. If so, we would completely understand why the Minister would wish to withdraw the instrument and we would not object to its withdrawal.
MV “Ruby”: Ammonium Nitrate
Lord Greenway Excerpts(1 year ago)
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Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I am told that handling ammonium nitrate is a normal operational activity at Great Yarmouth, as we have heard. My understanding is that there has been no special public consultation and, in fact, the transfer of cargo has begun and is regarded by the port as not being an exceptional activity.
Lord Greenway (CB)
My Lords, I welcome the Minister to what I think is his first maritime Question. I agree with him entirely about the transportation of this particular fertiliser, many hundreds of thousands of tonnes of which are transported safely around the world every year. He mentioned the Beirut explosion. This particular commodity can be set off only through shock or heat in a confined space. On that occasion, having been poorly stored for several years, as the Minister said, the fireworks caught fire and exploded, providing the perfect whammy for the major explosion which followed.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The noble Lord is right that it is my first maritime Question. I was not expecting to be so knowledgeable about ammonium nitrate 48 hours ago, but I am now and I welcome his information about the explosion in Beirut.