Wreck Removal Convention Bill

Lord Greenway Excerpts

Friday 10th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenway]

I very much agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Mackenzie, has just said. Having debated these matters with the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for many years, we all know where his concerns lie, particularly in regard to expenses put on the ship owner through the payment of light dues.

The convention is quite clear, as has been said, in that it will require ships over 300 gross tonnes to carry wreck removal insurance and the onus of wreck removal is firmly placed on the registered owners of those ships. The instances where a ship might fall through the net, so to speak, will be very much reduced in future. As has been said, I think the possible cost to the General Lighthouse Fund will certainly be lower.

As far as I can make out, the amendments limit the options open to the Secretary of State, compared with what he has today. The Secretary of State and his representative—SOSREP—are well known to the general lighthouse authorities. They have worked together over many years and those authorities have been marking and removing smaller wrecks for 150-odd years, so they have some experience in this matter. It would be wrong to try to bypass that experience by getting the Government to appoint independent salvers to do a job; for example, they would not necessarily have the experience of marking the wreck in the first place. There is an argument for maintaining continuity in dealing with the marking of wrecks and their possible removal by one source that is used to dealing with them.

The memorandum of understanding was mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. That is certainly something where I think many of these concerns can be thrashed out. I echo what the noble Earl said in asking the Minister whether he can give us an update on how that is proceeding. As I said before, there is already close co-operation between the Government’s representative and the general lighthouse authorities. The harbour authorities are perhaps slightly different. Some of the smaller ones would not have the necessary vessels to cope with removing a wreck, but there is absolutely no question of the general lighthouse authorities using this Bill to extend their fleet with newer and larger ships. I think that that is a red herring.

I emphasise that the cost to the General Lighthouse Fund, over quite a number of years of removing wrecks, is very small. I have a figure of 0.004 per cent, and that went up to 3.2 per cent only as a result of the one-off exercise of the removal of the German First World War U-boat from the Dover Strait, when the Government required Trinity House to do that and it had to appoint separate salvage contractors.

I will mention one final point. The point of the Secretary of State being able under the Bill to direct harbour authorities or general lighthouse authorities to remove a default wreck is so that they can recover their costs. Without that direction, which in effect makes them agents of the state, they cannot recover them. That is an important point.

[Lord Rosser]

My Lords, I will make only one or two comments about the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Berkeley. I do so in the context of repeating that we welcome the Bill.

My noble friend raised again the issue of the possible high level of costs that might have to be borne in the event that, contrary to requirements, a ship is not insured, the insurance does not cover the full costs or there is a lengthy delay in the insurance money being paid after the costs have been incurred. I sense from what my noble friend said that this could be an issue particularly for some harbour authorities because of their financial reserves. I am aware that in the Second Reading debate, the Minister said that the Government were of the opinion that the provisions of the Bill would ensure that the risks of a shortfall in expenditure would be significantly less for bodies such as harbour authorities than they are now. The Minister referred later in the debate to a memorandum of understanding between the respective parties that would be agreed prior to the entry into force of the International Maritime Organisation's International Convention on the Removal of Wrecks.

There have been discussions already between my noble friend Lord Berkeley, the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell of Beeston. I am sure that those discussions have been both appreciated and useful. I simply ask the Minister and the noble Baroness whether there is scope for further discussions with my noble friend Lord Berkeley on the issue that he has raised, and in particular whether any wording could be incorporated in the memorandum of understanding that might at least mitigate or lessen the concerns that have been expressed on this issue by my noble friend.

Wreck Removal Convention Bill

Lord Greenway Excerpts

Friday 13th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenway]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell of Beeston, for the clear and concise way in which she introduced this small but important Bill. At the outset I must declare an interest as an unpaid Elder Brother of Trinity House.

I welcome the Bill, which incorporates the wreck-removal provisions from the draft Marine Navigation Bill, which has been waiting on the shelf in some dark and dusty government corner for a while, but which neither the previous Administration nor the present coalition have so far seen fit to bring forward. As the noble Baroness said, the Bill paves the way for the Government to ratify the Nairobi International Convention on the Removal of Wrecks, which was adopted by the International Maritime Organisation some four years ago. The convention will come into force, as the noble Lord has just said, one year after 10 states have signed up to it. My understanding is that so far just one state has signed up, though I may be wrong about that. However, within the first year at least six states signified that they agreed with it, as they are entitled to do.

The present situation regarding wreck removal within our territorial waters—the 12-mile limit—is covered by provisions in Sections 252 and 253 of the Merchant Shipping Act 1995 which empower Trinity House and the other two general lighthouse authorities to mark, raise, remove or destroy any vessel,

“sunk, stranded or abandoned in any fairway, or on the seashore or on or near any rock, shoal or bank”,

in England or Wales,

“or any of the adjacent seas or islands”,

where there is no harbour or conservancy authority with power to do so, if in the opinion of the general light house authority,

“the vessel is, or is likely to become, an obstruction or danger to navigation or to lifeboats engaged in lifeboat service”.

Factors affecting safety of navigation include the clearance depth over the site at lowest astronomical tide; the depth of water in the area; the type, size and construction of the vessel; traffic density and frequency; the proximity of shipping routes; the type of traffic; and the topography of the seabed. Decisions about wreck removal or dispersal are inextricably linked to the danger presented by the wreck in terms of these factors, about which Trinity House and the other general lighthouse authorities have significant knowledge and expertise.

The Bill empowers the Secretary of State to deal with wrecks in a greatly expanded area up to 200 miles from the UK’s territorial waters. This is most welcome because it clears up an area of uncertainty that previously existed regarding the interpretation of “adjacent seas and islands”. Many an expert legal opinion has been sought on this without any true result. The legal position is now made clear, and that is certainly to be welcomed. Until now, Trinity House, with the agreement of the Department for Transport, has marked wrecks within this expanded area when they have been a danger, but dispersal has not ordinarily been carried out if the wreck is a foreign-flagged vessel due to a number of legal difficulties, including obtaining flag-state consent.

I welcome the fact that the onus of locating, marking and removing wrecks is now placed firmly on the owner of the vessel. I also understand that a state may extend the convention to its territory and territorial sea and that the present Government have indicated their wish to do so. This is to be welcomed because it will clear up any possible confusion between the present arrangements and those obtained in the convention.

I also welcome the expanded definition of wreck. It includes:

“any part of a sunken or stranded ship, including any object that is or has been on board such a ship”,

and,

“any object that is lost at sea from a ship and that is stranded, sunken or adrift at sea”.

In the past, Trinity House has, where necessary, dealt with such objects, such as floating containers, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, in the interests of safety of navigation, but hitherto has not been able to recover its costs.

Another welcome development is a draft memorandum of understanding between the Secretary of State and the general lighthouse authorities, setting out how they will exercise their respective roles and responsibilities under the convention and the Merchant Shipping Act. The general lighthouse authorities have been working for some time with the Secretary of State's representative. They know each other well; they know each other's capabilities. It is a great step forward to have that set down properly in a memorandum of understanding, which will certainly help to progress matters.

Several noble Lords, especially the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, expressed concern on behalf of ship owners that the convention could result in a greater call on the general lighthouse funds as a result of the cost of removing wrecks of uninsured vessels. At the moment, within the General Lighthouse Fund there is a contingency to deal with uninsured losses, so ship owners should be aware that there is already provision to cover such losses, although, as we have heard, with the new compulsory insurance provisions in the Bill, it is likely that calls on the General Lighthouse Fund should reduce over time.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, also mentioned passing ships that are not coming to UK ports. From 1 January next year, a new EU directive will require all ships weighing more than 300 gross tonnes belonging to member states or visiting EU ports to have insurance to cover the limits of their liability under the international Convention on Limitation of Liability for Maritime Claims 1976, as amended by the protocol of 1996. All the time, more measures are coming into force that are making it more difficult for ships sometimes referred to as rogue ships to operate on our high seas.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, also queried whether the Secretary of State or his representative should direct the general lighthouse authorities to deal with wrecks. My reading is that that has to be done for them to recover their costs. That is how it works under the convention. The general lighthouse authorities or harbour authorities are not party to the convention, so they have to be appointed by the Secretary of State or his representative.

Trinity House and the other general lighthouse authorities have a long history of dealing with wreck matters—about 150 years. They have great experience. The area that Trinity House is responsible for covers one of the busiest waterways in the world, the English Channel, where the waters are not very deep. Wrecks off the west coast of Scotland and Ireland tend to be in deeper water; if they sink, they go down a very long way. In some ways, Trinity House has more experience of dealing with such matters.

Several wrecks have been mentioned, but noble Lords may remember that back in December 2002 the Norwegian car carrier “Tricolour” collided with the container vessel “Kariba”, resulting in the Norwegian vessel sinking just as it was about to enter the north-south shipping lane through the English Channel. Two days later, the wreck was struck by another vessel, which was towed off; and two weeks after that, a tanker carrying 77,000 tonnes of gas oil also struck the wreck. As a result of that incident, the International Association of Marine Aids to Navigation and Lighthouse Authorities put in place a plan to provide emergency wreck buoys. Trinity House was very involved in their development. These are new buoys which can be taken out fairly quickly and have vertical red and yellow stripes. Trinity House also came up with a new form of lighting—an alternating blue and yellow flash which is highly visible and should go a long way towards alerting other ships of a wreck until such time has been found properly to survey it and mark it with normal, proper wreck buoys.

With regard to floating wreckage, such as containers or even timber, there were two incidents not so long ago in which large amounts of timber were washed off ships and floated up the English Channel, with most of it ending up on the beach. I believe that work is in hand to come up with some sort of floating wreck mark that would float up the Channel with any such mass of cargo. That would be a very sensible way of marking that sort of thing. However, to allay some of the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, I can say that the general lighthouse authorities certainly know their limitations and there is no way that they could be made responsible—

[Lord Berkeley]

I thank the noble Lord for giving way. I said that I thought that the GLAs were very competent to do that, and they have long experience of doing so. My concern is that they may end up having to fund the salvage.

[Lord Greenway]

I was just coming to the fact that they are well used to marking wrecks, although, when it comes to the salvage or removal of wrecks, such incidents are very few and far between. Over the past 10 or 12 years the GLAs have been involved in dealing with perhaps a couple of small fishing boats. Therefore, there is no way that the general lighthouse authorities would be involved in something like the MSC “Napoli”. The removal of larger ships is totally beyond their powers, and negotiations between them and SOSREP would very quickly sort out the best way of dealing with a wreck and deciding who should do the work.

I conclude by summing up where the Bill takes us. As I said, it introduces measures that Trinity House very much welcomes. It empowers the GLAs to locate, mark and remove wrecks which are a danger to navigation beyond the territorial sea, clarifying an area of legislation where there has been uncertainty. It makes registered owners responsible for reporting wrecks or for loss of cargo and for the costs of locating, marking and removing wrecks. It requires registered owners of all vessels over 300 gross tonnes to maintain insurance to cover their liability under the convention. It provides for any claim for costs arising under the convention to be brought directly against the insurer or other person providing financial security for the registered owner’s liability, therefore reducing the risk of non-recovery and, in so doing, also reducing the exposure of the General Lighthouse Fund to the cost of dealing with wrecks.

I very much welcome this small but nevertheless important measure. I wish it a speedy passage and look forward to what I hope will be ratification of the convention in the not-too-distant future.

Marine Navigation Aids Bill [HL]

Lord Greenway Excerpts

Friday 21st January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenway]

My Lords, I agree totally with what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Boyd, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, have just said. We have discussed this Bill once before, so it is rather extraordinary for us to discuss it again in its original form when the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, was good enough to write to us all to tell us that he is going to change it substantially. I declare an interest as an elder brother of Trinity House, which is an unpaid position. In view of the wise remarks that have already been made, I will confine my own to just a few points.

My first issue, which I did not raise when we discussed this almost a year ago, is that “Marine Navigation Aids Bill” as a short title is, strictly speaking, not correct because marine navigation aids include any aids that you might find on the bridge of a ship, including radar and so on. The correct title should be “Marine Aids to Navigation Bill”, which would limit it to the work done by the general lighthouse authorities, which is what the noble Lord is concerned about.

The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, has already taken issue with the general cost of light dues. It is true that such dues were reduced five times between 1993 and 2006, in which year the previous Administration reduced them by a further 13 per cent at a time when shipping was enjoying the best boom that it had had for years. With hindsight, that was unfortunate, because of course the time came to raise the dues again as the General Lighthouse Fund had in effect been running at a loss. In 2009, there was a large increase, which was followed by a second increase a year later in April 2010. As the noble Earl said, those increases came when we were in recession and shipping was going through a hard time. I can understand ship owners’ resentment, but they did slightly ignore what had been happening over the previous 10 to 15 years.

We have always collected light dues under the user pays principle. That is not unique to this country. Things may have changed a little but, as I mentioned on the previous occasion, quite a number of other countries collect light dues either in whole or in part in the same way, so it is not correct to say that our system is unique. Governments of both persuasions have supported the user pays principle. The problem is that our charges are transparent and ship owners can see them when they get their bills, whereas in other ports around the world the charges are either covered by government funds or included in port charges. There is no evidence to suggest that it is any more expensive for a ship to call at our ports than ports on the continent.

I also take slight issue on how business has been affected by the recent rises. The figures that I have seen do not suggest that there has been any reduction in ships calling at our ports. Some individual ports may have been affected, but container lines are notorious for switching from port to port as it suits them. A lot of them now work in consortia, so any decision—for example, to switch from Felixstowe to Southampton or vice versa—may be strategic.

Much has been said about the Atkins report, which is now in the process of being implemented. Reductions in costs are in the pipeline. Certainly, Trinity House has committed to reduce costs by 26 per cent over the next few years, which is broadly in line with departmental cuts. I think that it is safe to say that light dues will have to remain stable for the next three years so that one may see how the situation pans out. Let us give Atkins a chance. We all agree that the Atkins report was very useful. Let us see how its implementation works out before we think of any further changes to light dues. I feel certain that dues will come down in time, but the increased efficiencies now being made in the general lighthouse authorities will ensure that the reduction can be made in time. It would be unwise to think that any reduction could be made within the next three years.

One aspect of the Bill that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has introduced that is in many ways welcome is the proposal to give lighthouse authorities increased power to use their ships for commercial purposes. Under existing powers, such ships can undertake commercial work, which brings in more than £3 million a year that is paid into the General Lighthouse Fund. Any means of increasing that ability would be most welcome. In view of what has happened, that is one the few aspects of the Bill that would be welcomed. However, as the noble Lord mentioned, there is the problem of another Private Member’s Bill in another place that seeks to deal with wreck removal. Both those matters, as well as the pensions issue that has been mentioned, were included in the draft Marine Navigation Bill. Although we are all disappointed that the Government did not bring that Bill forward, it would now seem sensible for them to do so at the earliest opportunity. That would be the best course of action and would make the noble Lord’s Bill and the Bill in the Commons unnecessary.

Maritime and Coastguard Agency

Lord Greenway Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I cannot give specific assurances, but the proposal is to make sure that the radio systems are up to date, particularly in the use of digital networks.

[Lord Greenway]

My Lords, financial implications apart, is it not true that Her Majesty’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency has been going through a rather difficult period over the past five years? Does the Minister share my confidence in the new chief executive, which is felt widely in the maritime community, and agree with me that he will sort out the present problems, although it may take a little time to do so?