Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marland]

As I said earlier, I am very impressed by the calm rhetoric that has been shown from this side of the Atlantic and by the response from President Obama to the conversation that he had with our Prime Minister. At our level, we have been having very constructive and positive dialogue with our respective departments in the US, trying to find a constructive way forward. Clearly, with horrendous disasters on a scale such as this that affect the environment and many people’s lives, there is bound to be volatile and probably over-the-top rhetoric. However, I am glad to say that from the Government’s point of view the matter has been dealt with calmly, and I applaud the fact that that is as the noble Lord would wish to see it.

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

My Lords, the Minister’s tone has been very measured and I congratulate him on setting up the OSPREY exercise, which is very useful. However, the learning curve will be travelled up only by the United Kingdom. We have an international business with British associations but it would appear to adhere to different safety standards in different parts of the world. People do what they need to do or what they can get away with, rather than having a gold standard. Once we get OSPREY and look at the picture against the experience of Piper Alpha, would it not be better to try to get international agreement which is binding on all the players so that we do not have the kind of pantomime in which people say, “Oh yes we do, oh no we don’t”, every time there is a disaster? We have learnt a lot from Piper Alpha. Let us hope that we are not too complacent about it but that, as a consequence, we feel emboldened to say to other people, “We’ve tried to get our house in order. Why don’t we try to get all our houses in order at the same time?”.

[Lord Marland]

The noble Lord makes an incredibly valid point, which I hope I have answered. I should mention that the name is OSPRAG, which is difficult for me, let alone the noble Lord, to say—I have to have it written down in front of me. It stands for Oil Spill Prevention and Response Advisory Group, and I am glad that he welcomes it. As I said earlier, we are communicating at all levels with US government departments to ensure that we achieve this gold standard. As the noble Lord rightly said, the world cannot march out of tune. I think that the early steps by the US Government to separate safety and licensing are a major breakthrough. That separation was started in this country and it delivers a gold standard. I can only assume that everyone will learn a lot from this incident, as they did following Piper Alpha, and that they will adopt the very important safety standards that are now required.