Marine Navigation (No. 2) Bill

Lord Selsdon Excerpts

Friday 18th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Selsdon]

My Lords, I feel that I should begin by declaring an interest, but I may go on declaring it too long and bore your Lordships. I speak in my capacity as secretary and treasurer of the House of Lords Yacht Club and do so rather nervously, as I have the vice-commodore on my left and the commodore who is about to speak after me.

I have a belief that sea is in the blood. I have the same problem as the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, pointed out in relation to his family: I am the Scottish Mitchell-Thomson McEacharn—the Ben line, the McEacharn line, the Scottish line. We could not earn very much money, so we sailed the world. We set ourselves up in Australia; we were the first harbourmasters in Otago in New Zealand and, for ever and a day, we have a family rule that we must die at sea and have our latitude and longitude on our lair or on our tombstone. Even if we do not, and if I were to pass away today here, the rule would be that, on my lair in Scotland, the latitude and longitude of this particular Bench would be there.

I have an interest, obviously, because of my sea background. I think that I began in the boating world at the age of five, punting a rather ropey punt on my grandfather’s lake and being reminded that it was his father who in the First World War, and not being able to continue in the Army, had pressed into service his yacht “Venetia”, which was then fitted with depth charges and was off Harwich to patrol for submarines. However, it was unable sail to fast enough, so that, when the first trial took place, the stern blew off and the vessel was in port for the rest of the day. He received a remarkable letter from the Admiralty, that is still in my family, thanking him for his glorious service during the war and making him a commander in the RNVR, in which capacity he had himself painted. Provided with this certificate was a note stating that he had received 100 guineas by way of a prize or a reward. This was framed in the downstairs loo, as we would call it, and put on the wall with a note from him stating that, when he was on his seat, he would forever remember the historic meanness of the Admiralty.

We know that the public sector is inevitably mean and inevitably short of money, but we do need the private individuals. I pay great tribute to my noble friend who has introduced this Bill for what she has managed to do down in Cornwall. It is quite remarkable in that area how she has single-handedly almost transformed people’s attitude to the whole of the inlet business. We have a coastline in the United Kingdom that is as long as India. It is full of ins and outs, which to some extent means shellfish. When you go down there and visit the lobster factories, as I call them, where she has persuaded fishermen to take lobster eggs and grow lobsters that are then exported, you realise the importance of it.

Inlets and outlets—maybe they are called havens or harbours—are areas that need development and exploitation. I shall speak today principally on the role of the private sector. After punting across a lake, I then ended up trying to get a Seagull outboard motor with a small aluminium exhaust to go down the depths of the Arran. Over time, we ended up with small boats where we all trained at young age. My son first drove a Dellquay Dory at the age of three, sitting on your knees so that you could have health and safety. Over the years, as I had sailing boat—all, I have to say, on borrowed money—I would ask families where they had only children, and parents were worried that they might lose their children during the holidays if they had only one, if they would like me to take them. We would have gangs, and we would deal in adventures. We had to go across to France of course to invade France, but, on the way back, in order to be sure that my navigation was okay, we would ring lighthouse keepers. At a young age, they ring Niton Radio. My son would ring Niton Radio and they would say, “Hello, Callum, how are you? Is it going all right?”. You somehow felt secure if you had been in touch with a lighthouse keeper. If you were going past Portland Bill and wanted to take the inner route, and you were nervous about the tides, you would ring the lighthouse keeper. I always really wanted to be a lighthouse keeper or possibly to have my own lighthouse.

It is against this background that I have this deep affection for the sea, but also, I would like to return to the leisure sector. One day, I received a letter asking whether I would like to accept the appointment to be chairman of the Greater London and South East Council for Sport and Recreation, responsible for planning and development of sport and recreation in Greater London, Surrey, Sussex and Kent, so help me God. I think that they wanted a Lord, and I did not know that we had a committee of 300, which included the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and the Royal Parks. But that did not matter; the idea was to try to get people to go out and play games and play sport. This became something of a passion: how could you make something possible? Among the areas that we looked at were inland waterways, the whole of the Thames and the whole of Docklands, trying to encourage shallow-water diving. At Greenwich, there was an old Henry VIII graving dock which the council was going to fill in and get rid of. We managed to find the enthusiastic diving brigade which said that this would be a perfect place for training divers, and the other lot said that it would be a perfect place for training canoeists, so we had the divers diving at night. And then the local people wanted to fish, so we stocked it with fish as well. There were also little holes in the ground where you would put in a pole and an umbrella, and we brought things to life.

It was then that I realised that we were responsible. In Greater London, Surrey, Sussex and Kent, you had all the water areas, the inner lakes and others—what could you do with them? Over time, in my boat or boats, I have visited every single haven, harbour and creek right the way down to the end of Cornwall. There are moments of great excitement when you decide, “Let’s go into the Beaulieu River at night for the first time”. When you wake up in the morning, when everyone else and all the young ones are asleep, and you see a stag swim across that river in front of you, that is emotion. What I am trying to point out is that this private sector is absolutely critical to the whole of the maritime world. It is also a considerable nuisance. The sorts of things that we would encourage people to do would be to look at the history of windsurfing, which was meant to have started in Hayling Island with someone with a broomstick on a door. Before you knew it, once it was mentioned, a whole lot of the young were out there on doors, causing absolute havoc with the tide going the wrong way.

Looking at these inland creeks and waterways, there is this need to make sure that the private sector—if that is what it is called—co-operates fully and is fully trained on all aspects of navigation. One exercise we would do sometimes was to take a small Dory and go from somewhere such as Birdham in Chichester harbour through the little cut into Portsmouth harbour to review the fleet. You would arrange for one of the ships there to stand up and wave. It was creating the activity on the water that caused an enormous amount of fun.

I am trying to point out that if we are to be involved in this area, we have to bring together the private and public sectors and the training of individuals. A bunch of children who have capsized in the way of a tanker coming into a harbour can cause a lot of chaos. However, if you explain to people at a young age what the rules and regulations are during their training for sailing or for driving motorboats, you can get a long way. I speak here today on behalf of the private sector but, more importantly, for the young. Once you have got their enthusiasm the sea is in the blood for life, as it is with me.