Draft Works Detrimental To Navigation (Powers and Duties of Inspectors) Regulations 2018

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2018 General Committees

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve for the first time under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma.

The draft regulations are very much needed and the Opposition support their introduction. I have, however, some questions about what they apply to. I would like to hear some clarification and thoughts from the Minister before we conclude our business this afternoon.

The draft regulations are on hydrocarbon industries in the North sea, but ships do not distinguish between installations that get hydrocarbons from the sea and those that get wind out of the air. They collide with both. As far as I can see, the regulations relating to navigational safety regarding offshore wind are guided by different legislation: the Energy Act 2004. However, that Act itself requires some pretty similar sorts of arrangements as far as offshore wind establishments are concerned, relating to assurances that they will be safe from collision etc. As far as offshore hydrocarbon establishments are concerned, an automatic 500-yard safety zone is declared to be in place once the permissioning for that particular site has been agreed. However, as far as offshore wind is concerned, such establishments effectively have to apply for a safety zone to be placed around the installation, or the area in which the offshore wind farm is sited.

In the 2004 Act, there are also mostly equivalent arrangements concerning the responsibilities of offshore wind establishments to make sure that they do not get collided with. So they need to have provision of aids to navigation, the stationing of guard ships in the vicinity and other measures in connection with the control and movement of vessels. So they are nearly identical to what the Minister has set out for the provisions in respect of hydrocarbon-based installations.

Yet we are providing an additional level of inspection only for hydrocarbon facilities this afternoon. That may be because of the way the legislation falls and indeed I cannot see whether there is a parallel inspection body to that of the Offshore Petroleum Regulator for Environment and Decommissioning that applies to offshore wind installations. It appears to be the case that offshore wind installations are fairly well behaved. Of course, once a wind farm is in a place, people know where it is, whereas oil installations, while not exactly popping up, tend to be located in less easily established areas.

Nevertheless, it seems that the parallels are so exact that putting in place an inspection regime that applied to all installations operating in the North sea might be a wise move. I wonder whether the Minister can shed any light on whether such a move was considered, or will it be considered in the future, or does she consider that it is not necessary to have that sort of regime in respect of installations in the North sea that are not hydrocarbon-based?

The second issue that I would like some light shed on is the question of how it came about that these powers were considered to be needed. I ask that because in the explanatory memorandum that we have all received alongside the regulations themselves, it states:

“The need for the instrument has arisen due to a number of incidents from 2015 onwards whereby some operators failed to resolve within a reasonable timeframe (e.g. no more than a few days at most)”—

the Minister said that in one case it took four or five months—

“serious non-compliances with the conditions of Consents to Locate (primarily the obligation to maintain functional navigational aids) - despite continued pressure being exerted by OPRED.”

Under the 2008 Act, the Secretary of State already has considerable powers to investigate failure to comply with consents to locate. The Minister, under the 2008 Act, can indeed provide directions as far as non-complying installations with regard to consents to locate are concerned, and indeed can introduce enforcement on the back of those directions. Indeed, not only can she introduce enforcement but she can, in extremis, levy fines of—I believe—up to £50,000, or a persistent offender can be sentenced to two years in prison.

So there are already powers on the statute book that enable substantial direction and enforcement to take place, yet the explanatory memorandum states that the incidents occurred from 2015 onward. Given that the legislation was passed in 2009—the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 amended the Energy Act 2008—I assume that between 2009 and 2015 people with consents to locate did not flout their responsibility to supply navigational aids and other means of preventing collisions, or perhaps the Secretary of State did issue directions and enforcement measures before 2015.

I do not know whether the Minister has with her any record of what notices the Secretary of State has issued in respect of his powers under the 2008 Act, whether any enforcement has been undertaken, and, if so, what the outcome was. The Committee should be able to see whether action was taken before 2015, when it was pointed out that a number of operators appeared not to have resolved issues within a reasonable timeframe.

The other issue that arises is that, if nothing much happened between 2009 and 2015, why did lots of things suddenly happen after 2015 requiring this change to the inspectors’ powers to enable them, as the Minister reasonably said, to board structures and ensure there are navigational aids and so on? Are the operators behaving differently? Is it that the previous operators were rather well behaved but that a new set of operators who are determined to flout the regulations has turned up in the North sea, or is it that the situation was identical during that period but that we did not realise it until 2015 so are only now introducing these regulations? I rather suspect that the former is the case—there are a higher number of incidents that inspectors consider have not been resolved properly. That is effectively what the Minister is saying, but it would be useful to know whether that is the case and whether the operators are much less compliant than they used to be. If so, we should think more widely about the question of compliance, which is very important given the disastrous consequences if a navigational problem causes a collision with an oil rig or an exploratory rig. If such disasters are being countenanced by operators in the North sea, who are not complying as they previously did, should not the Department look at whether a culture of not taking compliance seriously has developed? Should we take wider action, in addition to giving inspectors further powers of entry, to ensure that a culture is in place that regards compliance with the requirement to provide navigational aids and other means of ensuring ships do not collide with offshore institutions to be a matter of course for operators, and not as something that they may eventually be dragged into complying with after much to-ing and fro-ing and threatening from the Government?

I would appreciate it if the Minister would address those thoughts, to ensure that safety in the North sea is as good as it can be. It is paramount, across all aspects of installations. If she can shed a little light on that, I am sure the Opposition will not oppose the regulations, because at their heart is making sure that safety in the North sea is as good as it can be, which is the right and proper thing to do.