Merchant Shipping (Monitoring, Reporting and Verification of Carbon Dioxide Emissions) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2018 Grand Committee

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for introducing these draft regulations. Before I get into the substance, I would be interested to know how much monitoring has happened in the UK up to now, both in the ports and on the seas between the ports. As the Minister implied, and taking the Dover Strait as an example, ships going in a south-westerly direction may be going from a continental port to somewhere else in the world but they are still in UK waters for a time. It would be interesting to know what monitoring has taken place inside and outside the ports.

I declare an interest: until last year I was a trustee of Plymouth Marine Laboratory, which developed a very interesting means of checking the emissions from ships from up to five miles away; it was mainly CO₂ but other emissions as well. It tested it off Rame Head in Plymouth. I think it found that the few naval ships that were running on this kind of fuel were the worst offenders but I am sure that has changed. It does not really matter; the point is that it could do it. The idea would be to put this equipment in the middle of the Dover Strait, for example, where you could check ships going both ways. I do not know where that has got to, but it is important that monitoring is carried out not just in the ports but out at sea where the emissions can still be quite dangerous.

Can the Minister explain what the difference will be when we have left the EU? If a ship in the Dover Strait has set off from Rotterdam and is due to end up in China, how will we monitor the emissions, let alone enforce any limits? What are we going to do about that? It is all very well having these regulations. I believe that there is another regulation which requires cleaner fuel to be burnt when you are travelling in the English Channel, which I think is to the east of Lizard or Scilly and up to the North Sea. I think that that is going to change in a few years’ time in order to cover the whole of the UK. Has that position changed as a result of our potentially leaving the EU? How will the monitoring be done?

It is good that the Minister has brought forward these regulations, but my doubts are around whether there will be any monitoring at all, whether there is any monitoring, and what action will be taken if a ship is found to be exceeding the limits. I look forward to hearing her comments.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I will follow the noble Lord in the same vein by asking a simple question. I remind the Committee of my historic interest as the Conservative spokesman in the European Parliament on transport issues. Can my noble friend the Minister explain the current enforcement mechanism if either a UK-registered ship or an EU-registered ship breaches the carbon dioxide emissions limit? How does she imagine that that enforcement mechanism will change in the future? Presumably the whole point of having carbon dioxide emissions limits is to ensure that, along with every other form of transport, maritime shipping abides by air quality standards. Will we be able to enforce this unilaterally going forward?

I turn to something that is very topical. Is there currently any jurisdiction for the European Court of Justice over a breach of these emissions standards?

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I should declare that I am a board member of the Marine Management Organisation. I do not think that it conflicts with what we are considering here, but I mention it for the avoidance of doubt. I would like to respond to the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, by saying that in her role as leading the group in the European Parliament when the Conservatives were part of the EPP, which is exactly where they should still be, she was a fantastic advocate for her position. I was in a different group that sometimes became involved in things like trans-European networks, and I noted that she was very successful in what she tried to do. She presented a difficult opposition.

I want to come back to a few points about carbon budgets, which is what this comes down to. In her remarks the Minister alternated between talking about carbon emissions and greenhouse gas emissions. There is a very important difference between those two phrases. I would be interested in understanding whether these regulations are in fact concerned with greenhouse gases or carbon dioxide emissions. I know that they refer to carbon dioxide, but most of the monitoring that is done is for greenhouse gases. Although emissions of methane are lower, it is a much more potent greenhouse gas. The difference is important and I presume that it is particularly relevant to the shipping industry, given its emissions.

I congratulate the Minister on reminding us that international shipping is the one area where we still have not solved this issue internationally. In aviation we have this rather dodgy—if I am honest—offset system. We will see how it works, but I suspect that the Amazon rainforest will not grow at the rate that aircraft emissions will. Given that sympathy, I am interested to understand whether, given the fact that we have international paralysis, and with the Government perhaps frustrated by the fact that that sector is not represented within European or British carbon budgets, the UK, as the Climate Change Committee has often advocated, will take on its leadership role in this area again and start to reconsider whether the sector should be. I am not expecting a policy decision today in the Moses Room, but I will be interested to know if the Government will start to look at that issue.

When it comes to individual matters of these particular regulations, I shall quote from the Explanatory Memorandum as the legislation refers to European regulations all the way through and it is very difficult to read, as I am sure the Minister understands:

“The amendments … remove what will become redundant requirements on the UK to make certain reports to the Commission”.


I wanted to clarify whether those requirements, whatever they are, or those reports will actually now be made within the UK anyway.

I am in particularly interested in documents of compliance. I do not know much about this topic although I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is clued up on them. I presume that they will be issued by the Marine and Coastguard Agency. I am interested to understand whether these are existing EU systems. If they are, are we having to replace the IT systems? Are they ready? How many of these things do we issue at the moment and how many are we going to have to issue after March 2019, or after the transition period if we manage to come to an agreement? As we all know, IT systems and the increase in documentation and red tape are one of the biggest challenges in making Brexit work.

I have to ask about this ability to expel ships from a port, which we are getting rid of because we already have the ability to get rid of ships for safety and environmental reasons. I am interested to understand, in terms of EU legislation, what other scenarios the Government were thinking of in that legislation other than safety and the environment, in order to understand what rights we are forgoing.