Marine Navigation (No. 2) Bill

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Friday 18th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lady Wilcox on introducing this important Bill. The great advantage of being tail-end Charlie is that you can tear up the speech that you were going to make because so many points have been made. I was particularly pleased to hear the noble Lord, Lord MacKenzie of Culkein, talking about the lighthouses, an area of interest to me. I agree with him that it is crazy that we have not been specific about where the lighthouse authorities can operate. He will know that we have Whale Rock, on which the Northern Lighthouse Board currently has to put two buoys. Trinity House has many more examples. For the lighthouse authority not to have had that certainty needed to be addressed a long time ago. I am glad to see it in the Bill.

I, too, support the enabling of the lighthouse authorities to undertake certain commercial activities within defined limits; that will certainly help. Of course, the marking of wrecks needs attention and is now well covered in Bill. The second half of the Bill needs to be welcomed, and has been.

More controversial are Clauses 1 to 4 about pilotage, particularly Clause 2. I declare my interest, such as it is, as having twice been Minister of Shipping. I was, I suppose, part of the gestation process of the Pilotage Act 1987 when I was Minister for Shipping in 1986; my noble friend Lord Brabazon of Tara gave birth to that Act, because I had moved on to the Home Office by that stage. I remember full well the long discussions with the pilots’ association. They have done and continue to do a very good job. Of course, the nature of pilotage has changed, as the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, says. I cannot remember it, but certainly my ancestors could remember that if you had a good easterly gale in the Pentland Firth, you took on a pilot and you did not see him again; he wound up in America. Times have moved on a little since then.

The pilots were one of the most “conservative with a small c” bodies that I had come across, and were reluctant to change. I recall being told in 1986 that if we introduced the Pilotage Act there would be many more accidents at sea and at entrances to the harbour. That has not happened. I can understand the pilots’ concern, but it was misplaced. I also think that it is misplaced on this occasion. As the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, has just said, there are good controls which the competent harbour authority must ensure. My honourable friend, during consideration in Committee of an amendment to the Bill in another place, described the definition of deck officer as:

“‘an officer in charge of the above-deck workings and manoeuvres at sea of a ship or boat’””.—[Official Report, Commons, 30/11/12; col. 539.]

That makes it fairly clear that this is a responsible person for consideration of an exemption certificate.

The useful Explanatory Notes state that,

“the relevant competent harbour authority is satisfied that that person has the skill, experience and local knowledge, and sufficient knowledge of English for safety purposes”—

that is important in Scotland where more people speak Gaelic—

“to be capable of piloting one or more specified ships within its harbour”.

That is pretty straight. I am therefore inclined to support my noble friend Lady Wilcox on this; the Bill has got it right on this occasion. I would hate there to be any reduction in safety at sea. I was the Minister in charge when the “Braer”, not the “Sea Empress”, went down. That was not a matter of pilotage. We all know what happened, and I will not comment further, but it is no joy at all for there to be any shipping accident whatever in our waters, or any other waters. Nevertheless, I still support the Bill as it stands.

That takes me on to my old sparring partner, the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. I am less sanguine than is the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, about the noble Lord, who was very nice about the GLAs, for a change—which slightly surprised me—but I wonder whether, given what he said, he really wants to get rid of Clause 2. He knows full well that the Bill will not reach the statute book if that clause is removed. I listened earlier to the noble Lord; he was waxing eloquently on the Scrap Metal Dealers Bill and said, “This Bill must not be amended because it will not reach the statute book”. Now he is happy to say, “Let’s take Clause 2 out of this Bill and it will sail through the House of Commons”. I am much more cynical about the intentions of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. I would not be at all surprised if, deeply underlying that, was the intention that if we get rid of Clause 2, we will not have Clauses 8 and 9 relating to the lighthouse authorities.

Overall, I support the Bill unamended and wish it a fair wind.