Transport: Remote Island Communities in England

Lord Greenway Excerpts

Thursday 20th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenway (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for introducing this debate. One of the advantages of being tail-end Charlie is that most of the things you were going to say have already been said, but on my calculations I have an hour available should I need it. I assure your Lordships that I will take up only a fraction of that time.

I was most interested to hear the right reverend Prelate talking about Holy Island and taking us away from the Isles of Scilly. I remember going there many years ago with a friend. We were enjoying a few drinks in the pub when all of sudden the publican cried out, “All those for England”, and we all had to up sticks and leave, thereby leaving the islanders to carry on their carousing into the night.

I lived for quite a few years in the same town as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, where the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, currently has a house, so I am very familiar with Cornwall, although I have visited the Scillies only once. That was back in the early 1950s, when we flew from St Just in a Dragon Rapide. Some of your Lordships may be old enough to remember that: it was a sort of canvas and struts biplane. We happened to fly through two, rather violent hail-storms on the way. As a 10 or 11 year-old, I was very apprehensive, I can tell your Lordships.

Slightly more recently, I was on a trip from here with the defence group, in a Nimrod from St Mawgan. One of the other noble Lords on board happened to have a holiday home in the Scillies. He had a word with the pilot and the pilot thought, “Come on, we’ll go and have a look at it”. We came in very low over the runway, at a very low speed. The noble Lord said, “Oh, there’s my house”, and the pilot then thought, “Let’s get out of here”. He pulled out all the stops and we did a power climb which must have shaken every window in Scilly. We got, quite correctly, a sound reprimand from the control tower.

The noble Lord who just spoke referred to nautical matters. I have been becalmed for many hours in previous Fastnet races off the Scilly Isles, so have had plenty of time to observe them, and I will talk about the sea connection in my few minutes of remarks. The “Scillionian III” has been mentioned, which reached her 40th anniversary in May this year. I would describe her as a prime example of a ship that was built specifically for the route she was intended to serve on. That is extremely important, especially in the case of the Scillies, because not only does the ship have to carry 500 passengers and a certain amount of freight, she also has to be capable of taking the ground at low water in St Mary’s. There are remarkably few modern ships of that type around today.

I know that the Isles of Scilly company has been looking at potential second-hand ships—I have had a look myself—but there are almost no ships of that type around at all. All the ships available are what are termed ro-ro ships—roll-on roll-off ships—where you need special ramps at either end for road traffic to come on and off. I would argue that a ro-ro ship would not really be suitable for the Isles of Scilly. You only have some nine miles of road in St Mary’s, and I cannot think why anybody would ever want to take a car there. In fact, I am surprised private cars have not been banned from going there. If anyone is stupid enough to pay the enormous fare to take their car, I suppose they are welcome to it. But the other factor is a ship that carries a lot of cars needs a lot of extra space: cars take up an awful lot of room, and for that reason your limited draught would create a great problem.

What really needs to happen is for the Government, Cornwall Council and maybe even the Duchy to sit down and look at plans for a proper replacement for the “Scillionian III” and to build a ship that would last, hopefully, another 40 years but which would be purpose-built and would suit all the islands’ needs. They could for instance, bearing in mind all the changes going on in regulations at sea, power her with liquefied natural gas, something that Caledonian MacBrayne is doing for two of its new ferries being built up on the Clyde. We could have a new ship, built in a British yard. Sadly, we have very few British yards still capable of doing this, but there is Appledore, where the current “Scillonian” was built, or Ferguson, on the Clyde, or possibly even Cammell Laird. A British-built ship, flying the Red Ensign, would be a wonderful achievement.

We are looking at an updated version of the present vessel, capable of carrying some 500 passengers and a certain amount of freight. I see absolutely no reason why vans should be taken to the Scilly Isles with freight—what is the point? You can bring the van to the quay in Penzance, offload the freight, put it on the ship and put it on to a van at the other end. You do not need to move vehicles backwards and forwards.

I think my noble friend on the Cross Benches mentioned this, but believe it or not, the present “Scillonian” was designed to work year-round, and for the first 13 years of her life, she did so. I have a photograph in my pocket here of her passing the Wolf Rock in 1979, when she was two years old—and that was on the last day of the year. The new ship must be capable of year-round operation. There is the rather extraordinary idea of having this freight ship. The right reverend Prelate mentioned the “I survived the ‘Scillionian’” badge. I think we ought to club together and give the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, a special badge, because he survived the “Gry Maritha”, the small freight ship, in the middle of a winter on a very rough crossing. She is about to be replaced by a slightly larger vessel, also second-hand from Norway, but I would describe her as perhaps a slightly larger floating shoe-box compared with the other vessel. Having sailed many seas of the world in all sorts of weather, I would certainly not like to travel in that ship in the depths of winter.

I return briefly to the “Scillonian” and her design. The waters between Land’s End and Scilly are probably, potentially, the roughest waters in this country. Only just over a year ago, a wave was recorded off Land’s End of 90 feet in height, which gives you some idea of the sort of conditions that need to be met. A new ship could be slightly faster, enabling it to do two trips a day at peak times; it could operate perhaps two or three times a week in the winter. Who would pay for this ship? It is not beyond the wit of the three organisations I mentioned earlier—the Government, Cornwall Council and the Duchy—to get together and look at potential designs for the ship. It would serve the island well and in my opinion would be the best thing to do, although I welcome the idea of the helicopter coming back.

The danger is that if you build a larger ship, particularly a ro-ro ship, you will get—as I am sure the islanders would like—many more tourists visiting. But as the right reverend Prelate said, the charm of these islands is in their remoteness and quietness, and a lot of the people who go there really appreciate that, which is why they go there. It would be wrong to swamp Scilly with thousands and thousands of tourists.