Merchant Shipping (Control and Management of Ships’ Ballast Water and Sediments) Order 2022

Lord Greenway Excerpts

Thursday 13th January 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for introducing this fascinating draft order. It is interesting that the Government blame everything on things coming from the Far East, be they Chinese or Japanese knotweed or Japanese oysters. I expect that equal blame goes in the opposite direction.

This needs doing—I have no problem with ensuring that ballast water is sampled and tested—but I wonder whether the Minister can just help me. How is this sampling done? It is presumably done when the ship is in port, then sent away for analysis—that seems quite clear to me—but what happens if some of the samples are found to be non-compliant with whatever regulations we are coming up with? Will they nail a writ to the mast of the ship, the next time it comes in? Will they send our Navy out on to the high seas? How will these things actually be enforced?

It is wonderful having regulations. These have been coming for a long time. The IMO worked very fast to get them ready by 2017. It probably takes 10 years to do these things, and now we are taking another five. It is important to understand how these regulations will be enforced. They need to be enforced around the world. We can do only our bit, but we can set an example. I hope there is a way of doing it without us spending too much money on it.

[Lord Greenway (CB)]

My Lords, I too am grateful to the Minister for introducing this order. As she said, the convention dates from 2004 and was not ratified until September 2016 by 30 states, representing 35% of the world’s merchant tonnage. By the time it came into force a year after that, over 60 countries had ratified it, representing over 70% of the world’s shipping.

The Minister mentioned the delay in bringing forward this order. I am not certain that I entirely buy her explanation. It seems to me that when so many other countries, representing so much of the world’s shipping, have already ratified it, it does not do our reputation as a so-called maritime nation much good when we are seen to be dragging our feet over these conventions.

She also mentioned in passing the Chinese mitten crabs. When I went through the list, it read more like something out of a science-horror movie, since we also have round goby, North American comb jelly, zebra mussels, toxic algae and even cholera, which has been transported on micro-organisms such as plankton. There are some very nasty things going around, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, just said, and this convention was brought in for very good reasons.

There is one thing I would like to ask the Minister. What has been the position with our ships? This measure does not mean that an awful lot of ships, in the general sense of the word, would be affected because our Merchant Navy is a shadow of what it used to be. But what has happened to those ships to enable them to continue trading? Have they been, on their own accord, taking the actions necessary to comply with the convention in order to trade? If they were seen to be operating under the flag of a country that had not ratified, they would quickly be picked up by port state control around the world and forbidden to trade. I would be grateful if the Minister could shed some light on that.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome this important environmental measure and thank the Minister for her explanation. In particular, I was fascinated by paragraph 6.3 of the Explanatory Memorandum, which explains the complexity about which comes first: the ratifying of the convention or these regulations. However, that does not explain why it has taken since 2004 for us to get to this stage.

I realise that we were not alone because, as the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, just explained to us, it took until 2017 for 30 countries representing 35% of the world’s tonnage to ratify the convention. But it is a serious matter of concern and shame for us that the nations with 70% of the world’s tonnage have now signed up and we have not yet managed to do so, although it will happen soon. It is depressing that, as a once-great maritime nation, we yet again have been slow to adopt international and environmental measures that were a matter of urgency.

Perhaps the Minister can clarify, but am I right that our slowness has simply been because of the huge backlog of maritime measures that the Department for Transport managed to build up? Was it simply overlooked, or has it been a lack of enthusiasm by successive Governments to sign up that has been the problem?

There is a key point, not explained in the Explanatory Memorandum. I am sure that noble Lords will forgive my ignorance, but do ships need new technology to manage their ballast water in the way that will be prescribed, or is it just a matter of better management? I am not clear whether it is that all modern shipping would have the correct equipment, and so on—but I am surprised that there has been no impact assessment. I would assume, whether it is better management or modern equipment, either way there will be costs for ship owners as a result of this SI. However, I welcome the fact that we have finally got round to it.