Merchant Shipping (Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping) Regulations 2022

Lord Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I also congratulate the Minister and her officials. I think I should also congratulate the MCA, which has probably done most of the work and produced some amazing documentation; I think we are all very grateful to it. As the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, says, it has taken a lot of reading and I will not go through many of these things, but I have a couple of questions for the Minister.

First, concerning the heading “Application” in Part 2, the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, asked about the Thames Clippers. I saw that the minimum weight was 80 gross tonnes and the length 24 metres. Which ships on the Thames does this apply to, as he asked? We debated life jackets on ships some time ago and I trust that has all been sorted out.

I have another question on this section. We see that it does not apply to foreign- registered vessels, which we know, but in Regulation 5(2)(e) we get an exclusion for

“wooden ships of primitive build”.

Can the Minister say what a wooden ship of primitive build is? Does it have to be over or under 24 metres? Is it powered by sail or motor, and where does it go? The only criterion seems to be that it should have a UK flag, if it ever had one. I do not know about that, but I suppose my concern is that these regulations go into great detail. I notice that only 25 UK-registered ships are owned by small businesses, and you can understand why: if they have to plough through all this and comply with it, the answer is they probably will not. That is quite a worry.

I am not sure how much of these provisions will apply to foreign-registered ships in UK waters. Does anybody check on those? Do the other ports of registry for ships have similar requirements to this—let us hope they do—or will we have one law for the British ones and one law for the rest of the world? As the Minister said, we want to encourage UK-registered ships but if this is the only country of registration that requires 200 pages of documents to be gone through, that is hardly an incentive.

Finally, I have often raised the question of enforcement before on different things. The Minister mentioned human error in her introduction. There have been a couple of interesting accidents with ships this summer, including the MV “Alfred”, which seemed to hit an island in Orkney on 5 July. One has to question how, in broad daylight, that happened with safe manning. I am sure we will see the results of an inquiry into that. I hope that in implementing and enforcing these regulations, the MCA will be given enough staff and resources to do it properly—it will be largely down to them—so that we have a good reputation for following these regulations, rather than just publishing more bits of paper.

[Lord Jones (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness for her helpful introduction and exclaim, as others have, at the huge challenge that these pages offer to those who have little or no expertise on what is clearly a vital matter. This is a doorstep of regulations, Explanatory Notes and, shall we say, additional pages. Taking into account the principle that the Executive are to be questioned and held to account, which in this instance is virtually impossible by what might be called a Back-Bencher, I want to ask the Minister about the importance of training, which is now a priority for all Governments in succession.

I am looking at page 37 and its references to nautical colleges. Might the Minister say who reports to her department regarding assessment and inspection there? Does she know, or is her department able to say, how many nautical colleges there are? Is it possible for her to say what the number of students is in the average nautical college? Where might they be located?

On that basis of attempting, in principle, to question the Minister, I say that time is of the essence so I shall sit down.

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I do not seem to have anything else to say; that means that there will be elements in writing, unless—oh, the noble Lord, Lord Jones, is looking at me expectantly.

[Lord Jones (Lab)]

All credit to the department for furnishing this Committee with that magnificent detail.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The department is grateful, as is the MCA. I look forward to the next debate on maritime regulations.