Marine Navigation (No. 2) Bill

Lord MacKenzie of Culkein Excerpts

Friday 18th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord MacKenzie of Culkein]

My Lords, I am very pleased to welcome this Bill and to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, for taking it forward in this House. A number of matters are covered in this Bill, and it will not be surprising to noble Lords, given my background as a fourth generation lighthouse keeper, that I will concentrate on the parts of the Bill dealing with the general lighthouse authorities.

The measures in this Bill relating to the GLAs are long overdue. Representations about these issues have been made for some considerable time, and it is good that these are now at long last being taken forward. I was sorry that the Marine Navigation Bill of 2008 did not get beyond the draft stage, and I am delighted that both the Government and the Labour Opposition supported this private Member’s Bill in another place.

First, Clause 8 provides for the first time clarity on the area of geographical responsibility of the lighthouse authorities. As is often the case, legal experts do not agree on meanings of Acts of Parliament, and it seemed never to be possible to get agreement on the meaning of the expression “adjacent seas and islands”, as set out in the Merchant Shipping Act. Notwithstanding the lack of agreement on the precise meaning of present legislation, the GLAs provide aids to navigation, including marking hazards outside the 12 nautical mile limit, as well as lighting internationally recognised sea lanes for the purpose of traffic separation. Added to this is the need to light buoys or beacons on potentially hazardous wrecks outside that limit. This Bill will give legal certainty by making it clear that the responsibility of the GLAs includes the area beyond the territorial seas and up to the outer limit of the UK’s pollution control zone—in other words, 200 nautical miles. It is not new that hazards are marked outside the territorial limit. The iconic Bell Rock lighthouse was built, with parliamentary approval, some 200 years ago, and was outside of the then three nautical mile limit.

Over the years that I have spent in your Lordships’ House, I have quite often taken part in debates where there was understandable concern about the costs to shipowners of light dues and the need to keep these as low as possible. I do not have an issue with that, provided always that the safety of the mariner and the environment is not compromised. So secondly, I welcome the measures in Clause 9, which will provide for more opportunity for GLAs to generate more income for the General Lighthouse Fund. The Merchant Shipping Act, as the noble Baroness said, allows for any spare capacity to be utilised for third-party commercial work, provided such work is not outside the scope of the statutory responsibilities of the GLAs. In reality, the GLAs are constrained in that they are limited to using ships or property assets. One example of that is that the Oban base of the Northern Lighthouse Board is now utilised by small cruise vessels for berthing.

In the period 2011-12, some £4 million was raised by the GLAs from commercial activities. There is little doubt that the measures in this Bill will allow for greater opportunity for commercial work by allowing the purchase of ancillary assets and services which, while not necessarily required for statutory duties, nevertheless can and indeed must be used for exploiting spare capacity.

These past few months, the NLV “Pole Star” has carried out quite a bit of interesting contract work, including recovery of waverider buoys, their guard buoys and seabed frames. The last-mentioned part of that work is extremely delicate due to the fragile nature of the instruments on these seabed frames. No doubt that was greatly assisted by the dynamic positioning capabilities of this very versatile ship. The commercial work carried out by the “Pole Star” included multibeam surveys, camera tows and grab sampling of the seabed. Those are the sort of skills that are available and can be brought to bear whenever there is spare capacity available. That can now be enhanced by the purchase of assets to enable that additional work to be undertaken.

There are a lot of clever people in the employ of the general lighthouse authorities and the Bill will allow for consultancy work and other services which can provide a greater possibility of increasing commercial income and so alleviating some of the costs of the General Lighthouse Fund. It is important to point out that none of these additional activities will prejudice the statutory role and responsibility of the general lighthouse authorities. Purchase of assets from the General Lighthouse Fund for contract work outside of statutory responsibilities will require the consent of the Secretary of State, as has been said, and, clearly, will be given only where the benefit outweighs the costs.

Thirdly, and finally, for the GLAs, I refer to Clause 11. This will provide an extension of the ways in which the GLAs can mark a wreck where there is a danger to navigation. The amendment proposed to the Merchant Shipping Act would allow the wreck to be marked by a non-physical device such as the relatively new automatic identification system as well as the more traditional buoys or beacons. The beauty of marking by electronic means such as AIS means that a hazard can be quickly marked before it is possible for a lighthouse tender to get out to a wreck to lay buoys, beacons or other physical markers. This must enhance the safety of the mariner and provide better protection of the marine environment.

As an aside, I hope that nautical colleges are teaching that the AIS is used not just for tracking other vessels by the watchkeeper on the bridge of ships or by coastal vessel traffic services stations, but is used increasingly as an aid to navigation. I was on the bridge of a ship recently and was talking to a deck officer cadet in his final year who was adamant that it was dangerous to use AIS as an aid to navigation. Clearly, he had never been taught about the concept of virtual AIS, either at Warsash Maritime Academy or on board the ships on which he had served as part of his cadetship.

I again welcome the measures in this Bill which will assist the GLAs to better carry out their good works and at the same time help keep down costs to the shipping industry. I know that other matters are covered in the Bill but I hope that nothing will get in the way of it having a safe and speedy passage through this House and on to the statute book.