Draft Hovercraft (Application of Enactments) and Merchant Shipping (Prevention of Pollution) (Law of the Sea Convention) Amendment Order 2022

Mike Kane Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2022 General Committees

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Ms Rees. I hope that you will allow me to take a liberty in welcoming the pupils and teachers from Dobyns-Bennett High School in Tennessee in the United States. They are most welcome today, and are now formally recorded in Hansard as having been here at the Houses of Parliament.

[Hon. Members]

Hear, hear!

[Mike Kane]

The purpose of the instrument is to ensure that anyone polluting from a hovercraft is indictable and, as the Minister said, to bring hovercrafts under the same governance as ships for the purposes of the Merchant Shipping Act 1995.

As a young man on family visits to Ireland, I was always fascinated to watch the Seacat take off from Holyhead to Dun Laoghaire, as we caught the far less exciting, and to my mind quite mundane and pedestrian, ferry. The hon. Member for Meon Valley has pre-empted the next part of my speech. The hovercraft that runs between Ryde on the Isle of Wight and Southsea in Portsmouth claims to be the last remaining commercial hovercraft in the world, so I am grateful to the Minister for making clear that that hovercraft is not affected by the instrument.

Since Sir Christopher Cockerell invented the hovercraft by experimenting with, I believe, an empty tin can and a vacuum cleaner pack in the late 1950s, the hovercraft has had a mixed history and mixed usage—hon. Members cannot say that they do not learn things from my speeches. Hovercraft have been useful for the military, as they are amphibious. They cross sea, land and sand without the need for a port or pier. However, they are very heavy users of diesel and their popularity has waned over the years.

Hovercraft are reputed to be heavily polluting feats of engineering and, as we all agree, we have an ongoing need to reduce pollution and emissions from the maritime sector to protect the environment and the health of our nation. As I said earlier, we do not have a particularly thriving or large hovercraft industry. I was therefore a little perplexed, like my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South, to see the order before the Committee today. However, the Minister has explained why that is the case.

Will the Minister update us on exactly how many pieces of maritime legislation are delayed? What stage in the process are they at and when will they be brought before the House? It is my understanding that the Department for Transport set a target of dealing with delayed legislation by the end of 2020. We are now halfway through 2022. I am told that some of the legislation has been delayed for six years, so any clarification we could have here today, or in writing, would be much appreciated.

As a nation, we are no longer the force in international shipping that we once were. It is hugely regrettable, but we could once again be such a force. We have the skills and the knowledge in this country to decarbonise the maritime sector and to clean it up once and for all. To achieve that, we need to show true commitment to the maritime sector and to those engineers, marine technologists, academics and businesses that are committed to doing it, many of whom the Minister has met, as have I. They need the Government’s help to achieve it. Industry cannot do this alone.

In 2020, the Government set out “Maritime 2050” and its clean maritime plan, which I was reading just yesterday. It states that, by 2025, the Government expect all vessels operating in UK waters to be

“maximising the use of energy efficiency options.”

This is an admirable hope, but quite vague. I am keen to hear from the Minister what progress has been made to ensure that this hope becomes a reality. It also states:

“The UK is building clean maritime clusters focused on innovation and infrastructure associated with zero emission propulsion technologies, including bunkering of low or zero emission fuel.”

This is the ambition for 2025, which is two and a half years away. Will the Minister update us on the progress and financial commitment the Government have made on those developments so that we can ensure they are on track?

I, too, noticed on reading the explanatory memorandum that there was no consultation on this matter. In the context of the horrendous backlogs of legislation and the small size of the industry, it feels somewhat as though we are tinkering around the edges. I say to the Minister and to the Department that we need to set our eyes on the horizon, the world as it is now and the world as it should be. We could be doing more, and we could be doing it faster.