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

Debate between Robert Courts and Flick Drummond

Tuesday 14th June 2022 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Robert Courts)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Hovercraft (Application of Enactments) and Merchant Shipping (Prevention of Pollution) (Law of the Sea Convention) Amendment Order 2022.

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Ms Rees. Hon. Members will be glad to know that the purpose of the order is to give the Government the powers they will need to apply the pollution prevention requirements in the international convention on standards of training, certification and watchkeeping for seafarers—which I will refer to as the STCW convention for brevity—to hovercraft, and to provide strengthened enforcement powers for breaches relating to the prevention of pollution. Those powers are needed as a result of the repeal of section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972, which provided the powers for the pollution prevention requirements in the regulations that currently implement the STCW convention, including the application of those requirements to hovercraft.

The order amends the Hovercraft (Application of Enactments) Order 1989 to apply the Merchant Shipping (Prevention of Pollution) (Law of the Sea Convention) Order 1996 and certain provisions of the Merchant Shipping Act 1995 relating to pollution prevention to hovercraft. In short, the order amends the 1989 order to apply the 1996 order and bits of the 1995 Act to hovercraft. I hope that makes sense to the Committee.

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)]

Will the Minister say exactly how many hovercraft the order is going to affect, and whether it will affect the hovercraft service from Southsea to the Isle of Wight?

[Robert Courts]

Yes, I can answer that question. I was alarmed at the intervention—I wondered whether my explanation thus far had not been clear. The only hovercraft that are operational in the UK at the moment are those that operate from Southsea, near my hon. Friend’s constituency, to the Isle of Wight. Those are not covered by the order because they operate only in internal waters. The order applies to external waters, and there are not currently any hovercraft operating in the UK that would be caught by it. None the less, it is important that we make the order so that future hovercraft would be covered by pollution regulations, for reasons we all understand.

The 1996 order provides powers to give effect in secondary legislation to the pollution prevention obligations in the UN convention on the law of the sea, or UNCLOS, with which we should all be familiar. Those obligations are often found in other international conventions, including the STCW convention, which sets out the standards that must be met for seafarers to obtain the internationally recognised certificates that are required if they are to work on vessels that operate internationally. The Hovercraft Act 1968 confers power on Her Majesty to make an Order in Council that applies any enactment relating to ships to hovercraft. The 1989 order serves that purpose, but it needs to be updated to include provision relating to the prevention of pollution.

The 1989 order, which is best thought of as an enabling order, contains some provision for the application of pollution prevention measures made under the Merchant Shipping Act, but it does not include the 1996 order, which is the relevant one for the purposes of pollution prevention. This order will fix that. It will ensure that the pollution prevention obligations in UNCLOS can be applied in full to hovercraft in the way that they already apply to ships. It will also bring some other measures up to date and apply them to hovercraft.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Courts and Flick Drummond

Thursday 19th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)]

17. What steps he is taking to tackle the use of loud engines and exhausts.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Robert Courts)]

Following encouraging initial research, further trials of the latest noise camera technologies have been announced to assess their effectiveness, and Members House are encouraged to submit applications for a trial in their local area.

[Robert Courts]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for her interest in the scheme and for highlighting the nuisance of noisy vehicles in her constituency. We will be carefully reviewing all the applications received, and we will choose four sites that represent a wide range of urban and rural environments across England and Wales. We will then consider the results of those trials.

[Mrs Drummond]

Villages in Meon Valley, including those along the A32, are blighted by noise from illegally modified motorcycle exhausts, so I am pleased the Minister has explained that the noise camera trial will move forward. Will Meon Valley be included in the trial to put an end to this unacceptable blight on communities in my constituency?

[Robert Courts]

My hon. Friend is right to raise the blight on her constituents, and I entirely understand why she does so. The noise camera trials will demonstrate whether the technology can be an effective enforcement tool that enables the police and local authorities to tackle the excessively noisy and illegally modified vehicles to which she refers. I know she will work with her local authority to apply for a trial in the best way possible.

Homelessness

Debate between Robert Courts and Flick Drummond

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)]

When we discuss homelessness in this place, we should always keep it in mind that there but for the grace of God go I. Like people in the country at large, we all have different circumstances, but I wonder just how little would need to go wrong for us to find ourselves in dire straits—perhaps just a missed rent or mortgage payment, especially if we do not have family or friends to take us in.

Homelessness can come very suddenly and for a number of reasons, but homelessness and rough sleeping should not be allowed to rob individuals of their individuality or their hopes and dreams. We do not want people to fall out of society. Homelessness is about more than simply the availability of houses. That is why the Homelessness Reduction Bill and the Children and Social Work Bill are such good news, and I will return to those later.

There is, though, good work being done already. In my area, Portsmouth City Council has received 1,068 homeless presentations in the last year. Of these, 527 were accepted. In 110 cases, homelessness was prevented, and in 183 cases, advice and assistance alone were sufficient for the applicant. Once it has accepted a family, Portsmouth has a strong record of finding permanent, secure accommodation. Three months in temporary accommodation is an average wait for a family, with some housed much sooner. This is very positive, but there are undoubted pressures.

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

My hon. Friend speaks movingly of the fact that is at the front of everyone’s minds: there but for the grace of God may go any one of us. Does she agree that the work done by local councils all over the country, such as the one in west Oxfordshire on which I still serve, is absolutely critical? Moreover, does she agree that the fact that 4% more people are being prevented from becoming homeless than last year shows that local councils are in fact tackling homelessness very effectively?

[Mrs Drummond]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and I was disappointed that Opposition Members did not tell us earlier about what Labour councils are doing around the country, and just blamed the Government every time.

There are undoubted pressures. Difficulties with private landlords, domestic violence and eviction by parents are the most significant factors in Portsmouth. The council is coping well with the demands made of it, but we need to consider how we can prevent these circumstances from developing in the first place.

Sleeping rough is not something that anyone undertakes lightly, and those who have not done it must struggle to understand the blow it must be to one’s self-esteem and identity. Dignity can be hard to maintain. I therefore praise Portsmouth City Council’s work to give rough sleepers support. The homeless day service, run by The Society of St James, is available seven days a week, and provides advice on how to find a home. But more than that, it offers access to free showers and laundry services and a free breakfast.

There are currently 37 rough sleepers in the city, and as the cold weather begins to set in, their predicament is especially acute. The council recognises the problem. Over the winter months, the council can call on 36 beds for rough sleepers on an 8 pm to 8 am basis. During periods of severe cold, the number of beds can increase to 44. This means there is a bed, a bath and a breakfast available to nearly every rough sleeper in our city over the coldest months of the year. I hope we can all agree how important it is that local authorities support these services.

There is much to praise in the charity sector in my city, too. On Christmas day, there will be two places providing lunches for homeless people in the city. Portsmouth Anglican cathedral will cater for 60 people who are homeless, lonely or finding it hard to manage the cost of Christmas lunch. The lunch will be catered by the excellent FoodCycle Pompey. Volunteers will prepare a three-course meal from food that would otherwise have been thrown away by supermarkets. Elsewhere in the city, the Salvation Army will hold its annual Christmas lunch at Southsea Citadel, where some of the people will have been referred by the council’s homeless day service. I thank everybody involved for putting on those lunches. Particularly at Christmas, the burden of social exclusion can be unbearable, and efforts to keep people in touch with others are in the true spirit of the season.

Ending the breakdown of the corporate family is the business of the Children and Social Work Bill. As I have said in this House before, parental duties do not lapse as soon as a child reaches the age of majority; it is optimistic even to think that they end when the child is 21. Anyone here who is a parent of young adults will say as much. I am therefore delighted that the Bill looks to extend the duty of responsibility for those in care to the age of 25, keeping care leavers off the streets. The Homelessness Reduction Bill, on whose Committee I am pleased to serve, does similar work. I support the duty on local authorities to become involved before people become homeless. The Bill will also double the period for which support will be available.

I have not focused on the bricks and mortar, or even the hard cash, of homelessness; those matters have been well ventilated by others. Instead, I have tried to stress that there is so much more to homelessness than simply being unhoused: it is about families and their breakdown; children and their welfare; human dignity and self-respect. I urge those who are overtaken by events to seek help as soon as possible. I reiterate my thanks and admiration for those in Portsmouth, and around the country, who are showing homeless people that they are valuable members of society.