Merchant Shipping (Pollution) Bill [Lords]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak and perhaps I should declare an interest. I worked for several years in a shipping company that is owned by my parents. I have no financial interest whatever in it at the moment. Perhaps I should also come clean and say that I suppose that it could be argued that, because of some of the things that I saw going on there, we have contributed directly in a very small way to pollution for reasons that I shall come to shortly. The other side of the coin is that perhaps I have a unique perspective on the issue. At the time that I worked for the company, I would also leave at about 4 o’clock, travel down the coast and go surfing off the coast at Porthcawl. I would do that week in, week out for most of my 20s. On one occasion, we were ordered not to go into the water by the police because of a spillage that had taken place. I can therefore say that I have been both a contributor to, and victim of, maritime pollution. There is a lot of good news and, in commending the Bill, it is worth picking up on the statistics that were mentioned earlier. I do not want to undermine anything said by my hon. Friends, who are quite correct about the problems that exist. However, there is a lot of good news and, in a spirit of consensus, we should pay tribute to this Government and previous Governments going all the way back to the 1960s. There has been a growing realisation of the importance of better standards of maritime cleanliness. When one talks to people who have worked in the industry for years, they will speak about some of the bad practice that has gone on, but has now largely been stopped. I refer to the emptying out of tanks and bilges. That was absolutely commonplace a few years ago. It may still happen—I do not deny that—but much of it has been stopped because of the good work of organisations such as the International Maritime Organisation and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. They are able to go on board ships to check logbooks and to ensure that ships docking at UK ports make use of the facilities that have been put in place to clean out tanks and bilges. Collisions are now less of a risk because in busy sea lanes, such as the Dover straits, there are clear shipping lanes that ships must go up and down. They cannot just set their compass and go anywhere they want. As the Minister has said, there is now an ongoing programme to phase out single-hulled tankers and to bring in double-hulled ones. We have certainly come a very long way; there is a lot of good news. I do not, however, think that we should be too complacent. Headline-grabbing disasters still take place and, as I saw in the office when I worked for the company, many smaller incidents of spillage and pollution happen regularly. We used to find that we were regularly told that containers coming into the UK for which we had responsibility had been washed off a ship as a result of bad weather. I said that we were responsible for a bit of pollution, but the containers for which we were responsible contained only tea. Presumably, that does not do a lot of damage. Nevertheless, many nasty things are carried around in containers, and it is not uncommon for them to be washed over the sides of ships. Perhaps the Minister will bear that point in mind and confirm that the fund, if it is ever needed, will also apply to such small-scale incidents that could turn out to be very expensive if the wrong types of goods are washed overboard. There are two reasons for the problem. The first is bad weather, and I appreciate that there is not much that the Minister can do about freak weather conditions and tidal waves. We do not expect him to stand there like Moses with his staff, ordering the storms to calm down and the waves to part. However, I sometimes think that his leader thinks that he could probably do that. One issue that the Minister could consider is training. The comments that have been made about levels of training, particularly on flagged vessels from certain countries, are very relevant. Tragically, within the past fortnight, a seaman was killed on a ship that was leaving the port of Newport where I used to work. I know something about that incident, but I will not say much while it is under investigation. Suffice it to say, however, that basic safety procedures were not being carried out at the time. The Minister must agree that the issue of training arises over and over again, and it is particularly pertinent to flagged vessels. I hope that he will look into that. When ships come into UK ports, they must take on board a pilot for many of those ports unless the master can get the exemption licence. To do that, he would have to undergo some tests within the UK. I am told informally that many of the masters tested, from certain countries, are found to have such a poor sea knowledge that not only will they not qualify for the exemption, but had they taken the test in the United Kingdom they would never be allowed to be put in charge of a UK-flagged vessel. Clearly, training is a real issue in relation to some of the vessels coming in. I will not specify any country in that regard, because some of the countries mentioned today have taken steps to raise their standards. The Minister will be aware, however, that not all such countries have done so, and that overall training levels can be poor. On air pollution, I echo the comments of those who pointed out that whatever problems are sometimes caused by ships, shipping is one of the greenest ways of moving goods from A to B. It is of great concern to me that, at the moment, much of the freight destined for the United Kingdom on ocean-going vessels goes straight into one of two ports, usually Felixstowe. Sometimes Felixstowe is skipped altogether and it goes into Rotterdam. From there, UK forwarding companies must arrange the delivery of vast numbers of containers to their final destination by lorry. I know that rail freight services are available, but without going into too much detail, they do not operate as efficiently as one would hope. Many movements take place by road, which results in additional expense for the consumer, the environment suffering and the roads getting clogged up. Much greater use of the current facilities around the United Kingdom would be desirable, and it should be fairly easy for the Minister to do that. I will not stretch your patience, Mr. Deputy Speaker, by talking about the amendment that I tabled but that was not called. It would be completely wrong to do so. Suffice it to say that the Minister can do a lot to help the environment by ensuring that more of our goods are moved around by ship. I recognise that there are problems, and that the Minister recognises that we do not live in a perfect world. Things sometimes go wrong, and that is what this Bill is all about—putting in place a mechanism for dealing with something that, we hope, will not take place. I wish the Bill God speed, and I hope that it sails through Parliament’s legislative channels as easily as a supertanker through the straits of Dover.