Light Dues

This has been a very interesting and thorough debate, with good points made in all parts of the Chamber. I particularly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner) on obtaining the debate and on taking a very long view indeed on the issue. As the son of a distinguished international yachtsman, I was very taken with the quote from Sir Thomas Sutherland with which he ended his speech. It reminded me of the time when the Kaiser caused an incident by turning up in London at very short notice off the boat train at Victoria. The embarrassed officials from Buckingham palace who met him told him that King Edward VII was on the Isle of Wight—my hon. Friend's constituency—and he said:""I suppose the man is boating with his grocer again."" When businesses face severe difficulties, there is a particularly strong onus on Government to minimise potential additional costs. As a number of hon. Members, including my hon. Friend, have remarked, the shipping industry has been particularly hard hit by the current economic turmoil. In January, Lloyd's List reported that freight rates for containers shipped from Asia to Europe had hit zero, with customers paying just bunker rates and terminal charges. The Baltic dry index, which measures freight rates for bulk commodities, had fallen by 96 per cent. Those were desperate times, and things have picked up a little since then, but in mid-April Lloyd's List was still reporting that 10 per cent. of global container ships were idle. Shipping companies everywhere are busy analysing all aspects of their operations to reduce costs. Measures include service suspensions, slow steaming, service deviations, off-hiring chartered tonnage and lay-ups. Worst of all, many jobs are disappearing onshore and offshore. Last week, figures from Lloyd's Maritime Intelligence Unit showed that 26 ships with capacity of at least 6,000 20-ft equivalent units had not moved in the past 19 days. Sadly, Coastal Bulk Shipping Ltd, which is based in Kent, has gone to the wall. The company operated a fleet of 13 vessels and was engaged in the extremely ecologically sound process of coastal shipping. It employed 90 people, but they have lost their jobs. The hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) mentioned the fishing industry, and I know from constituents in Whitstable that it is struggling. Although DEFRA's measures are welcome, they are only for the current year. I have had discussions with several members of the independent light dues forum, the Chamber of Shipping and One Voice. I have also met managers at Trinity House and I am looking forward to visiting their depot in Harwich next week. None of us should doubt the difficulty or the magnitude of the task facing Trinity House and its two sister authorities. Britain is an island nation, and our sea lanes are our arteries. One of those arteries—the English channel—is the busiest shipping lane in the world. The Minister kindly arranged for me to visit the Maritime and Coastguard Agency headquarters near Dover, and I saw the printout of the shipping movements that took place at just one moment in time. It was impossible not to be impressed. I must make it absolutely clear that Trinity House, the Northern Lighthouse Board and the Irish organisations do a first-class job. The Minister, the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) and other hon. Members are quite right when they say that nothing that we say or do should compromise the quality of the work that those organisations do. Nevertheless, as my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight made clear, ships docking in the UK and the Republic of Ireland are paying light dues that apply in few other countries, including most other EU member states. That brings me to the proposed increase in light dues. Trinity House informs me that light dues are now typically between 1 and 11 per cent. of total port charges and that they will go up to between 1 and 15 per cent. after the proposed increase. The planned rise ramps up fees from 35p to 41p per net registered tonne. For the largest vessels, the charge per call would rise by nearly two thirds to £20,000, and the overall annual cost would be even more if those vessels were frequent callers at UK ports. For smaller regular traders, the increase would be about 45 per cent. In the current climate, the UK ship industry—shipping lines and ports alike—sees light dues as an albatross around its neck. I meant what I said when I stated that we must not compromise the quality of the work done by Trinity House, and there is no question of a future Conservative Administration expecting the taxpayer to pick up the bill for its work. However, we need to understand what the proposals mean for the shipping industry. To take one example, Maersk has told me that it will face an additional bill of £3 million per annum. Light dues act as a cost multiplier. When shipping lines and ports are stripping out inefficiencies and costs, such a tax undermines UK competitiveness and retards the development of the UK's short sea shipping market, as evidenced by the collapse of Coastal Bulk Shipping. Indeed, we risk losing stops at UK ports altogether. In the era of the ro-ro and the channel tunnel, containers can simply be unloaded at Rotterdam or other major continental ports and put straight on to the back of a lorry. That is bad for British jobs in ports, it is bad for the regions of our country and it is very bad for the environment in terms of not only CO2 emissions, but congestion pressures on the M25 and some of the most crowded parts of our road system. There is also a longer term threat to the City of London, as the world's centre of excellence on maritime issues, if large amounts of trade shift from British ports. I will not repeat the eloquent quote that the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Leech) read out from One Voice, which echoes concerns expressed by the Chamber of Shipping and many individual lines. Instead, I want to look at some of the effects on the industry. COSCO is pulling one of its big container ships out and moving its route to Rotterdam. Maersk is considering pulling five of its six container ships out of their bases in Britain, and Grimaldi and APL are considering similar action. Light dues are one part of an accumulation of measures that the Government have recently introduced.