Merchant Shipping (Light Dues) (Amendment) Regulations 2009

My Lords, first, I must declare an interest as a harbour commissioner for the port of Fowey in Cornwall, which operates its own lights and receives revenue from ships entering the port. I am also president of the United Kingdom Maritime Pilots’ Association, but I should tell the House that both interests are unpaid and there is no financial arrangement of any kind binding me to a particular point of view on behalf of a body outside Parliament. It is worth pointing out that this is not a fatal Motion. It is designed to express regret, and I hope that the debate will flag up the urgent need for the Government to resolve the question of the lights and the funding for lights going to the Irish Republic, which I shall explain. The light dues system works on ships entering UK ports. They pay light dues set by the Government, and this statutory instrument is the latest increase, which I shall come on to. The light dues are used to fund the main navigation aids around the UK coast. They are paid into the General Lighthouse Fund, which in turn funds the three general lighthouse authorities—Trinity House, the Northern Lighthouse Board and the Commissioners of Irish Lights, which provide services to Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. The issue that I want to raise this afternoon is that dues paid by ships entering UK ports contribute some £15 million a year to the maintenance of lights in the Republic, which is rather unfair on ships coming into UK ports. It is not surprising that the Irish lights question goes back some 100 years and that there has been much parliamentary scrutiny of it. I have found some interesting historical comments in the debate on the Merchant Shipping (Mercantile Marine Fund) Bill on 17 March 1898, in which Sir Charles Dilke, MP for Gloucester and the Forest of Dean, criticised both the Northern Lights Commissioners and the Commissioners of Irish Lights. He said: ""I can remember in this House frequent occasions on which the conduct of the Northern Lights Commissioners has been brought before the House and overhauled by it; but I am bound to say that a more disgraceful exhibition than that presented by these accounts I have never heard in the course of my membership. The Irish Board is admittedly even worse than the Scotch … The administration of the Irish Board is a disgrace to the United Kingdom".—[Official Report, Commons, 17/3/1898; col. 171.]" In the same debate, Mr J Bryce, MP for Aberdeen, South, reserved his criticisms for the Commissioners of Irish Lights. He said: ""I am bound to say that"—" the Irish Lights Board— ""has given much less satisfaction than the other two Boards, and I do not think anybody can come forward here and defend the constitution of the Irish Board".—[Official Report, Commons, 17/3/1898; col. 167.]" Little has changed in 100 years because, 85 years after independence for the Republic, the UK Government in effect control and fund the Irish lights, and no shipping interests that provide funding have any say in how that funding is spent. More recently, other noble Lords and I have been raising this issue in this House for six or seven years. When my noble friend Lady Crawley was the Minister responsible for this, I tabled a Question asking why the British Government had not made more progress in their negotiations with the Irish Government. Her reply was, "They’re not very keen to negotiate". My response was, "Well, they wouldn’t be, would they?". On 10 June, the Shipping Minister, my honourable friend Paul Clark MP, announced that for 2009-10, with effect from 1 July this year, UK light dues would rise by 11 per cent for all ships and 43 per cent for ferries and short sea operators. The increase in light dues in 2010-11 is pretty horrifying. For a typical 4,000 TEU container vessel on the North Atlantic trade routes making 10 trips to the US and back a year, the increase works out at 80 per cent. The proposal to increase light dues in this way, apart from being the highest for two decades, is unacceptable given the current economic downturn and the very serious financial trouble that the shipping industry is in. The shipping industry tries to reduce its costs all the time and remain competitive, and there is a real threat that many companies will try as much as possible to avoid calling at UK ports and to divert ships to the continent or elsewhere, which will have a serious effect on our economy in the long term. The key issue is that the increases are being proposed to make good a £20 million forecast deficit in the general lighthouse fund, but the bulk of the deficit would be removed if the Republic of Ireland was asked to meet the full cost of the provision of its aids to navigation, which is about £15 million. If the Government of Ireland took responsibility for financing the maintenance of lights around their coast, the increase in light dues to ships coming into UK ports would be virtually zero. More than five years ago, in January 2004, Alistair Darling, who was then the Secretary of State for Transport, committed the Government in their response to the Transport Committee’s report on ports to stop this subsidy to the Republic. This was reinforced on 26 March this year when the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State acknowledged his department’s failure to deliver and made it his personal and departmental obligation to find a solution. Sadly, that personal obligation disappeared three months later in a reshuffle. Interestingly, my noble friend Lord Adonis, who is now the Secretary of State for Transport, confirmed in a Written Answer on 12 January that there was no legal obligation on the UK to fund the maintenance of Irish Lights. Indeed, a good precedent can be found in the Department of Health which without consultation ceased funding to provide healthcare for Irish pensioners through a similar arrangement made between the two Governments in 1971, to the tune of about €600 million. I am not suggesting that navigation aids are not vital to shipping, of course they are, and no one would want to see any problem about that. But I believe that the subsidy from the British Government to the Irish Government should cease and the Irish Government should be responsible for the maintenance of their own lights, just like the French, German, Dutch and all other Governments. I was in Dublin last week and I talked to a number of port operators and shipping line representatives. I mentioned the issue of the subsidy of Irish Lights and the general response was, "We’ve had it good for 85 years, so why should we stop now?", and they were rubbing their hands. I have some sympathy with that. The Government recently commissioned yet more studies to consider efficiency, management and so on from the General Lighthouse Authorities, but the fact remains that a cut in what I call the Irish subsidy would mean that efficiency could be looked at taking a bit more time and with a bit more vigour than has been the case up to now. The increase is a disaster for UK shipping and it is unnecessary. I would also say that it is anti-competitive in that ships going into Irish ports pay lower dues because of the subsidy they gain from ships coming into UK ports. In conclusion, when my noble friend responds, can he give me an assurance that at the end of this financial year the subsidy for Irish Lights will be finished completely? It is quite possible to do and it would make all the shipping lines happy. They could then turn to the important things in life—ensuring that everything is done in the most cost-effective way so that they can deliver what their customers want. I beg to move.