Marine Navigation Aids Bill [HL]

My Lords, I will make a few brief comments if only because I am recovering from a heavy cold and I am not certain how long my voice will last. I declare a non-financial interest as an Elder Brother of Trinity House. One has to admire the tenacity of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, who continues to bring his question before us at every opportunity. He mentioned that his timing might be a little awry at the moment. Obviously, it was the usual channels’ decision as to when his Bill would get a Second Reading, but the timing is unfortunate. As has been mentioned, there is yet another review going on into the General Lighthouse Authorities—the Atkins review—one of a number over the past few years, and that is due to report next month. Although this gives us an opportunity to discuss the whole question of light dues once again, we might be wasting our time because nothing will happen until the Government have seen the results of that review. The noble Lord admits that he does not expect his Bill to make much further progress and we will have to see. But it is probably unlikely. The Irish question has been referred to several times. It is really the fly in the ointment and the one thing that really annoys the ship owners. As has already been hinted at by the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, this new arrangement is under an international treaty. It is not as easy as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, suggests to walk away from international treaties. These things require careful consideration. The other problem, as we all know, is that the majority of light dues are paid by ships visiting English ports—something like 87 per cent. Scotland and Ireland would find great difficulty if they had to pay for their own navigation aids. Ireland gets comparatively few ships these days and if it was forced to charge realistic light dues, the dues would be extremely high and probably no ship would go to Ireland anyway. There have been several misconceptions with regard to figures—the noble Lord who preceded me mentioned this. This is something that does not come out very often, but ship owners always scream about this huge increase in light dues. Admittedly it is large, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Boyd, said, light dues have not risen since 1993 and were reduced on several occasions since then resulting in a 50 per cent decrease. As has been said, in 2006, there was an opportunity to raise light dues, but it was resisted. That was unfortunate because ship owners at that time were enjoying successful markets and most of them were making large sums of money. An increase then would have been easily absorbed and nobody would even have considered it. However, the shipping industry has taken a huge downturn during the recession and these rises coming through now—one recently and another one due later this year—will hit them harder because they have been going through such lean times. The recovery is starting, if slowly. Certainly, I was looking at figures only yesterday for a large French shipping company. Its revenues on the Asia-Europe run, which is the main trade lane, are certainly beginning to rise and rise more quickly. We hope that difficult times are past and that ship owners soon start making reasonable money again. The noble Lord mentioned charges of thousands of pounds per ship, but within the overall costs of running a ship, they are still remarkably small. There is some conception that these services are provided free in a lot of other places around the world. That is not true. Ours are upfront and visible. It is the user-pays principle, which the Government and the EU champion. In other countries it may be paid by direct taxation or included in general port charges. There is no evidence to suggest that ships are charged more in this country—there is no direct figure available—but it seems that the costs of provision of navigational aids is roughly the same wherever you are. Ship owners are paying wherever they go: it is only because they have a huge bill put in front of them every year that they complain. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, also mentioned ships turning away from this country due to the charges, but I question those figures. Maersk Line, the largest container line in the world, has only recently brought its largest container ships into Felixstowe. Only four or five tankers ever built have been larger than these ships. They are extremely large and carry up to 15,000 20-foot containers. When they were introduced a few years ago, they made two initial visits for promotional purposes into Felixstowe and then the service was run from the north continental ports. The fact that Maersk has now decided to bring the ships into Felixstowe tells me that this great worry about light dues is perhaps not as great as one might imagine. There seems to be an almost insatiable appetite to modernise or, in other words, tear down or destroy institutions that have been around for many hundreds of years and replace them with a new set-up that may well prove to be less efficient, could well cost a great deal more—there was mention from other speakers of possibly up to £50 million more under this Bill—and which could have all sorts of unintended consequences. The three general lighthouse authorities have worked efficiently together to provide seamless provision of aids to navigation in what amounts to 20,000 miles of some of the most dangerous waters in the world. Anything that upsets that balance should sound a warning note. Another example of how these cross-border organisations work is the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. It has worked perfectly satisfactorily in Ireland as well as the rest of the UK for many years. I know that it is a charity funded entirely from donations, but it shows how these organisations can work—as indeed the lighthouse authorities work together well with their Irish partners. I cannot say that I wish this Bill well in any way at all. In fact, I sincerely hope that it has a quiet death, but I have no doubt that the noble Lord will persist. Perhaps we shall look forward to debating this again in a new Parliament. But I have a feeling that the new Government of whatever colour will have their time taken up by far more pressing matters than light dues.