Marine Navigation Aids Bill [HL]

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity that the Second Reading of my noble friend’s Bill gives us to discuss this important issue. Aids to navigation may seem rather esoteric to many people, but that belies their importance to the safety of the mariner and the security of the marine environment. I have an interest in this issue: I was born and brought up in the lighthouse service in Scotland, and I served as a lighthouse keeper for a few years in my younger days. My noble friend’s Bill seeks to abolish the Trinity House lighthouse service and the Northern Lighthouse Board and to replace them with a two-tier structure: a new commission and a new regulator. The Bill will also cut the Republic of Ireland out of the present structure, which, in my submission, works extremely well. There is no doubt that shipowners have been campaigning very loudly about the recent rises in light dues. That is perhaps understandable in the current economic climate, but the matter has to be seen in the correct context. Due to the efficiencies of the three GLAs in the use of new technology, automation and the reduction in bases and in the fleet of lighthouse tenders, a substantial saving has accrued to shipowners in recent times. Until last year, the most recent increase in light dues was in 1993. Dues were cut in 1997, 2002, 2004 and 2006. As I understand it, light dues are about 32 per cent lower in real terms today when compared with 1993. Like pension funds holidays taken by employers when times were good, a day of reckoning always arrives. Shipping has enjoyed a light dues holiday, but the consequence is that the deficit in the GLA fund is something like £21 million, and that cannot go on without affecting the quality of the service provided and therefore compromising the safety of life at sea. Of course, shipowners are hard-nosed business people—it is a tough and competitive business—but they have been complaining about light dues for as long as I can remember. It has not arisen as a consequence of the present difficult times. It was the case when I was in the lighthouse service in the 1960s. Lobbying on the merger of GLAs has probably been around for much of the history of the three lighthouse authorities. Not so long ago, a shipping representative complained rather bitterly to me about the fact that Her Royal Highness, the Princess Royal, had become a patron of the Northern Lighthouse Board because he saw it as yet another impediment to lobbying for the GLA merger. I know that my noble friend Lord Berkeley has no interest whatever in compromising the provision and effectiveness of aids to navigation. He is seeking economies of scale by reorganisation. I have been around the block on reorganisations a few times. As well as being merchant service officers and working in the lighthouse service, another occupation frequently found in my family is nursing. In my subsequent career as a nurse and as a representative of the profession in a nurses’ trade union, I saw too many reorganisations. I think there have been something like 19 in the National Health Service in the past 40 years. Most of them were allegedly designed to provide efficiencies and synergies. Not every aspect of them was wrong, of course. However, almost all those changes and reorganisations invariably brought about huge redundancy costs, a consequent loss of experience among senior people and demoralisation among staff. An inevitable sequela was an increase in management costs and support staff. I suspect we might well have the same outcome if this Bill were enacted, although I am sure that is not my noble friend’s intention. The existing structure of GLAs provides for each part of the UK and Irish coasts to be covered by people who have unique knowledge of their own coasts which, as the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, said, are the most dangerous in the world. That knowledge must not be lost. Something like 80 per cent of the staff in the GLAs are involved in design, engineering and marine services. Many members of staff would be lost in any new structure where there is relocation to a new HQ, which would almost certainly be in England. As reorganisation in any business shows, many members of staff are not in a position to relocate. The consequences could be quite damaging to the safety of navigation. New premises would be required for a new two-tier structure, training and recruitment issues would follow and it is highly unlikely that the staffing requirements of the new commission and the new regulatory office would show that fewer staff would be required. There would be a reduction in some of the most senior posts, but that would be outweighed by redundancy costs and the need for more support staff to cover a much larger area. Does the Minister have any figures on the cost of the staff at the Department for Transport who are devoted to GLAs? Has any comparative estimate been made of the staffing costs for the proposed new regulatory body? There are political issues to consider. I am not sure that those of us who believe in a United Kingdom should give gifts to the Scottish National Party, such as proposing the abolition of the Northern Lighthouse Board. I am not approaching this from nostalgia or from any nationalistic point of view, but I suspect that many Scots would find it difficult to relate to, for example, the responsibility for Sule Skerry Lighthouse, which is 40 miles north of the Scottish mainland and the same distance west of the Orkneys, to be in Harwich, Tower Hill or somewhere else in the south of England. Neither do I think disentangling the Trinity House lighthouse service from the rest of Trinity House will be as simple a matter as my noble friend Lord Berkeley suggests. As for the politics of the Irish issue, as has already been said, this morning, of all mornings, when delicate manoeuvrings on devolution appear to be coming to fruition, is not a good time to propose abolishing a successful cross-border body. I am on record in this House as supporting a more equitable funding arrangement for the provision of the Irish lighthouse service, but we also have to recognise the long history. Britain had the largest merchant fleet in the world at the time of Irish independence, and the Irish Free State had almost nothing by comparison. The Dáil—the Parliament of the Irish Free State—perhaps understandably told the Brits that if they wanted to protect their merchant shipping, they could jolly well pay for it. So, there was never a division and the CIL had been a successful cross-border body for three-quarters of a century before the Belfast agreement came into being, and it seems nonsense now to tear it up. We cannot ignore the Belfast agreement because the CIL features in it as an excellent example of all-Ireland co-operation. We need to have seamless provision in the waters of the geographic British Isles and that co-operation should continue. I have seen the ILV Granuaile—the Irish lighthouse tender—operating in Scottish waters, and that is the way it should be, rather than creating a situation where we may need additional staffing costs to cover Northern Ireland, in addition to new ship-time costs and helicopter-time costs and, as I understand it, two new DGPS stations. I was disappointed that the Government did not find time in their legislative programme for the draft Marine Navigation Bill. That draft Bill had the support of the three GLAs and would not have been contentious. It would have allowed more opportunities for commercial earnings, which would defray the costs to the shipping industry. My noble friend Lord Berkeley questioned whether the lighthouse boards are the best people to make spending decisions. The GLAs do not work in a vacuum. They work closely with the shipping industry to ensure safety. When lighthouses and other aids to navigation are no longer necessary, they are decommissioned. To give but one of many examples, Killantringan lighthouse, the light station where I was born, was discontinued a little over two years ago. On the other hand, in consultation with maritime interests, the original Monach lighthouse, which had been unlit since early in the Second World War, was brought back into commission 18 months ago. Some shipping lobbyists would like to go further. Once they get the merger of GLAs, they would like to get rid of many traditional aids to navigation and many lighthouses. That day may come in the longer term but for the present there is that increasing reliance on GPS, electronic charts and other electrical and radio-generated aids to navigation. However, all these systems can fail. As the cruise master of a cruise vessel pointed out to me not long ago, fewer and fewer officers of the watch on far too many vessels can no longer deal with horizontal and vertical sextant angles, rising and dipping distances or a running fix. He found that rather worrying. For him, as for me, lighthouses are still a vital failsafe. We await the outcome of the WS Atkins review, which has been commissioned by the Government. That review will deal with all the issues being debated today, including light dues and UK-Irish co-operation. We should know the outcome of that report shortly. No doubt the Minister will let us know when it is due to be published. We will undoubtedly then have further debates so that we can shed even more light on this matter.