Wreck Removal Convention Bill

I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Stowell for her full response to the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. The noble Lord referred to discussions yesterday, and I am very happy to continue them, not least because they are so interesting, because the noble Lord genuinely seeks a solution to these problems. I understand his very real concerns, and I am delighted to have the opportunity to give a fuller response in Committee. It may be helpful to noble Lords if I say a few words about the memorandum of understanding between the Department for Transport and the GLAs. This will provide guidance and understanding about how the convention would work in practice. The Committee will understand that the development of the MoU is in its early stages, as it will be a while before the convention comes into force. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, will want to keep abreast of developments, and I am sure that I will be able to facilitate that at the appropriate point. The MoU will of course be based on several principles. Importantly, one of these is that one of the objectives of SOSREP giving a direction is to ensure that the authority being directed will benefit from the convention, as explained by my noble friend Lady Stowell. Another principle is that SOSREP should only give a direction when the authority being directed has the capacity to deal with the problem. By that I mean that it already has a ship or a facility that could help resolve the situation. Capacity would not include the capability to engage a salvor or other expensive facility. However, this would be trumped by the foremost principle of allowing the directed person to benefit from the convention, and I stress the word benefit. Thus, a harbour authority would benefit from being directed to remove a properly insured wreck from its domain. It would be inappropriate to put these arrangements on the face of the Bill or into secondary legislation. This is in order to ensure the clarity and certainty that will allow the directed person to benefit from the convention. It may be that a small piece of wreckage has to be dealt with, such as an unidentified shipping container. In this case, it would be impossible to invoke any insurance. How this would be dealt with would be a matter of detail in the MoU, but neither the GLAs nor the harbour and conservancy authorities would be any worse off than they are now as they already deal with these problems within their existing resources. In the case of the GLAs, this is a tiny proportion of their annual turnover, and has been for many years. As I have indicated, the MoU is being worked up by the Department for Transport, within which SOSREP works, and the GLAs. I would expect that the harbour and conservancy authorities would want the benefit of a similar MoU as well. It would be impractical to have tailor-made MoUs with all bodies and I would expect that the relevant trade associations would negotiate a joint MoU in due course. It would be rather odd if any MoU were not based upon principles including the two that I have just outlined. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, may be concerned that the GLAs will increase their capacity in order to meet a new need, perhaps with specialist ships, a point touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Greenway. I doubt that they have any desire to do so, but in any case, this is not something which could be done unilaterally. Regular fleet reviews consider the vessel needs and provision for GLAs every five to 10 years. As part of this process, a full business case has to be considered. The Government would consider any proposal for an increase very closely indeed. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, also referred to a Question for Written Answer tabled by my noble friend Lord Bradshaw, on uninsured ships. Some 12 ships had some deficiencies in their insurance, but noble Lords should remember that some of those deficiencies may well have been technical and could be rectified quickly. Inspections are targeted, and we would expect there to be good intelligence on those ships that are not properly insured, not least because that would be an extremely good indicator of ships that have other serious problems. There is of course the problem of ships not calling at UK ports and our therefore being unable to undertake any port state control—a point made by the noble Lord, Lord MacKenzie of Culkein—but the Bill and the convention would help reduce this problem because it would be more impractical to operate a ship without insurance. I accept that we will not completely eliminate ships running without proper insurance, but, as I say, the Bill and the convention will help reduce this problem.