My Lords, is it my impression that the Minister is not here to reply to his letter and my debate in Committee about the safety of passengers and seafarers on vessels? This is a clause about safety on ships and inquiries, and I will seek to show that the “Marchioness” disaster was due to the negligence of the Department of Transport in dealing with that sad loss of 51 people. I mean no insult to the noble Baroness who will be replying, but I hope that I can record my argument, even given the lateness of the hour. The Minister then might, when he wakes up, read what has been said today because presumably there will be another opportunity to look at it when the Bill comes back at Third Reading.
My objection is a strong one relating to safety—this is not about parking, cars or whatever else, it is about safety on our seas and, in particular, on that river outside, the River Thames. The current proposal suggests that any rehearing into the loss of a ship, which may have occurred years ago, will now be at the discretion of the Minister and not be a duty. We are replacing a department’s duty and obligation to hold a hearing into the loss of a ship with a discretion. Evidence shows that discretion is not the best way if you want to get the best out of an inquiry.
Other ships have been lost and taken a long time to be found, such as the “Derbyshire”, which I mentioned in Committee, the fishing trawler “Gaul” and the “Marchioness”. Each time, particularly with the “Marchioness”, the Government refused to have an inquiry. It was normal practice and, indeed, the duty at the time when the “Marchioness” went down to hold a public inquiry as to the causes. So that we are in no doubt about it, all I am saying has been confirmed by the Thames Safety Inquiry report by Lord Justice Clarke. I should know, because when I became the Secretary of State I appointed him to meet the demands of the relatives who died on the vessel in the Thames that there should be a proper public inquiry. He spells out the reason for a public inquiry in the report, referring in turn to the report into the “Herald of Free Enterprise”:
“In every formal investigation it is of great importance that members of the public should feel confident that a searching investigation has been held, that nothing has been swept under the carpet and that no punches have been pulled”.
That is precisely what happened with the inquiry set up by the Department of Transport, headed at that time by Mr Cecil Parkinson. The ship went down and the normal cry came out for an inquiry, as had happened in a number of other cases. However, the Government made the decision that there would not be a full public inquiry or examination of the facts. They chose to use the maritime investigation board, which is under an obligation in law to investigate immediately the loss of a ship and then to report and act. It does not examine the circumstances of the loss. The Government insisted that it should be this maritime body that investigated, and it was the only inquiry that they implemented. What I find difficult about that is that the Government’s argument at the time was, “Look, we have the maritime inquiry; we cannot have a public inquiry because that might interfere with any public prosecutions or criminal actions that may be undertaken”. However, that does not fit with what happened with “Piper Alpha” or with other ships that went down, where they immediately set up a public inquiry and made clear that that did not matter. It was the same with the King’s Cross fire—the same department, almost in the same period, said, “We are having the inquiry, and are not stopping it simply because of any criminal investigations”. So I then think, “Why is the department doing it in certain circumstances but not in this one?”. To be truthful, it was in the process of changing the regulations for inquiries, but the duty that was imposed on the department still existed when the “Marchioness” went down and 51 people died.
The first question must be: why did the department not use the powers that were there and the duty on it to investigate and hold a public inquiry? That was all people were asking for. The department refused, constantly. It refused for 10 years to have a public inquiry. That started right at the beginning, which I will come to in a few minutes. So I ordered an inquiry.
Ministers, including the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, wrote to me after Committee—this is why I am particularly annoyed—protesting that I had said that they had hidden the truth about the loss of a vessel. That is a serious charge, so I invited them and the Secretary of State, who wrote to me as well, to read the Lord Justice Clarke report and come and discuss it here in the Lords when we debate these issues. I am a bit surprised that they did not turn up. I have a feeling—I do not know him too well—that he sat on that Bench for a few minutes and then presumably shot home to have a little sleep and not attend this debate. Perhaps he was not here, perhaps it was not him; it did look like him—another good-looking fella like the guy at the end there. The point is, he is not here for the debate. My accusation is a serious one and everything I say is backed up by Lord Justice Clarke’s safety inquiry. He started his inquiry wondering why there had not been an inquiry under the previous Administration. There is a chapter called, “Should a Public Inquiry Have Been Ordered?”, which gave me the quote I have just read. Another chapter asks, “Was This a Suitable Case for a Public Inquiry?”, and he said it certainly was: 51 people died; King’s Cross was less than that and they had a public inquiry. Lord Justice Clarke came to the conclusion that there should have been
inquiry, there was good reason to have an inquiry, and the report contains a chapter called, “Why Was a Public Inquiry Not Held?”. That is the question.
At the heart of this debate is the argument of discretion. The department exercised discretion—in this case without carrying out the duty; it was to change some months later but it did not do the inquiry—so Lord Justice Clarke looked at the reasons given by the department. All the evidence was given and he looked at the papers. He was told by the legal department that you could not have an inquiry. That is exactly what the civil servants said to me when I came in in 1997, and it is referred to in this report. I held the inquiry. I did not take the advice of the department. I made a decision. I said it was the duty to do this. What happened then? He said that the department took the view that the criminal inquiry prevented it from having an inquiry. Lord Justice Clarke said that it did not. He examined it all in detail and said that it did not make any difference. There was a duty on the department to have an inquiry. It had been done before.
That is critical because the clause that I am seeking to remove is about not every vessel but those vessels that are found a number of years later, such as the “Derbyshire” and the “Gaul”. The amendment says if you apply to have a hearing into the circumstances—which we did for the “Derbyshire” and the “Gaul” but not for the “Marchioness”—you have to have the inquiry. But here the department chose not to recognise its obligation and duty. The amendment says I am changing the duty for a second hearing on the loss of a vessel to discretion.
I have to say to myself: does that make it better or worse? Does it make it easier, as deregulation is claimed to do, or does it mean you save money in case somebody else calls for an inquiry—as the families could—and the Secretary of State can say, “It’s my discretion, I will not do it”? But if you look at the circumstances of a loss, it is not only the safety, it is about the relatives who are left grieving and want to know what happened. The reality was, as Lord Justice Clarke showed, that compared to the maritime investigation, which took two years to be published when it should have been done immediately and made few recommendations, this inquiry looked at all the same circumstances and made 70 recommendations to improve safety on the River Thames. It said that the excuse of criminal law intervention was totally wrong and indeed had not been observed by the department before.
The coroner’s laws were reformed. It was discovered in the case of the “Marchioness” that the coroner had ordered that the hands and feet be cut off and therefore would not show the people the bodies. When the relatives said, “Can we see the bodies?”, he would not let them see them because he felt they would be upset. Well, I suppose they would be upset, but all those laws were changed by the Lord Justice and many others.
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This Bill is seeking to say that it will no longer be a duty on the Minister to have a rehearing but that it will be at his discretion. When discretion applies in departments—I had my share of it—all sorts of pressures are put on by departments. It was the legal department which said to me, “Mr Prescott, you can’t do it”.
I went to the Lord Chancellor, a good legal adviser, who soon told me, “Of course, you can have it”, so I did impose the inquiry. There was one very good reason why the department did not want me to have it and it is in this report: the department was found to be negligent. When the vessel went down, I was in opposition at the time and I said, “There must be negligence in the department”, because it was a cruiser, a launch, that had been a dance deck. When the “Bowbelle” came alongside and collided with it, the captain could not see, because, since they had built a dance deck, he could not see from the forward bridge that something was coming up because they were all dancing. The department had agreed to the change in the status of the vessel and I had to apologise in the House of Commons for the department’s failure to carry out its job—the report mentioned other authorities as well.
What the inquiry shows you about the truth and the evidence is far different from what you were told by the maritime investigation branch. As the Lord Justice asked, why did the department not do that? I know that the relatives were very upset, largely because it took a long time, and they advocated an inquiry for 10 years until I came along and gave them one, as I promised I would. The report shows that, when you compare what is done by the department with what is done by a public inquiry conducted by a judge, you get a far different examination. I suggest that the maritime investigation was more about sweeping it under the carpet, whereas the public interest and the relatives required an inquiry. What the Bill is proposing is a return to that very system. By the way, what the inquiry also found out was that the skipper of the “Bowbelle” had had a few drinks and the look-out had had a few drinks, but it was not admitted at the time, particularly to the maritime people, so the ship collided and they were found to be negligent.
Relatives who had been waiting 10 years for an inquiry were denied time and again. Parkinson denied it; every Secretary of State denied it—even the present Secretary of State, McLoughlin, who was then a junior Minister, denied it and said that everything had been done properly by the maritime people. Members here in the Lords, who have to do debates from time to time, gave exactly the same story as the department had fed out.
The Government are proposing to change the legislation to prevent it being a duty on the Secretary of State and to leave it to their discretion. With discretion, Ministers come under awful pressure, and in the Department for Transport they are not there for very long—I must have been the longest in the Department for Transport. Basically, I fear that the truth is going to be hidden when relatives are entitled to know the full truth. You will not get the truth simply from a maritime investigatory body—that can find out the facts about the ship—but if you want to know the circumstances, why the vessel went down, that is a matter for a proper public inquiry. What the Government are doing here is making it possible to continue the same process, which is totally unacceptable.
The relatives said to me, and I found it difficult to answer against them, that the Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, on the very next day, had Mr Portillo
and other Ministers into her room to discuss it. Of course, the Prime Minister would be concerned at the loss of a vessel—it was of great public concern—but we now know from the inquiry that she agreed with the Department for Transport not to have a public inquiry and for Ministers just to back the view that the maritime board was right. I know that they said it was Blue Circle’s offence—that was the owner of the ship—and it was never really taken to court and, of course, it contributes to Tory Party funds. People think like that sometimes. They could be quite wrong. But I would certainly have liked to hear tonight from the Minister some reply to some of these things. He said that he was coming—I wrote to him and we had an exchange of letters. I assumed that he might be here. I am hoping now that he might just read what we have said today. I entered this debate to have an exchange, like most others do here. “Oh, we’ll have an amendment. Then we’ll get persuaded to withdraw it”—exactly as I will do tonight. But I was hoping to get a debate. That is what a second debate is about. That is why we have moved from those committees on to the Floor: so that we can discuss it.