Clause 94 - Consents for generating stations offshore
Energy Bill [Lords]
9:45 am
Mr Stephen Timms (Minister of State (e-Commerce & Competitiveness), Department of Trade and Industry; East Ham, Labour)
The consent applications are made to the Department of Trade and Industry; the Secretary of State will therefore issue the consent.
With regard to the new clause, site selection is important in terms of minimising the risk of collision. The consent process provided for under the Coast Protection Act deals with that. Safety zones around installations are a further aid to safety, although the automatic creation of safety zones around every installation would not be a good idea. However, it is certainly right to consider whether a safety zone is needed.
In response to the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Dr. Turner), I referred to marking safety zones around structures on Admiralty charts. The general lighthouse authorities, on behalf of the Secretary of State, direct developers on the safe marking of renewable energy installations, ranging from painting and marking individual wind turbines to using marker buoys around the site where appropriate, and using other markers such as lanterns,
fog detectors, foghorns and radar reflectors. Some of those measures have already been put in place for the North Hoyle and Scroby Sands offshore wind farms.
On the emergency procedures that wind farm operators should follow in the event of a vessel colliding with a structure or a major pollution incident, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency requires developers to adopt an active safety management system. A pollution incident, such as an oil spillage following a collision, would be dealt with under the national contingency plan, which is administered by the MCA. If a vessel were to sink in water depths that constituted a danger to surface navigation, it would be the responsibility of the general lighthouse authorities to ensure that the danger was appropriately marked.
We will need a flexible process in which developers and operators work under the general direction of the general lighthouse authorities, the MCA and the search and rescue services to devise procedures and markings appropriate to each installation. Those arrangements would need to be subject to periodic review and to evolve in the light of experience and new information over time.
Amendment No. 164 raises the matter of consultation. I agree with the hon. Member for Vale of York that, were the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to assess the cumulative effects on the safety of navigation of installations and safety zones around them, it would be essential for there to be consultation with both the Secretary of State for Transport and the MCA. I hope that putting that assurance on the record in Hansard will be helpful.
It is not appropriate to include in the Bill a requirement for one Secretary of State to consult with another, because legally—and practically—they are indivisible and act collectively. The reference to the Secretary of State covers all Secretaries of State. Moreover, the MCA is an executive agency of the Department for Transport, which exercises the functions of the Secretary of State for Transport. So again, legally, no separate reference to it is necessary.
An additional point is that, in Scotland, the functions of assessing the effects of installations are devolved to Scottish Ministers, so the reference to the Secretary of State would not be right.
We have had much discussion about clauses 100 and 101. As I said in an earlier intervention, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State gave an undertaking on Second Reading that we would retain the principles enshrined in the clause, but would want to introduce amendments to make it workable. I am not in a position to table such amendments for the Committee's consideration. I would have liked to have done so, but the work involved in getting them right has made it impossible and I apologise for that. We will table them on Report, but, contrary to what the hon. Member for Vale of York thought I would say, I ask the Committee to retain the current wording of clause 100.