Clause 1 - Power to give effect to revisions of the international arrangements relating to compensation for oil pollution from ships
Merchant Shipping (Pollution) Bill [Lords]
10:30 am
Julian Brazier (Shadow Minister, Transport; Canterbury, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 2, in clause 1, page 2, line 10, after ‘way’, insert
‘which shall require proof of intent or proof of reckless conduct.’.
Clause 1(4)(d), the context of amendment No. 2, will
“create summary offences or offences triable either way (but subject to the limitation that the Order may not authorise the imposition, on conviction on indictment, of a term of imprisonment exceeding two years)”.
We are concerned that the breadth of the clause will allow Ministers to implement directive 2005/35/EEC on the basis of a statutory instrument alone. That will criminalise the accidental discharge of oil.
On Second Reading, I mentioned concerns raised with us by a number of outside bodies about the idea of criminalising merchant seamen when there was no intent or even reckless disregard. Since then, further representations have been made. A joint press release issued by Lloyd’s Register of Shipping, the International Salvage Union, the Greek Shipping Cooperation Committee and the International Association of Independent Tanker Owners, or Intertanko, said that
“the Directive already has had a detrimental effect on the morale of seamen, and ... this will have adverse implications for the retention and recruitment of high quality crews.”
Hans van Rooij, president of the International Salvage Union, has also made the point that salvage companies are the last line of defence against catastrophic pollution: if a directive introduces the serious negligence concept, salvors will have no choice but to seek immunity before intervening in the waters of EU states, with their reputation for aggressive behaviour in maritime accident situations. I do not have to underline the point that if salvage crews become reluctant to intervene, a bad pollution situation might get rapidly worse, compounding the problem.
On Second Reading, I paid tribute to the promotion, by the tonnage tax that the Government have introduced, of a recovery in the tonnage of our merchant shipping. However, the fact remains that no significant recovery has taken place in the merchant navy’s officers and crews, serving under the British flag. The numbers have hardly changed. I have given two relevant examples, but there is other verbal testimony about this: the measure will have a real effect on people’s willingness to join the merchant navy and serve on vessels.
Effectively, under the provision, somebody who is held to be negligent in respect of an oil discharge can be convicted. Ministers will have the power to introduce a statutory instrument, with the small amount of scrutiny involved in that, which could result in seafarers being sent to prison for up to two years for an accident involving oil, even when there was not reckless disregard, let alone intent. The distinction, of course, is that reckless disregard means behaving sufficiently stupidly—for example, getting drunk on watch—that it must be obvious to the person concerned that there is a risk to safety or, in the case that we are considering, a risk of pollution.
In my view, that is not something that anyone in the shipping world will welcome, and I do not believe for a moment that it will mean less pollution. In producing the relevant directives, the EU’s approach has perhaps been coloured by the fact that there was first a French and then a Spanish Commissioner. They were from the two countries that have had the worst experience of oil pollution. I do not mean that in a petty “little Englander” sense, but there is a real worry that, in their desperation to prevent another accident of that sort, they have lost the plot.
The way to prevent oil pollution is to have vessels properly operated by good, well-trained seafarers. Discouraging good-quality people from joining the seafaring profession and allowing, as will inevitably happen, more oil to be handled by crews from countries that may operate under flags without proper insurance—the Minister’s letter acknowledged that we have no way of checking, and of course we do not, that a vessel transiting our waters has proper insurance—is not the way to promote safety on vessels or to prevent pollution.
It appears that, in any case, such measures and the EU’s demands conflict with the international convention for the prevention of pollution from ships, known as the MARPOL convention, which explicitly exempts accidental discharges. The provision will put us in an absurd conflict with our international obligations.
This is a modest little amendment. All it would do is restrict the powers of the Minister to make regulations so that they applied only to cases involving either intent or reckless disregard. Given that he made some sympathetic noises on Second Reading, I hope he feels able to accept it.