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
Stephen Ladyman (Minister of State, Department for Transport; South Thanet, Labour)
I am unable to accept the amendment, but I understand the hon. Gentleman’s underlying concerns. First, I also acknowledge that although tonnage tax has been a huge success, it has not yet brought the benefits of increased UK employment at sea that I expected. I intend to do something about that and am working closely with the Chamber of Shipping, unions, shipowners and so on to find ways to increase the number of people employed on British ships.
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right in that if we are working across the industry, in all the different sectors, to increase the number of British people employed at sea, and at the same time introducing unfair penalties or criminalising people for acts that are not deliberate or reckless, we will put people off going into seafaring. If that happens, at the end of a generation we will find that all our onshore maritime industries, which are worth many billions of pounds to the British economy, no longer have the people with the necessary experience of sea life, and we will lose those industries as well. We will lose not only jobs at sea, but, ultimately, an incredibly valuable sector of British industry.
I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman’s theme, although I disagree with him on some points. The Bill is fundamentally about compensation arrangements, so any offence it creates must also relate to compensation arrangements. I can guarantee that our intention is not to introduce any offence that penalises seafarers in the way he has described.
The case involving Intertanko, which the hon. Gentleman referred to, relates to directive 2005/35/EC, which requires member states to put in place sanctions against the discharge of oil. In other words, the directive deals with people who release oil into the environment, and sanctions to prevent them from doing that. The Bill is about compensation arrangements, so offences of the sort to which he refers fall outside the scope of the Bill.
When that directive was being negotiated, we made our views clear, and our constant policy was, as with all European Union legislation with respect to maritime affairs, to ensure that legislation is made at international, rather than EU, level. Any EU legislation that we must have should be entirely compatible with international legislation. That was our position on the directive, which has been agreed, and we are in the process of transposing it to UK law. However, the directive deals with different circumstances from the ones dealt with in the Bill, which is purely about compensation arrangements.