Clause 1 - Safety directions

Part of Marine Safety Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 3:00 pm on 29 April 2003.

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Photo of Mr David Jamieson Mr David Jamieson Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport 3:00, 29 April 2003

I am always pleased to meet the hon. Gentleman and representatives from his part of the world to discuss the matters that he raises. That is a case in which certain circumstances prevailed, but I do not believe it to be appropriate to go into them now because other actions are taking place.

We can examine particular incidents and see how they could have been handled better, but, had it been a ship carrying a large amount of oil—all ships carry bunker oil, even if they do not actually transport oil—that had been stricken out at sea, there would now have been an opportunity for SOSREP to bring that ship into one of the near ports along that coast to reduce the amount of damage that it would cause.

The hon. Member for St. Ives also asked about the firefighting unit. He may wish to raise that in the context of the debate on the next clause. The SOSREP can issue a direction to a salvor to take action of any kind, including boarding a firefighting unit on to a casualty if that is required. It can require that the casualty move to a safer place.

The hon. Member for Uxbridge rightly raised the point about the speed of action. In such instances, speed is of the essence. I assure him that the coastguard service in the UK is not a nine-to-five service: in modern parlance, it operates 24/7. As soon as there is a casualty, the operation is geared to taking action as rapidly as possible. Since the national plan was implemented, I believe that there have been about 280 incidents, and most of them have been dealt with rapidly.

I think that that has probably covered most of the points that were raised. As I said on Second Reading, the Government welcome the proposals, and I am glad that they are also welcomed by all members of the Committee. Thankfully, the occasions when they will be used will be few and far between. However, the proposals are important because incidents of that type can be major, with catastrophic effects on our coastline and on human, bird and plant life, as we saw in the case of the Prestige.

The clause and the schedule to the Bill also consolidate all the existing provisions to issue directions in a single document and that, too, is welcome. I hope that the Committee will give clause 1 of the Bill a favourable hearing.