Merchant Shipping Pollution Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 1:"Page 1, line 10, after ““Council”” insert ““at the earliest opportunity””" The noble Lord said: First, let me take this opportunity to say what a pleasure it is to discuss this small but crucially important Bill. Indeed, let me add what a pleasure it is to scrutinise this Bill in the company of the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, after our excellent Second Reading debate. My amendments today seek to clarify the Bill rather than to oppose it. As I said previously, we are happy to support any measures that are designed to tackle horrific environmental, social and economic effects of marine pollution. However, I believe that there are just one or two areas that we wish to probe. I hope that the noble Baroness will give us satisfactory answers on those. I turn to our first amendment. This is a simple probing amendment that is designed to try to elicit from the Minister precise details of the time frame for the passage and implementation of the Bill. We are told in the Explanatory Notes that the protocol will come into force three months after the date on which the United Kingdom ratifies it. However, before we reach that stage the Bill itself has to be passed and is, indeed, constructed by an Order in Council. Therefore, although the intent is there to implement the legislation in a short time frame, it is dependent on forces outside the control of Parliament. My Amendment No. 3 will probe further the issue of an Order in Council so I shall reserve my comments until that stage. I am simply trying to understand the process that the Bill must go through prior to being ratified. Far from my trying to influence Her Majesty’s workload, and time frame of when she should or should not make a particular Order in Council, I should be grateful if the Minister would explain whether this is likely to be a lengthy process or is it something that could effectively happen overnight without any undue delay or hindrance? I am sure that the Minister will be able to shed some light on this particular concern and assure us that there will not be any undue hindrance in passing this important piece of legislation. I beg to move.