Merchant Shipping (Pollution) Bill [Lords]

I also welcome the opportunity to debate this short Bill and wish to echo the Minister’s comments about Lord Donaldson. I also welcome the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) to his first outing on the subject of merchant shipping. I do not anticipate that the Bill will detain the House until late this evening because it commands all-party support. It will not need any Punch and Judy politics—although I was interested to note that Punch and Judy were back at Prime Minister’s questions earlier. In the other place, the Bill was dispatched in just over an hour and a half. Peers received no approaches from lobbyists and suggested that the Bill was uncontroversial. I concur with that assessment and do not wish to delay matters and leave the UK vulnerable in the way that the Minister spelled out in his opening remarks. The main purpose of the Bill is to allow the UK to implement two important international treaties. The first would greatly improve compensation for oil spills and the second would introduce measures to reduce air pollution from ships. A further minor purpose is a useful clarification of the claim period during which compensation claims can be made. I come now to the supplementary fund protocol. The present regime, the liability convention, now includes 98 member states, although at the time of the debate in June 2005 it had 93 signatories. The present regime provides for an overall limit of £168 million of compensation. At the time of the debate last June, it was £160 million or £162 million. The present figure, £168 million, is compensation paid for by ship owners and oil importers. In the past 25 years, the regime has provided compensation in more than 130 oil pollution incidents. The Bill makes provision for the UK to implement the supplementary fund protocol and make available an additional £440 million for compensation in the event of a major oil spill from a tanker. The fund was developed to provide additional compensation for victims of oil pollution in states that choose to ratify the protocol and are content for their oil industries to make the financial contributions. It was helpful of the Minister to clarify the point raised by the hon. Member for Canterbury and confirm that the UK, if it is affected by an oil spill involving a vessel that is not covered, will still be able to access the full funding available in the supplementary fund. The total amount, taking into account the existing fund and the supplementary fund, will be £600 million-plus. The supplementary fund entered into force in March last year and has so far been ratified by 15 states. By June 2005, it had been ratified by only 10—Japan and nine states in Europe—and that underlines the Minister’s legitimate concerns that the UK should join the club. Membership is now growing rapidly and we support the Government in their desire to ensure that the UK has the additional financial protection that the supplementary fund can provide. In the other place, Baroness Crawley described the fund as follows:"““The supplementary fund should ensure that in future the regime bears the full cost. The shipping and oil industries will pay. That is in line with the ‘polluter pays’ principle to which the UK fully subscribes.””—[Official Report, House of Lords, 14 June 2005; Vol. 672, c. 1149.]" My party also subscribes to that principle. The Bill will also ensure that the costs of funding compensation are shared by major oil importers internationally, rather than falling on national budgets. The Bill will also allow the UK to join any future regime governing oil pollution compensation. I wish to return briefly to the polluter pays principle. I intervened on the Minister on the subject of the Prestige and the fact that the estimate of the damage is more than £700 million, whereas the supplementary fund, together with the original fund, will cover only just over £600 million. What is the thinking behind setting up a fund that does not have sufficient funds to cover an incident that has already taken place? That is rather illogical, and one would have expected agreement to be reached that the fund would have in it at least as much as would be required to cover such an incident. I hope that the Minister will be able to clarify the thinking on that when he winds up. Air pollution from ships is not something to be sniffed at—if hon. Members will pardon the pun. Emissions from shipping are set to be larger than emissions from all UK land-based sources by 2020, according to a report from the European Parliament’s Environment Committee. We therefore support the measures that allow the UK to implement annexe VI of the international convention on the prevention of pollution from ships, commonly known as the MARPOL convention. I intervened on the Minister on that point and, when he sums up, I hope that he will be able to give more detail on what the implementation of MARPOL will mean in terms of the actions that UK port authorities can take when vessels dock in UK ports. Does the UK have powers to board ships to check whether they have the insurance required under the liability convention, as the Minister implied? If a dirty-looking steamer came over the horizon, would the UK have powers to board that vessel to see whether it complied—