Merchant Shipping (Pollution) Bill [Lords]

I shall address some of the specific issues that were raised by various Members. I agree with the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) about the training of ships’ officers and the need for high international standards of training and competence. That important requirement bears directly on the threat to our coastline. We try to work within the International Maritime Organisation to raise the standards of shipping generally. Indeed, one of the things that we must do to raise standards and to reduce the threat of pollution to our coastline is to show leadership within that organisation. That goes back to the issue raised by the hon. Member for Canterbury and by other hon. Members. To prevent pollution, we are showing such leadership in a number of areas. For example, within the IMO, we have started to move forward on the introduction of e-navigation. We are trying to create an international standard whereby all ships on the high seas will work with electronic navigation systems to the same standard. Those systems will work together and allow ships to be recognised from the shore and to recognise one another while at sea, to avoid collisions and groundings. There is a great deal of support for that work within the IMO, and I hope that we can reach agreement on a standard for e-navigation. We have also shown strong leadership within the IMO’s flag state audit scheme under which a flag state agrees to have the quality of its fleet audited. I am proud to say that we were the first state to support the scheme and to commit the UK fleet to being audited. Also, we were the first state to promise that, once that audit is complete and we are ready to respond to it, we will make it public. That demonstrates our strong leadership in terms of raising standards. A number of other states have responded to our lead by saying that not only will they have their fleets audited, but that they will consider making the audits public. By adopting such a positive approach, we are doing what we can to raise international standards.