My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for providing the opportunity to debate these regulations—or, more correctly, the timing of the regulations and the circumstances in which they have now been made. I thank all noble Lords for their contributions. I will focus on the regulations and matters relating to them and will write with further details, particularly on the excellent points raised by my noble friend Lord Patten, and the very detailed questions from the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and many other noble Lords.
I turn first to the content of the statutory instrument. The Government are absolutely committed to ensuring the safety and welfare of seafarers, which I believe is reflected in the volume of regulations that the department brings to your Lordships’ House. These are but one of a set of such regulations that came into force on 30 June 2021. We know that they increase safety by introducing a requirement for cargo vessels of 24 metres
or more in length and under 500 gross tonnes to fit bilge alarm systems. I will not go into further detail around that, so let us turn to the background to the regulations.
The regulations fulfil the Marine Accident Investigation Branch, or MAIB, recommendation 2009/141. It was raised following the sinking of the grab hopper dredger “Abigail H”, as many noble Lords noted. Many noble Lords also noted that there were no fatalities as a result of this incident, which was, of course, very fortunate. To prevent a less fortunate outcome, these regulations make it mandatory to install the bilge alarm systems that were advised in marine guidance note 425, which was issued in September 2010 in response to the MAIB’s 2009 “Abigail H” incident report.
There was a consultation on these regulations. It was a 10-week public consultation from 2 October to 10 December 2020 via the GOV.UK website. There was a press release announcing the public consultation, which went to marine trade press and industry press. Notice of the consultation was posted on the MCA’s Twitter account. Of course, we cannot force people to respond to a consultation; sometimes they do not for any number of reasons. It may be that the people who run these vessels are very focused on it and therefore do not want to or do not have time to respond to a consultation. But these regulations are not controversial, so it does not surprise me that we did not get a massive response to the consultation.
The regulations improve the safety of seafarers and were long expected. It is worth reinforcing that the guidance to introduce bilge alarms had been in place since 2010. In the pandemic we have done many things to protect public safety by guidance rather than mandating in law, so I do not feel that, given that the guidance was in place for such a long time, getting these regulations in place now was as big an issue as potentially noted by noble Lords today.
But I will comment on the delay, because it is right that I do so. I accept that there has been a delay in implementing this mandatory requirement, but I remind noble Lords that the guidance was out there a very long time ago. The delay in making that guidance mandatory reflects the thorough and complex nature of the process, as well as the wide reach of regulations that the MCA is responsible for, and the need to continually review the priorities of regulatory changes in order to meet our international obligations and domestic safety and environmental obligations. In this case, the potential risk to the 425 vessels and their crews, to which these regulations apply, and the fact that only two similar incidents occurred after this guidance was published, meant that, as priorities changed, including as a result of the UK’s exit from the EU, other regulatory developments took precedence.
Given that the guidance was issued back in 2010, and the industry was advised and consulted on the development of this mandatory guidance, I believe it was reasonable to expect that a good proportion of the 425 vessels referred to would have already had bilge alarm systems fitted prior to the regulations coming into force, although we cannot know that. Although the guidance issued was not mandatory, we expect responsible owners and operators to take guidance
from the MCA very seriously, and that they would look to enhance the safety of their vessels even in the absence of a mandatory obligation.
Further, of the nine incidents to which the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, referred, seven occurred prior to the publication of the MAIB report into the “Abigail H”. Of the remaining two incidents, accident investigation data indicates that both were minor and neither needed investigation by the MAIB. There have been no further similar incidents.
The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, said that 425 vessels was a relatively small number. It is a small number in the context of the 63,230 vessels currently listed on the UK Ship Register. Furthermore, many of the cohort of 425 vessels would be of lower risk anyway, since crews do not customarily sleep on board or because they would already have had the required equipment fitted. I also point out that the MCA will not customarily collect information on the number of vessels with this required equipment on board, but it will monitor compliance with this requirement through the survey and the inspection regime it usually carries out.
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, mentioned how cheap these systems are. I do not know which website he was looking at, because I have slightly different figures. I believe the cost of installing a bilge alarm is roughly £2,500. That is what we assumed in the impact assessment. Given that, I possibly would not buy one for £100, but it will of course vary from vessel to vessel. To verify this cost, the first question of the consultation specifically asked for evidence of the costs associated with the installation of the water level detectors and bilge alarms needed to comply with the regulations. But, as noted previously, we did not receive very much response to that consultation, and I suspect that was because the industry had either already complied with the regulations or knew that they were coming down the track.
I turn to maritime regulations more broadly. The maritime sector is highly regulated and has to take into account international obligations, amendments to previous EU regulations and the development of domestic legislation. Each strand is usually complex and highly technical and requires transposing to domestic law by way of secondary legislation, which is both time- consuming and resource-intensive. The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, assumed you could knock off a negative SI in an afternoon. That is absolutely not the case; it takes many weeks and months of intensive work to ensure that even a negative SI, which will not necessarily receive parliamentary scrutiny, is up to the standards we would expect for our statute book.
Keeping pace with international amendments, often issued annually, is extremely challenging and results in many of the domestic SIs always being in need of updating. So, over the years, priority has been given to the implementation of the EU directives and regulations to avoid EU infraction proceedings, and this has resulted in the backlog of international obligations, with our domestic regulations becoming out of step with the latest requirements.
The MCA has recently provided a progress update to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee on its road map of international maritime legislation that is required to be implemented into the UK domestic
regime by SI; it should all be completed by the end of 2023. Significant progress has already been made. We have made 12 SIs in 2020 and early 2021, and a further 10 proposed SIs are well progressed and are either at consultation stage or the final stages prior to making and laying.
I trust that noble Lords agree that the introduction of these regulations is important to ensure the safety of crews on board small cargo vessels—indeed, I will take that as a given, because I believe that they do. I hope they will also appreciate that we have to continually assess our priorities to meet our international and domestic obligations, given the availability of resources within the department, within government and, of course, within Parliament.
The MCA has commenced an ambitious programme of regulatory updating which, in the last two years, has reduced the number of outstanding recommendations by the MAIB by 30%. This leaves 14 recommendations which are actively being worked on at present, eight of which will be completed later this year. I hope I have been able to explain the Government’s position and I therefore ask noble Lords to vote against this regret Motion.
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