I am grateful to all noble Lords for this short debate and am relieved and delighted that all noble Lords agree that these regulations are necessary. All noble Lords—including the Minister—agree that they have potentially taken too long. That should concern all noble Lords and I will start by addressing the timeline.
I mentioned in opening that there has been an inordinate amount of engagement on this, because the types of vessels and ships that we are covering in these regulations are hugely diverse. They operate in very different categories of water. The Government received an enormous amount of pressure and representation from Members of your Lordships’ house, from Members of Parliament and from local elected officials—and, of course, they are all absolutely right to bring these matters to our attention. However, it caused some delay in reaching the right balance, which I believe we have got to today.
We had two public consultations, which was good, and five workshops between 2016 and 2019. Since then, we have focused on some of the more challenging vessels, where safety was not necessarily 100% proven and there was a case to be made, which is why we ended up taking so long on these regulations. However, we are where we are, and we have to play on the pitch we are on. We are now putting them in front of your Lordships’ House, and I hope they will be passed today.
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The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, raised the matter of the types of vessels. Again, these regulations are about two things: first, the type of vessel, and secondly, the category of water that they tend to operate in. During the course of the discussions, reference was made to 120 class VI vessels, all of which have the new stability requirements disapplied to them—it is not an exemption but a disapplication of part of the regulations. Class VI vessels are seagoing passenger ships which have a lot of operational restrictions placed on them anyway, in that they operate only in the summer and only in favourable weather, and therefore an assessment was made such that the stability requirements would not apply to that entire group of vessels.
The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and others mentioned exemptions. I want to be absolutely clear that there is clarity in these regulations, but I would be remiss if I did not raise the fact that there is a very limited—I reiterate that—facility for exemption from the new stability requirements, which are the most challenging aspect of the regulations to implement. However, we expect the successful use of any exemption to be extremely rare. It would be in quite unique circumstances and would relate to operators on the tidal category C waters, places such as the Thames, where we receive the most challenge from representatives and other people within the system.
Getting any sort of exemption would involve a detailed risk assessment. I am happy to write to noble Lords about what that would look like. It would have to satisfy the MCA that the exemption in question is one of lower operational risk. I put on record now that it is not our intention to create a category of a large number of exempted vessels in these circumstances; it is very much about specific circumstances where it would seem reasonable and, dare I say it, right that they receive a certain exemption. However, obviously, we expect the vast majority of the vessels to comply, and if they cannot they will have to stop sailing as passenger transport. It is as simple as that.
It is quite surprising how many incidents there are on our waters. For example, there are more than 100 every year, on average, on the Thames alone. In a serious incident in 2014 the “Millennium Time” sustained structural damage to its bow in a collision. In 2011 the “Moon Clipper” hit the Tower Millennium Pier and was breached both above and below the water line. The engine room of “Millennium City” was flooded after a collision with Westminster Bridge in 2008. None of these were older vessels but, of course, it is simply a matter of time before an older vessel is involved. Although the risk of occurrence is considered to be medium, the potential severity of the outcome of an incident is high and it could lead to a significant loss of life. That makes the risk unacceptable. I am not aware of any incidents involving older vessels, but as I say, we need to make sure that we do not leave a loophole and the possibility of a risky outcome.
Turning to compliance and enforcement, as ever, with all maritime matters we look to the wonderful people at the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, because they have responsibility for doing the annual surveys for ships. Compliance with these regulations will be checked. As noted, there is a two-year phase-in period, but the industry has known that this is coming for a very long time, and I would expect it to make sure that it is well ready, if it has not done so already, because as I said earlier, exemptions will be very few and far between. I can say that because I am the new Maritime Minister and I intend to stay in my post for as long as possible, so I will ensure that we do not do the wrong thing in that regard.
Finally, I want to try to make my noble friend Lord Hodgson happy. First, I intend to continue the fine work of Robert Courts, who was a superb Maritime Minister. We will continue to fight the backlog. These regulations are not in the backlog; they are slightly separate, but I know that we are making good progress,
and my noble friend will have seen a couple of SIs go through recently. Nine statutory instruments remain out of the total of 13; two have been approved by Parliament and will be made shortly, and another has been laid in draft. We are getting there, and I again commit to him that we will get there by the end of 2023. We will clear the maritime backlog where those regulations relate to the International Maritime Organization’s III instruments. We will then be in the SLSC’s good books and I, for one, will be very grateful. I beg to move.