Shipping: Towing Vessels

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

The noble Lord makes an extremely important point and his analysis is correct. However, although the Dover Strait is an area of higher likelihood because of the concentration of ships in the area, experience indicates that the consequences of a grounding are likely to be lower because the seabed is flat and sandy rather than rocky. Regarding his point about the motorway pile-up, the coastguard, with automatic monitoring of ship movements, will be aware immediately a ship stops moving and can warn other ships of the difficulties.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, is it not the case that the Government are not prepared to pay the relatively modest insurance policy to guarantee that we have adequate towing tug capacity in British waters? If a major disaster occurs, we will be dependent upon Rotterdam or other foreign ports to produce the necessary towing and tug equipment. Is that not a dereliction of duty on the part of the Government?

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the noble Lord makes an important point about Rotterdam. Rotterdam and the Dutch have great experience in salvage operations. There are lots of tugs operating out of there. If we withdrew the funding, which we have, from the Falmouth tug, someone will probably station a tug in Falmouth in order to pick up the market. Currently, however, we are distorting the market by paying out large sums of taxpayers’ money to no good effect.