§ 5.0 p.m.
EARL FERRERSMy Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Drumalbyn, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. This is primarily a safety Bill designed for the men who may be employed in the hazardous occupation of offshore exploration and production of minerals. It originates from the regrettable accident to the drilling platform "Sea Gem", which had been drilling for petroleum and collapsed in the North Sea on December 27, 1965, with the loss of 13 lives. A public inquiry was held into this accident, and the Tribunal recommended that for such installations 742 there should be a statutory code of safety and requirements to which drilling installations operating under the control of the United Kingdom should be subject, and which should be enforced by appropriate sanctions and penalties if the code is not kept. Two more drilling installations have been lost in the North Sea since the "Sea Gem" accident, one when on site in a storm and another whilst under tow. Very fortunately, through the courage and endeavours of the men manning the helicopter service, the crews of both these installations were all saved. Nevertheless, my Lords, the dangers continue: 24 such installations out of a world total of about 200 have been lost in the last 14 years, and there have been many other dangerous incidents.
As your Lordships well know, the seas around Britain can be very treacherous indeed. Even in the Southern half of the North Sea, where most of the exploration so far has been taking place, the waves and currents can be quite terrifying. The first drilling platform, which was erected no less than 40 feet above the sea when it started work on Boxing Day, 1964, was within a week being hit by tremendous waves and had to be jacked up higher to get it out of reach of the sea. Conditions in the Northern part of the North Sea, and off the North-West of Scotland, where exploration has yet to begin, are even worse. It is probably true to say that among offshore areas being explored throughout the world the environment of the United Kingdom Continental Shelf is one of the most hazardous. Despite the hazards, there has been very great effort put into the exploration of the offshore oil and gas resources, and we have been benefiting for some time from the large gas discoveries. Now oil has been found, and the activity can be expected to continue for a long time to come. The search may well extend later to other minerals; and we must see that the men, from whose efforts there have been such results, are properly protected. In this I feel sure that we can count on the ready cooperation of the drilling operators, who have always taken a very responsible attitude towards matters of safety.
My Lords, at present, safety instructions are issued under petroleum licences. The arrangement has worked well, but it has its limitations and its disadvantages, 743 not the least of which is that the sole penalty available is withdrawal of the licence for any kind of failure to observe safety conditions. There is need for a properly devised scheme which assures uniformity of standards and about which there can be no misunderstanding as to the intention. There is also need to have appropriate penalties for different levels of infringement. Preliminary consultations which we have had with the licensees lead us to believe that the offshore drilling industry will be receptive to our proposals, and we look forward to working out with them the details of an appropriate statutory code. My Lords, I think that we are the first country in the world to bring forward comprehensive safety legislation on this particular subject. Other countries are equally interested in the safety of these work-people, and our North Sea neighbours will no doubt be watching with interest the progress of this draft legislation. We are sure that all countries will welcome moves to provide for the safety of these activities. Indeed, it may well be that the initiative we are taking will spur others to do the same.
This is one of the very few areas of employment where safety is not yet controlled by Statute. There are enactments, for instance, having as their object the protection of people at work in mines and indeed in factories, in the building industry, in offices and in shops; we have legislation to ensure safety control over ships and over aircraft; and certainly we ought to have it for this hazardous offshore occupation. I am bound to say that this Bill has posed some legal problems, because this is a new and developing industry, and the Government have been particularly anxious to adopt a flexible approach towards the problems of it. There are international implications in so far as many of the people who work on these installations come from other countries. The scheme has needed to be set in the right relationship with other areas of safety control, and we have had to frame the legislation with care so as to get the pattern right and to enable it to fit (as one might so describe it) into the jigsaw of other forms of existing legislation. My Lords, what we have in this Bill is the framework for a comprehensive system of safety control which should contribute materially to 744 the protection of the men working in such hazardous conditions. It deals both with the safety of the installation itself and with that of operations which are carried out on or from the installation, thereby safeguarding the men in a double way.
I will not trouble your Lordships with all the detail, but I will try to restrict my remarks to a few general words of explanation of the Bill as a whole. The safety control will apply to all underwater mineral workings from installations which operate off the coasts of the United Kingdom, including territorial waters and all parts of the United Kingdom Continental Shelf which are designated for exploration of mineral resources under the Continental Shelf Act. Internal waters can also be added if necessary. Your Lordships may be aware that there are four main types of offshore installation in use at the present time for oil and gas exploration and production. Firstly, there are platforms which jack themselves up out of the sea on legs which are put down into the sea bed; then there are platforms which float in the sea on huge pontoons; and then there are drilling ships. These three are all used for exploration work. The fourth type is a fixed platform where the legs are actually inserted into the bed of the sea and then concreted in. This is a fixed and permanent installation which is used for drilling commercial production wells and which is used for the commercial extraction of oil and gas. The Bill will deal with all of these types and any others that may be used in the future for working underwater minerals, but it will leave installations which are directly accessible from land to be dealt with under the mines and quarries or factories legislation. The requirements will be applied to ships only in so far as their mineral working activities are not already covered by shipping legislation. Generally, the aim is to ensure that persons on board are safeguarded at all times, whether the installations are being moved to or from sites or whether they are actually on site and in use.
With regard to the controls themselves, my Lords, all the installations will need to be registered as a preliminary to the three main functions of the control. These are, first, the certification of installations as safe places on which to work; 745 secondly, masters will have to be appointed who will be in charge and who will act as a focal point of responsibility for safety; and thirdly, there will be safety regulations which will govern the procedures employed in offshore mineral activities. If one takes the first of these, detailed requirements will be set for certification of installations as fit for use, and those responsible for their use will have a duty to ensure that the requirements are met. If I may give an analogy, as your Lordships are doubtless aware registered ships may not proceed to sea without first having appropriate certificates. Similarly, the movement of these installations to sites and their use there will be prohibited unless these installations are properly certified.
Here I should mention that we envisage that the functions of surveying installations and issuing certificates could usefully be carried out on behalf of the Government by classification societies—for example, Lloyd's Register of Shipping, who are experts in this field and who already deal with certification of many ships. We have had preliminary discussions with several of these societies, and we shall be developing the detailed proposals in consultation with them.
The supervision of actual safety on board each installation will be the responsibility of a master to be appointed by the installation owner. He will be in sole charge of safety matters in the same way as is the manager of a mine. It will be an onerous task, but he will be given suitable authority, and he will be given powers to enable him to carry out his responsibilities. The owner of the installation is to be joined with the master in the general safety responsibilities, and the concession owner (or licensee of the mineral rights) will also be responsible for making suitable provision for safety matters. All persons on board will have to comply with safety regulations and will have to obey the master's orders. In fact, in matters of safety, an installation master will be placed in a position very similar to that of any merchant navy master. We expect that persons appointed as masters of installations will include qualified master mariners who will act when an installation is floating, and experienced drilling engineers who will act when it is fixed.
746 Activities which are carried on from and around the installations will be the subject of safety health and welfare regulations, on the matters described in the Schedule to the Bill. This list ranges from the protection of the installation against hazards in use to the protection of the individual workman when he is operating equipment. It also covers the powers of inspectors who will be appointed to enforce the requirements, and it covers powers to record accidents, inquiries, registration of deaths, and so forth.
My Lords, in this day and age I do not think there is any intention to put forward legislation which would be in any way oppressive. In fact the intention is that there shall be what might be described as benevolent enforcement, in the sense that it will be generally advisory in nature, and the responsible operator should have nothing to fear. Any persistent and deliberate infringement will, of course, bring down the full force of the law. We expect that there will nearly always be automatic compliance with the standards set in the Bill and regulations. Recourse to the processes of law should, we hope, be infrequent; there should be need to deal in this way only with the worst case of backsliding or of negligence. The latter part of the Bill is occupied with the legal framework within which the scheme of statutory control will operate. It includes, for example, the application of law outside the normal area of national jurisdiction, and provision to ensure that breaches of the duties imposed by the Bill or by regulations which give rise to personal injury will be actionable in the civil courts. The detail of these and other matters belongs to a later stage of our deliberations, but I will gladly give any explanation that may be requested on the various provisions which may arise out of noble Lords' remarks.
My Lords, the aim of this Bill is to fill the gap in present safety legislation and provide a suitable framework for protection, so far as is humanly possible, of the men who, at considerable risk to themselves, are at the moment operating on drilling installations. We hope that the Bill will save life and lessen the dangers they experience. I commend it to your Lordships.
§ Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Earl Ferrers.)
747§ 5.15 p.m.
§ LORD BROWNMy Lords, we on this side of the House welcome this Bill. It is a very necessary measure and we are grateful to the noble Earl for his very clear explanation of its purpose and of the way it will work. I have, however, a number of points of (shall I say?) misgiving, and I hope for reassurance on these when the noble Earl rises to his feet at the end of this short debate.
The first misgiving arises over the provisions of Clause 4. The noble Earl at one point likened the master of one of these oil rigs to a mine manager. May I say that a mine manager is not only a highly experienced man but a very highly certificated man. There is no provision whatever in Clause 4 for certification. If I were working on an oil rig—which seems unlikely—or if some of my sons were to do so, I should want to see on board somebody who was certificated, a person familiar with the sea and its hazards. Yet it is quite clear that we may expect the man in charge to be an oil rig expert and not an experienced mariner. The noble Earl said also that he "expected" there would be a master mariner on floating rigs. I should have thought it was not a question of expectation but a question of certainty that a ship which happened to be used as a rig would have a master mariner on it as is the case in all other types of ships.
It may be that at this limited stage of our experience of these matters it is a little early to get involved in certification, so I turn to Clauses 2 and 3, which lay down the various types of regulations that the Minister can make in pursuance of the aims of this Bill. I can find nothing in those clauses which enables him to require certification of masters or other members of the crew, the only reference being under Clause 2(2)(g) which refers to "other incidental matters". I cannot imagine that the certification of a master or other members of the crew would come under the heading of "incidental matters". I hope for reassurance on that point.
I turn now to Clause 10, and in particular to subsection (2). There may be an omission here. This clause sets out the conditions to be met before proceedings under the Bill can be taken in England, Wales or Northern Ireland. It makes no mention of Scotland. The assumption is 748 that anybody can take proceedings under this Bill: there is no limitation. It may be that the universally acknowledged superiority of Scottish law has already provided Statutes which govern such points, but I am ignorant of them and I should be happy to be reassured. The third point concerns radio contact with the shore. It may be that I am ignorant of the provisions of other Statutes in this respect, but I should assume the absolute necessity for regulations to exist somewhere that no rig may go to sea without having proper radio contact with the shore. Yet I have searched the Bill and can find no reference to this. I hope that I may also be assured on this point.
May I choose this opportunity to make a more general point which applies to this Bill? Every time I see a Bill with penalty provisions, the thought occurs to me that one day we in Parliament, facing up to the idea that inflation is a very serious matter nowadays, should incorporate in a Bill which involves monetary penalties—or even rewards—a clause gearing up the penalties—or the rewards—in accordance with some index like the national wages index. These penalties all get outdated as time moves on. If we could have automatic adjustment of these, I think it would be beneficial. I shall not ask the noble Lord to reply to that point, and merely take this opportunity of putting it forward.
§ 5.20 p.m.
EARL FERRERSMy Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Brown, for his comments on the Bill. He said that he was not inviting me to comment on his last remark, but I cannot refrain from doing so. I think it is certainly a novel suggestion, but if the Government inserted such a provision into this modest Bill it might cause the most fearful political turmoil. However much the noble Lord may feel that what he advocated is desirable, I hope that he will not try to move any Amendment along those lines and that we may achieve what I know is the desire of noble Lords opposite as well as the Government; to see that the safety provisions are put on the Statute Book.
The noble Lord mentioned one or two points about which he was concerned and the first was the fact that masters of installations are not to be certificated. 749 The noble Lord is perfectly right. It is not the intention to give a master of an installation a certificate saying, "You are a master, having gained various qualifications." The reason for this will be appreciated by the noble Lord. This is a growing and developing industry; drilling in the sea has been taking place only over the last 10 or 15 years. We consider that it would be undesirable to specify requirements under which a master would be granted a certificate. It is intended that a person should be designated as a master and be responsible for safety, health and welfare on the installation. When the installation is moving, the requirements of a master will be totally different from when it is fixed and drilling is being carried out. This is the reason why it is considered desirable to leave this matter fairly flexible. The Tribunal which, the noble Lord will remember, was set up to discover why "Sea Gem" collapsed, stated:
It would not be necessary for the 'master' to be an expert in the engineering and mechanical aspects of his charge. It would only be necessary for him to be a mature and responsible person trained to have a wholesome respect of the sea and knowing what to look for in carrying out his task of keeping everybody up to scratch.The people who operate these drilling rigs, my Lords, are intensely conscious that the rigs should not be subjected to unnecessary hazards. I think the noble Lord has the same feelings as we have on the subject, but the fact is that a master is not to be given a specific certificate of competence. He will, however, be placed in a position of authority to enable him to be in charge of his rig.
§ LORD BROWNMy Lords, before the noble Earl leaves that point, may I say that the choice of these men will lie upon the owners. The Government—the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, or whoever it may be—will have no jurisdiction over who shall take charge of these installations. There is no certificate; we are relying totally on owners who could make a mistake and put someone in charge who had no knowledge of the sea at all. I think that is a point which ought to receive a little more consideration.
EARL FERRERSMy Lords, I do not want to get involved in what might be described as a Committee point. I think the problem is over the understanding of the meaning of the word "master". Under this Bill it is intended that one person should be given the authority to ensure that regulations under which owners can use the installations are carried out. He will see that these regulations are enforced. However, the noble Lord has put the point, and it may be that he will wish to refer to it again later.
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Brown, was worried that this Bill referred only to England and Wales and not to Scotland. He is right in thinking that Scotland has a very curious set of laws. One would hesitate to comment on them, but perhaps I may put it in layman's language which the noble Lord will accept in the spirit in which it is intended. Many of the people who work on rigs are foreign nationals, but they will be subject to the regulations which this Bill seeks to put forward while they drill on the British Continental Shelf. If a crime is committed on an installation in United Kingdom waters, the facts would have to come before the Director of Public Prosecutions, or the Secretary of State, before proceedings could be instituted against the person concerned, because of the complexities of international law. In Scotland before proceedings can be instituted automatically the matter has to go to the Lord Advocate; and that is the reason why Scotland is not included in the Bill.
The noble Lord also was worried about the fact that there was no provision in the Bill for radio contact between the installation and the shore. That point is covered in paragraph 4(1) of the Schedule which states that provisions may be included in regulations for all forms of safety equipment and facilities. The need to have suitable radio contact would be covered by that paragraph. I do not know whether what I have said satisfies the noble Lord, but I hope that it has provided him with answers to the questions which he rightly raised.
§ On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.