§ 6.54 p.m.
§ Lord LEONARD rose to move, That the draft Hovercraft (Application of Enactments) (Amendment) Order 1978, laid before the House on 7th November, be approved. The noble Lord said: My Lords, this order applies two consequential amendments to the Hovercraft (Application of Enactments) Order 1972 necessitated by the introduction of revised Merchant Shipping (Dangerous Goods) Rules and amendments to the Collision Regulations and Distress Signals Order 1977 respectively.
§ I should perhaps begin by explaining to the House that the 1968 Hovercraft Act provides that hovercraft should be treated as vehicles in their own right, rather than ships or aircraft. The Act does, however, recognise the important need to ensure that relevant safety rules and navigational disciplines are appropriately observed by hovercraft operating in a marine environment. In this context it may interest your Lordships to know that approaching two million passengers and more than a quarter of a million vehicles crossed the Channel by hovercraft in 1977: a significant proportion of all passengers and vehicles on the cross-Channel ferry traffic. I think the House will, therefore, readily appreciate why it is necessary for appropriate marine safety measures to be extended to hovercraft operations. The Hovercraft (Application of Enactments) Order 1972, made under powers conferred in the Hovercraft Act 1968, accordingly applies to hovercraft a number of enactments and instruments relating to ships.
§ My Lords, if I may now turn to the two amendments in question, both owe something to the Government's commitment to international agreement, and to the Inter-Governmental Maritime Consultative Organisation—known as IMCO—in the field of marine safety.
97§ First, the Merchant Shipping (Dangerous Goods) Rules 1965 have been revised and up-dated. The new rules, which come into operation on 29th December, take account of the increasing use of cargo containers for sea transport, the recommendations in the 1978 report of the Department of Trade's Standing Advisory Committee on the carriage of dangerous goods in ships, and also the classifications in the corresponding 1977 edition of the IMCO Dangerous Goods Code. The Standing Advisory Committee's report—which your Lordships may know as the Blue Book—is expected to be published this month. This will coincide with the new Dangerous Goods Rules (Statutory Instrument 1978 No. 1543) which will revoke the current—1965—rules.
§ It is pertinent to point out that the Dangerous Goods Rules have only a marginal practical relationship to hovercraft. Very little cargo is in fact carried by hovercraft and only in a very few isolated instances would this touch on the rules. It is, nonetheless, necessary to amend the existing reference to the Dangerous Goods Rules in the 1972 Hovercraft Order, through a change in Part B of Schedule 1 to the 1972 Order, to apply the provisions of the 1978 rules to United Kingdom registered hovercraft, and to all hovercraft operating within United Kingdom territorial waters.
§
The second amendment to the Hovercraft (Application of Enactments) Order 1972, concerns the Collision Regulations and Distress Signals Order 1977, which also derives from international agreement in IMCO. These regulations were sub-stantively applied to hovercraft in July last year, but they have since been amended. I do not think your Lordships will wish me to deal in detail with the amendments in question to the Merchant Shipping Collision Regulations; neither was of substance. But, again, it is necessary to translate them to hovercraft by inserting the words
"as amended by SI 1977/1301 and SI 1978/462",
at the appropriate point in Part B of Schedule 1 to the Hovercraft Order: the operative date for this amendment is also 29th December 1978.
§ The essential purpose of this amendment order can be put very briefly: it is to ensure that merchant shipping safety 98 regulations applying to hovercraft relate fully to modern day demands. The need for this is surely beyond argument. I beg to move.
§ Moved, That the draft Hovercraft (Application of Enactments) (Amendment) Order 1978, laid before the House on 7th November, be approved.—(Lord Leonard.)
§ Lord TREFGARNEMy Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Leonard, for introducing the order with the precision we have so rapidly come to expect of him. As the noble Lord said, the order seeks only to regulate the operation of hovercraft rather than the construction, and I should like, for a moment, to dwell on that point. Although this proposal is clearly sound—and we would hasten to agree with the Government in its introduction—we would wish to be satisfied that the Government have no intention of bringing the whole paraphernalia of civil aviation regulation into the operation and in particular the construction of hovercraft, because we feel that this would be the death knell of this important device.
As the noble Lord has already explained, the hovercraft was given its existence with the original legislation in 1968, and we would want to be sure that the powers contained in that Act were not used to bring the machinery of air law into the operation and construction of hovercraft. Having said that, we think that the proposals contained in this order are sound. Clearly, it is appropriate that, for example, dangerous goods are regulated, as they have been for many years in the case of ships and more recently in the case of aircraft. It is clearly also appropriate that hovercraft ought to be required to observe the regulations with regard to the collision avoidance provisions contained in the marine legislation. We must remember that these vessels—if that is what they are—generally speaking operate at speeds considerably higher than those of ships, and therefore particular care is needed in their use: in the congested inshore waters where they generally operate. However, we would not wish to press the noble Lord further on this point, and I hope that this order will be approved by your Lordships.
§ Lord LEONARDMy Lords, I am very appreciative of the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne. We all know that the noble Lord is somebody in your Lordships' House. In my limited time here I have come to realise his wide knowledge on all matters pertaining to aviation and hovercraft transport. I fully appreciate his concern for the safety of everything in these spheres.
§ On Question, Motion agreed to.