All Parliamentary Parties Maritime & Ports Groups meetings: Mike Robarts

August 28th, 2014 by JCB
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Your Association regularly attends the All Parliamentary Parties Maritime and Ports Groups (APPMPG) meetings in Westminster’s committee rooms. The APPMPG allows MPs and House of Lords (HoL) to meet delegates from the maritime sector to discuss various items of mutual relevance. A presentation is a highlight of each meeting. An MP
and a Lord jointly chair the whole group, whose members have an interest in maritime topics. Some attending MPs have constituencies with a port or coastline. Regular delegates from the maritime sector include: Department for Transport, Maritime and Coastguard Agency, Chamber of Shipping, Trinity House, Royal Navy, Honourable Company of Master Mariners, UK major ports group, British Ports Association, trades unions, shipping companies and ourselves. These meetings give our Association excellent opportunities to meet MPs and representatives from different sectors of the maritime industry. Through them we make our voice heard.

At the meeting on the 7 January 2014 the Shipping Minister Stephen Hammond addressed the group. Nick Cutmore IMPA and Mike Robarts attended to represent our respective Associations. This turned out to be an important meeting. There was full attendance, because the discussion was on regulations affecting ports and shipping.

In his opening address Mr Hammond mentioned London International Shipping Week. He observed that the LISW had been a success in demonstrating the UK’s strengths as a maritime nation and, as a consequence, further events are to be planned on a biennial succession. He is to be part of a delegation to Singapore as part of the UK trade and industry, the aim being to promote maritime UK. He advocates round table discussions,which he considers successful in bringing together different areas of the industry, and also cross-party meetings in governmental efforts to promote maritime UK. Low sulphur regulations that focus on emissions are starting to prove a sizeable cost, making ship owners anxious, especially with new regulation coming into force in January 2015 that place a limit of 0.1% on sulphur emissions. The Shipping Minister voiced concern over the availability of low sulphur fuel in Europe. The UK continues to work with other EU states on the proposed European regulation.

The last point of discussion in the Joint Committee was about proposed EU regulation of ports. This regulation covers a number of aspects of port operations, including, for us as pilots, an unwarranted proposal for competition in pilotage. Mr Hammond spoke about the extraordinary number of proposed amendments in the new regulation: over 542. (Successful implementation of this regulation means significant changes to the way we work and to our profession. MR.) He then talked about the complexities if the regulation was not passed in Europe or the UK and something else brought in its place instead. The UK continues to work with the EU TRAN committee, MEPs and with other European states. The floor was then opened to questions from delegates. We expressed our concern about EU ports regulation and UK major ports group and other individual ports added their worries about proposed ports regulation.

On the 4 February Don Cockrill Chairman attended the APPMPG meeting, which discussed the vulnerability of GPS, e-navigation and navigational safety. Trinity House (TH) gave a presentation illustrating and explaining their various roles in these areas. One of the items looked at was e-loran, with the result that our Chairman is now in discussion with TH over assistance by our members with the trials TH are planning with regard to e-loran and port approaches on the east coast.

On another topic, that of EU Ports Regulation, Mike Morris recently attended a business forum in Bristol, at which Sim Kallas, European Transport Commissioner, was a delegate panel member. Mike represented our members well and fired questions directly to the commissioner about proposed European Ports regulation.

Future APPMPG meetings are planned and John Pearn Vice Chairman and Mike Robarts will attend the Ports Energy conference, and later a Parliamentary Renewable and Sustainable Energy Group (PRASEG) meeting at Westminster in the evening.