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Merchant Shipping Pollution Bill [HL]

I support my noble friend’s amendment because the clause has extremely sweeping powers. It is not a simple question of dealing with amendments to the convention by order. Paragraph (b) clearly states that the subsection relates to,"““any international agreement relating to compensation for oil pollution from ships which modifies””" —that is fine—"““or replaces the whole or any part of, the Liability Convention””," and so on. My reading of that is that it, in effect, gives Her Majesty the power to replace primary legislation with secondary legislation. We need primary legislation to put the convention into place and I entirely accept that ““on the run”” modifications to compensation schemes and so on should be dealt with by Orders in Council, but—