---

Port of Belfast

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Williams. This is the first such occasion since you were elevated to the Chairmen’s Panel. It is a pleasure to see you ensconced at the heart of the British establishment, where you definitely belong. It is also a pleasure to respond to the debate secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, South (Dr. McDonnell). I say right off the bat that I entirely share his vision of a thriving, prosperous and successful Belfast port and harbour. I entirely get the message that the harbour is important—and not only in its own economic terms, nor only for the economic development of south Belfast and the city of Belfast. It is vital to the economic development and future prosperity of the whole of Northern Ireland. As my hon. Friend knows, we are now looking at the responses that came in as part of the ports review. I am bit constrained in outlining the way forward, because we need to consider what people have said as part of the consultation process. My hon. Friend’s contribution today is an important part of that process and we shall take his points seriously. At the beginning of his remarks, my hon. Friend spoke movingly about Belfast’s proud industrial heritage and past and the centrality of the docks and port in building the city’s prosperity in the last century. From my conversations with him on this subject here and in Belfast, my hon. Friend knows that I entirely share that vision of the importance of the port in the industrial present, not only the industrial past. Like my hon. Friend, I come from a port town—much smaller than Belfast—that has a proud shipbuilding history, now sadly almost gone. However, it continues to thrive as a port. People who, unlike me and my hon. Friend, do not have day-to-day dealings with ports and harbours simply do not understand their enormous commercial potential in this day and age. More and more freight is travelling the world on larger and larger vessels and more and more people are going on cruises and so on. The potential of ports is greater today than it has been for a long time. People who do not have many dealings with them do not understand that; they think that ports belong to the 19th century. My hon. Friend and I know that that is not the case. I should like to pay tribute to Frank Cushnahan, the outgoing chairman of the Belfast harbour commissioners, who has worked very hard during many years of involvement with Belfast. He is retiring, but only in the sense that he will not be chairman for much longer—he is certainly not ““retiring”” otherwise, but comes forward to express his views on what should happen in Belfast. He has done a great deal to advance the cause of the port of Belfast and I wish him a long and happy retirement. I do not want to go over every bit of ground covered by my hon. Friend, but it is important to understand the scale of Belfast port and harbour to understand the seriousness of the decisions that the Government will have to make on its future and that of others in Northern Ireland. The eight miles of Belfast port’s quays occupy 2,000 acres. The port has 1.2 million sq ft of warehousing and 100 acres of terminals. As my hon. Friend rightly reminded us, two thirds of Northern Ireland’s seaborne trade and a quarter of that for Ireland as a whole is handled by the port. It is doing very well and going from strength to strength. It is the busiest ferry port in Northern Ireland, ferrying 1.2 million passengers, many of them lucky enough to be going to Scotland. I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to the port for garnering the title of Irish port of the year at the recent awards ceremony. My hon. Friend is right to highlight the fact that standing still is not an option for the port of Belfast; this era of globalisation, developing trade, changing ship design and changing business processes means that the port has to evolve and change. My hon. Friend highlighted one model that he thinks would serve that change process, but there is no difference between us—we both believe that the port of Belfast, although currently successful, has great potential into which it can grow. We must find the right mechanism to unlock some of that potential and allow the port to flourish to an even greater extent. I am happy to acknowledge the Belfast harbour commissioners’ response: their five-year, £140 million capital expenditure programme, delivering new terminals, new logistics facilities and new container capacity. I look forward to seeing those developments emerge, albeit from this side of the water. Belfast port is successful, thriving and crucial to the well-being of Northern Ireland. In that context and as part of the review, we are giving consideration to the power, status and governance of the public trust ports such as Belfast to ensure that they are appropriate for their crucial role. Time is short, so I shall cut to the model raised by my hon. Friend: giving extended commercial powers to the port, as recommended by the Assembly and the Executive. My hon. Friend was fair enough to acknowledge that that was part of a package on tighter public accountability. He knows that all that was caught up in and affected by the ruling by the Office for National Statistics that certain trust ports should be considered as public corporations for public expenditure purposes. There is a dilemma at the heart of that: if ports are to remain public corporations, how do we give them greater commercial freedom while ensuring that there are public lines of accountability? That is one of the options outlined in the ports review and it is under consideration. It is not the only one; on this side of the water, there are many examples of privatised ports that do an excellent job of developing their facilities—and, in a sensitive way, the associated land bank—for the economic benefit of people who live around them. There is not simply one available model. We have to look at the special circumstances of Belfast port. We also have to ensure that we design a model that is appropriate to all the trust ports in Northern Ireland. Of course, the specific circumstances of Belfast port would automatically read across to the other trust ports, but it is the largest one and is absolutely central to this discussion. The Government take seriously my hon. Friend’s advice. We will reflect on the model that he proposed and in due course introduce plans that will unlock the greater potential of Belfast port, as we entirely share his vision for it.