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Tankers (Lyme Bay)

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr. Bayley. I congratulate the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) on securing this important debate. He said at the beginning of his speech that the matter does not affect everyone but that it is important. I concur with that 100 per cent. It is obviously important to his constituents and others who are affected in such a way, but it is also important to the United Kingdom as a whole. Indeed, several other right hon. and hon. Members, including the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), my right hon. Friend the Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform, and the Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard), have raised this issue and others about shipping within the area of their own constituency. Let me make it clear that the Government, particularly the Department for Transport, seriously take on board the issues that the right hon. Member for West Dorset has raised, and that if there were no provisions and no monitoring of the situation, I would concur that action needed to be taken immediately. However, it is worth laying out clearly the provisions within UK legislation and international conventions that apply to shipping, which, obviously, is an international business. Let me, without disagreeing with the right hon. Gentleman, set out the situation. Yesterday morning, eight oil tankers were anchored in Lyme bay. In addition, two general cargo ships and a tug were at anchor. Just to help the right hon. Gentleman, he might find that the terminology is "at anchor" rather than "parked". At any time, there are vessels in Lyme bay which are under way—they are moving about, and departing. The right hon. Gentleman and others will know that Lyme bay is a body of water close to the English channel, which is one of the biggest and most heavily used shipping seaways in the world. It is an accepted fact that ships take advantage of the sheltered waters at Lyme bay in anticipation of, for example, bad weather, and that they wait at the designated western end of the bay for the embarkation and disembarkation of deep sea pilots. It is also normal for vessels to wait there for instructions from their owners or operators to go elsewhere. I understand that many of the tankers that were waiting there yesterday were doing just that: waiting for instructions to move on. Why are ships allowed to do that in part of the UK's territorial sea, and why can they stay there for longer than just days? It is true and absolutely right, in terms of merchant shipping operations and so on, that there are no valid grounds for making ships go away if they are not acting unlawfully or demonstrably posing a threat to the UK's seas and coasts.