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Marine Training and Employment (River Thames)

I am grateful to Mr Speaker for giving me this opportunity to have my first Adjournment debate in this new Parliament. I am also pleased that the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr Davey) is going to respond. I am smiling to myself a little, because I can remember the days when he first came to the House to work for our party as one of its key researchers. Clearly, the mentoring that some of us gave him has worked to good effect, and we welcome him to this responsibility and his important job in the Department. During the election campaign, I decided, for the first time in the eight campaigns that I have fought, to set out the top 12 issues that I wanted to flag up as commitments to my constituents. One of those—No. 5 on my list—was entitled ““Jobs and the river””, and in it I pledged to negotiate with the Greater London authority, the Port of London authority and local councils"““to provide a local site for boat building and repair, giving jobs and apprenticeships to Southwark residents.””" The reason that I am starting that campaign here and now is that the riverside constituencies in London that have a tradition of providing work, and workplaces, for people in the river industries need to have that interest rekindled. The Thames should not simply pass Southwark's northern shores; we need activity to take young people and others into training and apprenticeships, and then into work, in river-based industries. There are some places in which people can start to acquire those skills. The London Nautical school, just over the border in the constituency of the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), serves her constituency and mine. It is a state school, a community school, with a very fine tradition, and it takes boys from the age of 11 who have an interest in marine and maritime matters, on which its curriculum places a special emphasis. It produces people who go off to work in the Royal Navy and the merchant navy, as well as into all other walks of life. South Bank university, Southwark college and the other further education colleges also provide some of the necessary engineering skills. There is no sense, however, that we are producing people with the skills to work on the river or that we are trying to recruit from the local work force to do the jobs on the river. You may think, Mr Deputy Speaker, that the days of glory of trade and work on the Thames have gone because there is not as much bustle outside the windows of the Palace of Westminster as the pictures and prints portray, but the reality is that the port of London is hugely successful and the tidal Thames is getting busier, not less busy. There is not only more tourist traffic, but more commercial traffic. It is interesting to note that there is much more commercial traffic doing things that are environmentally good, such as taking waste from one part of London to another, which used to be carried on the roads but was not well received when it was transported in that way. There are likely to be major pieces of work ahead related to the river. First, there are the plans of Thames Water to have a new mains sewage plant installed across London, which will involve a lot of digging, some of it controversial when it comes to my constituency, but I shall not go into any more detail on that for now. The work for the 2012 Olympics is also producing a lot of construction traffic, much of it using the river. Boats come up and down with materials and products and then take waste and other things out of the way. The port of London handles 50 million metric tonnes a year; it is the largest port in southern England. About 2 million tonnes move within the Thames area, moving from one part of the river to another. There are links to business on the river—in the City as well as local firms—involving 46,000 full-time jobs; and there are 70 working port facilities on the river, 25 of which are west of the Thames barrier. There are 4 million passenger journeys made on the river every year, and nearly half all the traffic on inland waterways in the UK is on the Thames. That shows that this debate is not relevant only to me and my parliamentary neighbours—or to those of us who, like my hon. Friend the Minister, have the privilege of representing riverside constituencies—as the issues are of national as well as regional and local relevance. The Thames will get busier in the future. The building of the Thames tunnel from 2013 will mean an extra 100 boats. Then there is the building of Crossrail, bringing the need to transport all the soil dug out of the ground. Further developments are planned in Charlton, for example, and Sainsbury's has a large distribution centre on the river and it is thinking about opening up the wharves nearby to allow for the distribution of goods to shops along the river. Then there is the possibility of a dedicated cruise terminal near Greenwich. If we are to service all that, we will need new boatyards and repair facilities on the Thames. I want to deal with two reports, which I commend to the Minister. I hope that he will take what they say away with him—not just for his own Department, but for other Departments with an interest. The issues straddle the Departments. My hon. Friend is good enough to reply to my debate on behalf of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, but the Department for Transport and the Department for Communities and Local Government are also interested. I would like to share with the Minister some of the conclusions from a report entitled ““Assessment of Boatyard Facilities on the River Thames””, which was produced in 2007. It points out that there has been an"““increase of 20% in the number of vessels registered””" for commercial use between 1999 and 2006, but:"““The availability of boatyards in Greater London has remained largely unchanged since 2000””." The London plan seeks to protect boatyards against development for housing and other uses, but there has often been a struggle about that—for obvious reasons, as these are valuable bits of real estate on the river, where property developers have an interest in building luxury flats. The report also informs us:"““Only two boatyards regularly build boats””," but a larger range and number of boatyard facilities are available for private boat owners than for commercial operators—and there are 16 boatyards working for the private owners. What we need, and what the report recommended just three years ago, is, first, a"““site for a new boatyard to maintain passenger boats, support vessels and river piers””." Secondly, we need action taken"““to improve the availability of facilities for emergency repair””—" an issue to which I shall return in a few seconds. Thirdly, the report stresses the importance of having repair facilities here, because otherwise boat building and boat repair have to go from the Thames and round to the east coast. By definition, that takes a while—it is a journey of several days—and has the risk that some vessels are not licensed for that sort of North sea journey, although they are licensed and equipped to work on the Thames. Another recommendation three years ago was there should be an"““opportunity to link the provision of new boatyard facilities with training in marine industry skills””." The report also stated:"““The opportunity for the public sector activities and facilities in maintaining boats and passenger vessels should be explored””," with some of the private developments that may come on stream. It also recommended:"““Opportunities should be taken to provide additional facilities for private boat owners in the redevelopment of Thames side sites””." I know the pressures that exist. When I was first elected—more than a quarter of a century ago—I used to be able to walk along the river and see boatyards, boatbuilding and boat repair in my constituency around the Surrey docks. Yes, we have marinas, at Greenland dock and South dock, but we do not have the repair and maintenance facilities. There is nowhere that a 16-year-old can go to learn the skills, which the Thames and Britain need, of working on boats on the river. Strangely, no facilities exist locally to carry out emergency repairs on the river to rudders and propellers. People therefore use the traditional method of beaching the boat at low tide and doing the repair there. Self-evidently, that is not nearly as satisfactory. The Thames has three working boatyards, but the biggest boats cannot use them. The largest passenger boats must go to East Anglia—to places such as Lowestoft. There are dry docks in use, small boatyards in my hon. Friend the Minister's area of, Kingston and Richmond, some Thames repair facilities in Gravesend and the Port of London authority facility in Denton, and a dry docking facility that has been retained. However, that is not enough by a long way, given the big businesses that still exist, such as Tate and Lyle at Silvertown, which was the largest sugar refinery in the world. There is an eminent firm based in my constituency called City Cruises, run by two of the great protagonists in redevelopment along the river, Gary and Rita Beckwith, to whom I pay tribute for their work generally and for pressing me and others to do something about producing a new facility. There is Thames Clippers based in Trinity buoy wharf, and Thames Luxury Charters based on HMS Belfast in my constituency. An integrated approach is needed from central Government and local government.