Marchioness Inquiry

We endorse the proposed legislation and recommend that it be enacted as soon as possible.

Owners and operators of all vessels should have an active alcohol and drugs policy and include provisions in their contracts of employment relating to permitted levels of alcohol and drugs, if any.

Such contracts should permit random testing for alcohol and drugs, with appropriate penalties if levels of alcohol or drugs in excess of those permitted by the contract (if any) are found or in the case of a refusal to supply a relevant specimen.

Owners and operators should in fact carry out random testing because of its deterrent effect.

Owners and operators should discuss all these questions with representatives of officers and crews before they are included in contracts and they should embark on an education and training programme for all employees in order to ensure that they understand the policy, the mechanics of the testing procedures and the consequences of failing to comply with it.

Owners and operators should monitor and review the hours of work of their employees in order to ensure that they are not affected by fatigue.

The statutory requirements in the Merchant Shipping (Safe Manning, Hours of Work and Watchkeeping) Regulations 1997 should be adopted by owners of Class V passenger vessels as guidelines. They should also note the requirements of STCW95, Section A-VIII/1 regarding fitness for duty.

We welcome the agreement by the RNLI to provide lifeboat cover on the Thames 24 hours a day 365 days of the year and recommend that the SAR requirements on the Thames be kept under continuous review.

We maintain the recommendation made by the TSI that a statutory duty be imposed upon an appropriate entity or agency to assess and ensure the adequate provision and co-ordination of SAR facilities on the Thames.

The Department should give further consideration to the imposition of a general duty upon anyone who conducts an undertaking to ensure, as far as reasonably practicable, that the conduct of the undertaking does not expose other persons to risk to their health and safety.

We recommend that the consultation process relating to the introduction of the Safety Management Code for Domestic Passenger Ships be completed with the minimum of delay and the Code be introduced as soon as possible.

We wholeheartedly support this initiative by the Department to carry out an FSA to cover every aspect of the safety of Class V passenger vessels including their encounter risk with large ships and bridges, fire risk, stability, subdivision, freeboard, visibility, life-saving appliances, means of escape, manning, passenger numbers, trading areas and safety management. We recommend that, in the course of what we understand will be a wide-ranging review, the FSA should include an extensive analysis of life-saving appliances and means of escape in the light of the concerns expressed in this inquiry. We also recommend that the MCA should afford the highest priority to conducting the FSA on the older vessels.

We recommend that the PLA or other responsible body review the syllabus and course content leading to licensing of watermen and lightermen to ensure that they are aware of any special problems affecting safe navigation on the river. We also recommend that all training requirements be kept under continuous review to reflect changing circumstances and conditions.

We recommend that all owners and operators of Class V passenger vessels should consider the training requirements for their crews, particularly in relation to emergency training and that consideration be given to extending the ‘Crowd Management and Passenger Safety’ training requirements in STCW95, Section A-V/2 to all persons working on Class V vessels, not only on the Thames but also nationally.

Consideration should be given to the adoption of the requirements for ‘Crisis Management and Human Behaviour Training’ detailed in STCW95, Section A-V/2, paragraph 5 for all ships and not only for passenger ships.

We recommend that the checklists provided for by the ISM Code should cover all reasonably foreseeable emergency procedures and that they should be readily available to the master or skipper at all times.

We remind shipowners and operators of the importance of the keeping of accurate contemporaneous records and of the importance of ensuring that their standing orders include instructions to that effect and that such instructions should be monitored closely.

We support the recommendation by Colman J in paragraph 14.24 of his report in the DERBYSHIRE inquiry that the Department should press IMO to require the fitting of a VDR system on all existing cargo vessels and new buildings.

We recommend that the Department consider supporting the early development of a simplified system for recording voice and position data that can be retrieved and analysed in the event of an accident.

In the light of the contents of MGN 40 (M) and of the terms of regulation 8(1) of the Merchant Shipping (International Safety Management (ISM) Code) Regulations 1998, we recommend that the MCA give consideration to the question whether or not it is intended to be permissible to designate more than one person as ‘the designated person’ and to clarify the position.

We recommend that the PLA give further consideration to byelaw 19 in the context of the collision regulations, especially rules 13 and 17, and consider whether it is appropriate to spell out the obligations of a vessel affected by byelaw 19 with absolute clarity.

We recommend that any future FI be set up as soon as possible after the collision or other casualty.

Appropriate machinery should be established (as recommended in paragraph 11.58 of the final TSI report) for arriving at a decision in serious cases whether to prosecute or to hold a public inquiry (or as the case may be) and that that machinery, or at least appropriate guidelines should be published.

A new statutory framework for public inquiries (of an inquisitorial and not adversarial nature) should be introduced as suggested in paragraphs 11.59 and 11.60 of the final TSI report.

In the meantime, we suggest that in any future FI the questions attached to the Notice of Investigation might be less detailed than they were here.

In the light of the discussion in paragraphs 11.23 to 11.25 of the final TSI report clear guidelines should be laid down setting out precisely the role of the MAIB on the one hand and the Department on the other.

The enormous expenditure on this FI should not divert resources from the MAIB, which must be adequately funded for what we regard as essential investigatory work in order to improve maritime safety in the future.

We recommend that the duties of the Chief Inspector of Marine Accidents to assist an FI be reviewed in order to ensure that the MAIB has a duty to assist and that, in the discharge of that duty, it has power to appoint inspectors for the purposes of the FI, with all the powers of inspectors appointed under the 1995 Act. We recommend that there be a simple change to the statute to the effect that, for the purposes of the discharge of his duty, the Chief Inspector shall have the powers of an inspector and the power to appoint an inspector and that such an inspector shall have all the powers of an inspector under section 259 of the 1995 Act. In the meantime I recommend that the Secretary of State make an appropriate determination under section 267(7) of the 1995 Act.

We recommend that the Department, in conjunction with the industry, consider what is meant by censure, whether the penalty of censure should continue to exist and, if so, why. If (contrary to our present view) it is decided that it should continue to exist, we recommend that consideration be given to requiring that the censure be endorsed on the officer’s certificate.

Finally we recommend that consideration be given to whether it is appropriate to censure persons or entities other than certificated officers and, if so why, what the test should be and whether (as we think) it would be necessary to amend the 1995 Act in order to confer a power to censure.