18 JUNE 2003  

MR MIKE FELL OBE, MR NIGEL PRYKE AND MR PETER BOND

  Q425  Chairman: Good afternoon to you, gentlemen. You are most warmly welcome. Could I ask you first to identify yourselves?

  Mr Bond: Peter Bond, Chief Executive of Ports Skills and Safety Ltd.

  Mr Fell: Mike Fell, Chairman of Ports Skills and Safety Ltd. I should explain that I have recently retired from a permanent position in the port industry with Associated British Ports. Until 31 March, I was a director of Associated British Ports responsible for the ports of Hull and Goole.

  Mr Pryke: Nigel Pryke, Deputy Chairman of PSSL, Chairman of the British Ports Association and my proper job is Chief Executive of the Harwich Haven Authority.

  Q426  Chairman: Did you wish to make any opening remarks?

  Mr Fell: Please, if I may. Just to recall that Port Skills and Safety Ltd is a comparatively new organisation. It is 18 months old and it was born out of two previous organisations called the Ports Safety Organisation (PSO) and British Ports Industry Training (BPIT). This initiative was really born out of comments made in this Committee and elsewhere that there ought to be only one organisation representing the ports industry. We have succeeded in retaining the majority of membership of those two former organisations and we now have 134 subscribers to Ports Skills and Safety Ltd. That is our background.

  Q427  Mr Donohoe: Could you tell me how the statistics are gathered to demonstrate the number of deaths and serious injuries which have taken place in ports in this country?

  Mr Fell: We gather statistics from our membership. Our members volunteer to offer statistics. Our members cover about 19,000 employees in the ports industry and the statistics we gather represent some 15,500 to 16,000 of those employees. We estimate the total number within the industry is 25,500. Our statistics are not fully representative of the whole of the industry; they are representative of the majority of our membership.

  Q428  Mr Donohoe: They are almost meaningless in that respect then.

  Mr Fell: I do not think they are meaningless. They give us a guide to trends. The statistics we gather one year compared with another year will certainly illustrate a trend amongst our membership which does cover the majority of the major employers throughout the industry.

  Q429  Mr Donohoe: Who determines how these are submitted to you? If an employer wants to, he can ignore them, can he not?

  Mr Fell: Yes, he could. We believe that the majority of our subscribers who volunteer to present these statistics do so accurately.

  Q430  Chairman: What is a majority?

  Mr Fell: Out of the total industry we probably represent about 75% of the industry through our membership.

  Q431  Chairman: Do you agree with that Mr Bond?

  Mr Bond: Yes, the estimated number of people in the industry is 25,500 and our membership currently covers in excess of 19,000.

  Q432  Mr Donohoe: You indicated that you want to reduce the figures. Obviously anybody in your business would want to reduce these figures. How do you expect to achieve these targets?

  Mr Fell: We certainly do want to reduce the figures: the major injuries and fatalities by ten per cent by the end of 2005 and the other reportable three day accidents by 20% by the end of 2005. We have launched what is known as the Safer Ports Initiative in order to focus attention on the serious accidents which are taking place within the ports industry and that initiative is looking at encouraging our members and other people engaged in the industry in achieving a better safety performance. We have launched that initiative on the Thames and it is being followed up by a number of regional initiatives, one on the Humber, the Mersey, at Poole, one to be held shortly in Northern Ireland, Scotland, followed by one in South Wales. The HSE have joined with us in these regional launches and we are just advertising our aims to be a safer industry and encouraging people to support the initiative.

  Q433  Mr Donohoe: How is that to be achieved? Is better training being given?

  Mr Fell: We are not a training provider. We are there to represent the interests of our subscribers. They fund the organisation and we look after their funds and well-being. We are very interested in seeing that there is a proper standard of training and qualifications within the industry, but ultimately that rests with the employers. We can only encourage employers to adopt high standards.

  Q434  Mr Donohoe: You do not involve yourselves in programmes of training.

  Mr Fell: No. There are only four employees within PSSL, that is all, and Peter Bond is one of those.

  Q435  Mr Donohoe: In that sense then you have not had demand from your members to set up training.

  Mr Fell: We have had demands from members to participate and recommend improvements in certain types of training.

  Mr Bond: What we are trying to do as a new organisation is to bring together trainers who provide training to the ports industry with the employers who need that training. What we can do is provide guidance and standards for those trainers and those employers to work to.

  Q436  Mr Donohoe: Do you do that? Do you have a code of practice in that sense then?

  Mr Bond: For training?

  Q437  Mr Donohoe: Yes.

  Mr Bond: We have a range of national occupational standards which people use as benchmarks for developing training initiatives, which covers stevedoring, marine operations and passenger handling.

  Q438  Mr Donohoe: What help and assistance do you get from the Health and Safety Executive to do that?

  Mr Bond: The Health and Safety Executive joined us, in partnership with MCA and trade unions in the Safer Ports Initiative. When we have been going round to the regional events trying to encourage the smaller cargo handlers, who are not part of what we call the organised industry, to come on board and join in with what we are trying to achieve, Tim Galloway has joined in that drive and he has spoken to all of those people.

  Q439  Mr Donohoe: What resources do you have for that? What type of money is being ploughed into that?

  Mr Bond: These events are actually hosted by a large port or harbour authority within whose area the small cargo handlers operate. All of the hosting is done and the cost picked up by one of our subscribers who hosts the event. Basically, Tim Galloway, myself and local presenters come along and make a safe ports presentation to them.

  Mr Fell: So that is not a drain on the financial resources of PSS, it is actually funded by our subscribers.