The UK Government has already backed away from closing the coastguard stations at Stornoway and Lerwick. This reversal is more likely to be a political decision than an operational or common sense one, since they are otherwise persisting with the frankly risk-laden plan to run the coastguard’s Scotland operation from a single station based in Aberdeen.
This leaves the Clyde and the west coast where exactly? In emergency situations, local knowledge saves time and saving time saves lives.
However, reprieving the coastguard stations at Stornoway in the Western Isles and Kirkwall in Orkney has not meant the reprieving of the tugs - Emergency Towing Vessels (ETVs) – based in those waters and due to be axed in less than four weeks time.
Anglian Prince, based in Stornoway, came to public attention in October 2010 – two days after the planned removal of the tugs was announced – when she went to the assistance of the grounded supersubmarine, HMS Astute, in her embarrassment on a gravel bank near the Skye Bridge – the best viewing gallery imaginable.
Anglian Sovereign came down from her base in Kirkwall in the Orkney islands in July 2010 to lead the delicate towing operation to move the bulk carrier, Yeoman Bontrup from the berth at Glensanda Quarry in Morvern – where she had suffered a disastrous onboard fire – to a temporary anchorage in the Lynn of Lorne.
The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) charter the two ETV tugs – along with others in the fleet, from the UK’s oldest tug and barge company, JP Knight of Lowestoft. The tugs are painted in the red and white livery of the MCA, with the black and white funnel colours of JP Knight.
The contract for the ETVs runs out at the end of this month September 2011.
The Emergency Towing Vessels Task Group, campaigning to see the ETVs retained, met in Inverness on Friday 2nd September. Its members agreed action to convince the Westminster Government of the need to extend the current contract by six months to allow for measured decision taking on the matter.
The major concern is with the extent of an environmental disaster should there be an accident to an oil tanker in these dangerous northern waters with no ETVs available in the immediate area.
This concern is fuelled by the break up off Shetland of the tanker MV Braer in January 1993, breaking up after two nights of intense hurricane winds and high seas. She had been taking the route through the Pentland Firth – an additional issue – and, already stranded in rocks off Shetland by a previous storm, was a sitting duck.
The Liberian registered tanker broke into three sections and her entire cargo of 85,000 tons – or 620,000 barrels – of Norwegian light crude oil spilled into the sea around the south of the main Shetland island.
By good fortune, rough seas broke up and dispersed the crude me quickly than could have been imagined, limiting – but not, of course, avoiding – the environmental damage.
The then Defence Secretary, Malcolm Rifkind, visited the scene and was memorably winched down from a helicopter to the shores where the oil was washing in. A senior Conservative and Scottish politician, he should have something to contribute to the debate on the retention of the ETVs.
The meeting in Inverness last Friday learned from MPs present, representing the Western, Orkney and Shetland islands, that they had been told that no formal risk assessment had been undertaken by the MCA before the decision twas taken o allow the ETV contract to fall at the end of September. 2011.
This highlights the reality – that the decision has been taken on financial grounds alone. The MCA is claiming potential savings of £30 million from the proposed axing of the ETV service.
As a consequence of this information, the local authorities represented at the meeting agreed to commission an independent risk assessment to present to the Shipping Minister, Mike Penning and the Chief Executive of the MCA.
Angus Campbell, Leader of Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, said: ‘We can hardly move in the Outer Hebrides for designations supposed to protect the environment. But the one practical piece of insurance that we have for the safety of shipping and the protection of the environment, the Emergency Towing Vehicles, is being abandoned. That cannot make any sense.’
Argyll’s Highlands and Islands MSP, Mike MacKenzie, is a vigorous supporter of the campaign to retain the two tugs, saying: ‘I fully support the actions of the ETV Task Group, made up from councillors from the four local authorities, Highland, Orkney, Shetland and Western Isles (which have responsibilities for the neighbouring coastline), in their efforts to retain those vessels that provide what is considered to be essential back up for fast response when emergencies arise.
‘The Task Group is to seek further meetings with the Minister (Ed: UK Shipping Minister, Mike Penning) and I hope that they will be successful in their efforts to arrest yet further reduction in Coastguard and emergency services on our seas’.
It’s a tragedy that safety on the Scottish seas hasn’t been devolved from Westminster, so that we are at the mercy of Mike Penning, MP for the landlocked constituency of Hemel Hempstead. What a joke!
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I wonder why Ewan Kennedy is not complaining about the minister for the Glasgow Commonwealth Games being MSP for Dundee , or that the Holyrood Minister for children and young people is 41 years old…………
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# Predictably daft comment from the usual suspect!
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Western Isles Council have suggested that the Crown Estate should fund the two ERV’s from the Scottish seabed revenues they have collected.
But it will probably be easier to get blood out of a stone than for Danny Alexander of the Treasury and his Tory masters to agree to that simple solution
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Corrected to ETV’s
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Why can’t the peasants accept once and for all that Crown Estates’ seabed revenues are a tax on them, not for their benefit, shut up whingeing and just get on with being nasty common little people?
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Mike Penning has, as expected, pulled the plug on the future of the Emergency Towing Vessels. Apparently the UK government cannot now afford to fund such such luxuries.
Wonder what will come to the rescue of the next Trident Submarine that runs into one of our islands? The obsolete and obscene Trident operation is a luxury that is supposedly considered essential.
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