Lord Greenway (CB)

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this order, on which I have no complaint— I think it is all very sensible, but I would say that, as a mariner. Following on from what the noble Lord who has just spoken said, I shall be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about this movement of hovercraft from sea to land. The RNLI already uses small hovercraft for dealing with waters where the tide goes out a long way and there are a lot of mudflats, where they find them very useful. However, in terms of general passenger carriage, as the Minister referred to, the service between Southsea and Ryde is in fact the last all-year-round service in the world that uses hovercraft for carrying passengers. In some ways, it is very welcome that it uses hovercraft—as we have heard, invented by Christopher Cockerell—but it is also rather sad because, in many ways, the hovercraft was a brief flash in the pan in maritime history. It developed quite considerably from small hovercraft, such as the SRN6, up to the SRN4, which was quite a large hovercraft—in fact, it was even lengthened for service across the channel from Dover to Calais. However, hovercraft were not without their problems, and in fact there were at least two fatal accidents. One of the smaller SRN hovercraft flipped over in a gale just off Southsea and nine people were drowned. One of the larger ones, also in a gale, hit the breakwater coming into Dover, which put a 60-foot gash in its side, and a number of people fell out, four of whom, sadly, were pronounced dead. The hovercraft was, in many ways, an interesting and wonderful invention, but I am afraid that it was overtaken, first, by the huge fuel-price hikes in the 1960s and 1970s and, then, of course, by the introduction of the Channel Tunnel, which really killed off the larger hovercraft that crossed the channel. They went out of action in the year 2000. As I said, I have no complaints about this order, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply.