WHAT is the government doing to reduce the number of disastrous oil spills that regularly occur in British waters? David Jamieson, the Department for Transport’s shipping minister with responsibility for marine pollution policies, reckons that for a start, single-hull tankers should be phased out.
Following the loss of the Erika in 1999, the UK negotiated for the phasing out of the most vulnerable single-hull tankers by 2007. “We also want to control the movement of heavy oil in such vessels to and from the European Union’s ports,” said Jamieson. This year, the UK and five other EU member states pushed…
