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DEPARTMENT OF TRADE (SP)
1 VICTORIA STREET
LONDON SWIH OET
TELEPHONE DIRECT LINE 01 215 5406
SWITCHBOARD 01 215 7877
(~17)
P Morgan Esq
UN Department
Foreign & Commonwealth Office
King Charles Street
London SW1A 2AH
Draw Put
VIETNAMESE REFUGEES
26 June 1979
I's Williams JM.6
7-76
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ace (130?
My letter of 18 June referred to the operating expenses which British shipowners face in the interim period between rescuing refugees and an agreement being reached with the country of first port of call to allow the refugees to disembark.
That letter was intended as a first warning shot since we anticipated that shipowner pressure for reimbursement would intensify. You may already know that Lord Rochdale's motion on the state of the UK shipping industry was debated in Parliament on 21 June and that during the debate Lord Inverforth made reference to the expense which his Company had faced with Sibonga and Roachbank. I have not yet seen Hansard but I have been told that Government spokesmen äid not respond directly to his points. We are, however, due to give the General Council of British Shipping a substantive answer on this issue after having consulted inter-departmentally.
You will have seen from paragraph 4 of Chris Hayward's report of 20 June about the Roachbank that Bank Line estimate the cost of providing food for the refugees is at least £10,500. The off-hire costs are at £7,000 per day and the possibility is that the ship will be at least 32 days off-hire. They have also had to sustain similar costs for the Sibonga incident.
The Bank Line problem is one which has faced other shipowners recently and may well face others in the future. Clearly one answer to the problem is to attempt to mitigate the effects by making strenuous efforts to ensure that each case is dealt with as expeditiously as possible. I am sure that this has been done, nevertheless an answer on such lines would not satisfy the British shipowner.
In my view it would be difficult to deny that the shipowners' cut- of-pocket expences as distinct from off-hire expenses fall into the same category as those incurred at refugee transit camps and those for transporting refugees from those camps to a place of resettlement. I am now going to have to press you for an answer to
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