Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
English maritime law 2000
Stephen Girvin and Howard Bennett *
This article is the first of what, it is hoped, will be an annual instalment. The aim is to highlight, sometimes critically, the major developments in maritime law during the previous calendar year, in much the same way as has been done for some years in this
Quarterly in the case of Canada
1
and Australia.
2
Inevitably, the major focus of the survey is the cases reported during the calendar year and, on the evidence here, the Commercial and Admiralty Courts (as well as the higher courts) had a busy year in 2000. In one or two instances, where cases have in the meantime been taken on appeal and varied by the higher court, the changes have been referred to now though they were, in fact, reported in 2001.
A. Legislation
There were no major maritime legislative changes during the 2000 calendar year. The main interest of the year was the introduction of the new United Kingdom tonnage tax3
by the Finance Act 2000.4
There were a number of new statutory instruments, most of them made pursuant to powers given to the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions5
under the Merchant Shipping Act 1995.6
Some of these are of a “housekeeping” nature which do not merit special discussion.7
I. Merchant Shipping (Prevention of Oil Pollution) (Amendment) Regulations 20008
These regulations, which came into force on 1 April 2000, amend the Merchant Shipping (Prevention of Oil Pollution) Regulations 1996.9
Their purpose is to give effect to various
* Respectively, Senior Lecturer in Law and Hind Professor of Commercial Law, University of Nottingham. Dr Girvin took responsibility for sections A–I and Professor Bennett for sections J–K. [This article was prepared for publication in 2001 but has had to be held over owing to pressure on space—Ed.]
1. By Professor William Tetley, Q.C., of McGill University, Montreal; see [2001] LMCLQ 551.
2. By Professor Martin Davies of Tulane Law School (formerly Melbourne); see [2001] LMCLQ 491.
3. See infra,
text to fn. 27.
4. c. 22.
5. See <www.detr.gov.uk>.
6. c. 21. See Nicholas Gaskell, Current Law Statutes: Merchant Shipping Act 1995
(Chap. 21); Nevil Phillips and Nicholas Craig, The Merchant Shipping Act 1995: An annotated guide,
2nd edn (London, 2001).
7. See, e.g., The Merchant Shipping (Safe Manning, Hours of Work and Watchkeeping) (Amendment) Regulations 2000: S.I. 2000 No. 484. The Docks and Harbours (Rateable Values) (England) Order 2000: S.I. 2000 No. 951; The Merchant Shipping (Fees) (Amendment) Regulations 2000: S.I. 2000 No. 1683.
8. S.I. 2000 No. 483.
9. S.I. 1996 No. 2154.
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