The pursuit of quality The pursuit of quality in shipping operations is hardly new, but it has been given a new impetus in recent times. Shipping is a heavily regulated industry, and there is now a widely held view, on the part of administrations as much as industry, that enough is enough. Today the party line is that the priority must be the implementation of existing regulations rather than the adoption of new ones. It is of course not quite as simple as that. Cutting back on new regulation is not like turning off a tap. Work in progress tends to continue, and for many governments at IMO the development of new rules is part of the natural scheme of things. Nonetheless, there are now signs that the pace of activity is slackening, and this provides the maritime community with both a challenge and an opportunity. The European Commission has been quick to fill the vacuum by promoting a responsible attitude towards self-regulation on the part of the maritime sector as a whole. ICS has in principle welcomed this development, having long argued that the mass of prescriptive regulation has tended to hinder the scope for industry initiative. The debate has been taken forward through a number of conferences and seminars, the whole exercise to date having a noticeably European bias. The starting point was perhaps the Erasmus Forum Conference in November 1996 in Rotterdam, followed by a UK Government-hosted event in London in late 1997. A seminar chaired by European Union Transport Commissioner Neil Kinnock, held in Lisbon in June 1998, put the spotlight on a broad range of maritime interests - insurers, brokers, classification societies, managers and shippers as well as shipowners - by encouraging their representative bodies to state their own objectives in terms of self-regulation, a process continued by an OECD organised meeting in September 1998. A further seminar hosted by the UK Shipping Minister, Glenda Jackson, in December 1998 took the discussion one more step along the road, and efforts are now being made to elaborate various ideas in preparation for yet another conference, to be hosted by the Netherlands Administration in June 1999. The concept underlying the campaign is clear enough: if the pace of new regulation is to be slowed, then the industry must show itself capable of acting responsibly in the safe management of its operations. The practice, however, is more complex. What precisely is the responsibility of a shipper in selecting a safe ship for his cargo? Is the job of the marine insurer to determine quality or simply to assess risk? Should there be a formal obligation on the broker to be more selective on grounds of quality? Can banks be expected to concern themselves with the physical condition of a ship before deciding on a loan? Crucial to the debate about self-regulation is the question of transparency. Informed decisions require access to the necessary information, and the European Commission is currently developing its EQUASIS scheme, intended to provide co-ordinated access to various sources of data about the operation and physical condition of ships - port state control reports, charterers' inspections, certain classification records and the like. The Commission is also seeking to promote an industry charter, intended to encourage organisations to fulfil a semi-regulatory role with regard to their members. ICS has been centrally engaged in all these discussions, and has welcomed their thrust while questioning some of the detail. There certainly is too much prescriptive regulation, and if greater self-regulation is to prosper it must clearly be more than mere words. But whether the formality of an industry charter is the most productive way to proceed is still open to debate, as is the interpretation of quality. The principal object of a quality shipping campaign should be to eliminate sub-standard operation rather than to promote a 'supra' standard. It is one thing to name and shame the bad, but quite another to alienate the great majority of good operators by singling out a select list of the industry's innovators. Furthermore, and importantly, ICS has consistently stressed that shipping is an international industry and that any exercise of this nature will fail unless it embraces the maritime community worldwide. Nonetheless, the overall approach is positive. The shipowner remains ultimately responsible for the safety of his ship, but his partners in the maritime chain also have a part to play. For the first time for many years, perhaps, the whole maritime sector has an opportunity to show that there is a better balance between regulation and self-regulation than has hitherto been achieved. The task now is to carry the discussion forward internationally, ensuring that all interests are brought into the debate. .