Patrick O'Donovan

The keynote address was given by the Rt. Hon. Lord Bingham of Cornhill, the Senior Law Lord, who noted that international regulations like the existing ISM and the new ISPS codes were bound to give rise to problems and arguments about the consequences of non-compliance and about where the cost of compliance and the cost of delay should fall. The threat of terrorism will result in more stringent precautions being brought into force, perhaps on a local or piecemeal basis. He said that these were problems that were likely to end up on the desks of maritime arbitrators and were ones that were well suited to maritime arbitrators’ expertise.

The Cedric Barclay Memorial Lecture was given by the Lord Mayor of the City of London, Alderman Robert Finch. The theme of his lecture was a plea for more appeals to the courts to be allowed through the net of Section 69 of the Arbitration Act 1996. He said that there was a real concern that “the present day restrictive system of appeals from arbitration is having a stultifying effect on the development of English commercial law and there is a danger that if this situation persists it may do long-term damage”. (This theme was taken up by other speakers over the course of the Congress.) His other topic concerned the issue of new premises for the Commercial Court. He commented that he was disappointed “that a Treasury decision to allow the construction of a new Commercial Court remains in the wings”, although he stressed that he believed that the Treasury does understand the huge contribution that legal services in the UK provide to the Exchequer (some press reports, erroneously, had him saying the opposite). A copy of the lecture is available from Patrick O’Donovan.

The final highlight was the Gala Dinner (combined this year with the annual dinner of the L.M.A.A.) which was held at the Guildhall and at which the guest speaker was the Rt. Hon. Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, the Master of the Rolls.