The UK's Shipping Minister Mike Penning has told the BBC that cruise passengers may not be properly protected if they become victims of serious crime on board.
Mr Penning has told BBC Radio 4's Face the Facts that when cruise ships are on the high seas and serious crime takes place on board, current international law prevents him from providing British passengers with the level of protection they would expect on land.
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In the recent case of Rebecca Coriam from Chester, who disappeared last March while working on a cruise ship, only one police officer from the Bahamas was sent to investigate. That, the family say, was only because they insisted on a police investigation.
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Cruise ships do have security officers but they are paid employees and according to Geoff Furlong, a former Scotland Yard detective who worked for six years as a security officer in the 1990s, this can cause a conflict of interest.
When he was investigating a rape on board a cruise ship in the Caribbean, it had to be abandoned.
"I sealed the cabin, I told the steward on duty that the cabin was to remain locked and to remain untouched, it required forensic examination… and when I woke up, I was informed that the mattress involved on the bed had been dumped overboard."
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