Singapore's Maritime and Port Authority (MPA) draws its regulatory power from statute. The Merchant Shipping Act 1995 and the subsidiary legislation made under it define who may survey a pleasure craft, and the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore Act 1996 governs port clearance. When a statutory body wishes to change those rules, the question is not whether the change is sensible but whether it has the legal authority to make it, and in what form. Can the MPA use an administrative shipping circular to narrow a class of persons defined by regulation, to sideline surveyors that the Director of Marine has authorised, or to attach a training requirement to port clearance that no statute mentions? Singapore administrative law answers each through two doctrines: ultra vires, which confines a body to the powers Parliament actually gave it, and the rule against fettering discretion, which prevents rigid policies from displacing a discretion the law requires to be exercised.
The Statutory Definition of a "Recognised Surveyor"
The starting point is that the class of persons who may survey a pleasure craft is fixed by subsidiary legislation, not by administrative practice. Regulation 2 of the Merchant Shipping (Pleasure Craft) Regulations 2020 defines a "recognised surveyor" disjunctively:
"'recognised surveyor' means — (a) a person who is employed by an accredited organisation to conduct a survey of a pleasure craft and to issue a survey report under Part 3; or (b) a person who is authorised by the Director to conduct a survey of a pleasure craft and to issue a survey report under Part 3."
The definition recognises two independent pathways. A surveyor qualifies either by employment with an accredited organisation or by authorisation from the Director. Neither limb is subordinate to the other; the regulation gives them equal standing. That matters because these Regulations are themselves an exercise of delegated legislative power. They were made under sections 44(2), 45, 100(1), 116(1) and 216 of the Merchant Shipping Act, with the approval of the Minister for Transport, and then gazetted. Section 216 empowers the Authority, with the Minister's approval, to make regulations for the survey of ships and the issue of certificates. The power is exercised by regulation, through a formal legislative process, and not by circular.
The consequence follows directly. If the class of recognised surveyor is to be narrowed, for instance to accept only surveyors employed by accredited organisations for registration purposes, that change touches the definition in Regulation 2 and must be made by amending the subsidiary legislation. An administrative circular that reaches the same result by declining to accept Director-authorised surveyors does by the back door what the regulation-making power exists to do at the front, and it does so without the ministerial approval and gazetting that the process requires.