Seafarers’ Wages Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Mountevans and Baroness Randerson

Wednesday 12th October 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Mountevans (CB)]

My Lords, the case for the Secretary of State being responsible for surcharges was very well made by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. To summarise, it sits much better with the Secretary of State. We have a situation in which the port authority is normally providing a service to the owner; the owner-operator is therefore a customer. To be, in effect, levying a fine on your customer is an unnatural state of affairs. In the interests of transparency and consistency, we should have one entity in the land deciding these things. They can vary from port to port and there may be special circumstances, but it is desirable to have one authority making the surcharge across the land.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lords, Lord Berkeley and Lord Mountevans, for joining us on some of these amendments. I will briefly underline some of the points that my noble friend and those noble Lords made.

The complexity of expecting ports to do what is essentially the Government’s job for them will undermine the effectiveness of this legislation. Think about the use of the term “surcharge”. You pay a surcharge when you use a service voluntarily; it has no implication of illegality. If, however, a company finds itself paying a surcharge according to the rubric of this Bill when it becomes legislation, it will have broken the law. In other words, it is paying a surcharge as a fine—and a fine should be called a fine. I urge the Minister to look again at the phraseology here. Let us be clear: if companies are going to be fined, let us call it a fine.

The other issue is the complexity of expecting ports to deny access to the harbour. The international law on denying access to a harbour is complex and it would be difficult for them to do so. They would have to be absolutely sure that there is no question of danger to life. As a result, they will err on the side of caution and it will not happen. As both the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and my noble friend Lady Scott said, detaining ships is a normal course of events. It is not done frequently but it is done, and for safety reasons as well. I urge the Government to have the courage of their convictions and give these powers to the Secretary of State, because they are much more appropriately those of the Secretary of State.

It is not as if the Government do not want to be involved, because Clause 11 gives them wide-ranging powers of direction. It essentially gives them control, so the Government want that control behind the scenes but do not have the courage to put their name on the notices. That is a strange approach, so I urge them to rethink the way this is to be done. The impact would be that well-meaning and very important legislation could be undermined. At the same time, it would put our ports in a difficult position, make their relationship with ship owners more complex and create for them, as other noble Lords said, a conflict of interest.