UK Maritime Industry

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and John Hayes

Thursday 12th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mr Carmichael]

It will not surprise the hon. Gentleman to hear that I will have a fair bit to say about national minimum wage and national living wage enforcement, because that is something that has come very much to the fore this year. It came to my attention in particular through the detention of the Malaviya Seven in Aberdeen and its sister ship, the Malaviya Twenty, in Great Yarmouth. Those ships have been detained by the International Transport Workers Federation as a result of non-payment of the crew’s wages. The ownership of the ships is being contested—the case is winding its way through the courts. I am afraid I have to say that the willingness of the shipowners in those cases to leave the seafarers they employ effectively destitute does them no credit. Sadly, it does not reflect particularly well on the wider industry, either.

Where we have seen some progress—the Seatruck case—is however perhaps the low-hanging fruit. As I see it, that is just the tip of the iceberg. As we speak here in London, there are non-domiciled seafarers, principally Filipinos, working out of Scottish ports, being paid significantly less than the national minimum wage but still having retained by their employment agents—also domiciled outside the EU and also principally Filipinos, I am told—some 32% of their wages in respect of UK tax and national insurance. In some ways, that illustrates the absurdity and inadequacy of the current enforcement arrangements. If these men are not here working as part of the UK, why are they paying UK taxes? If they are here working as part of the UK, why are they not given the protection offered to other UK employees and workers?

The more I find out, the more it seems that the situation facing many seafarers working on ships that in some cases have not left UK waters effectively for decades is just as bad as the situation that led the previous Labour Government to set up the gangmasters licensing system. It may be that at some point we will have to take a similar approach on the position of seafarers.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr John Hayes)]

I intervene because it is so often the case that there is not sufficient time at the end to answer all the points made in the debate. The right hon. Gentleman is striking a chord with me, with which I have considerable sympathy, as he will know from our work together in the past. We will do more on this—he can be assured of that—and I hope to say a little more about that at the end.

[Mr Carmichael]

I am immensely grateful to the Minister for that intervention. I know he has a personal and political commitment in this regard and I am delighted that he was able to offer us that assurance again.

This is not just about the treatment of Filipino seafarers; there is also an effect on UK seafarers. First, because of such employment practices, UK seafarers are excluded from employment opportunities that would otherwise be available to them. That also drives down wages for those who are employed. I am told that Stena Line, the largest UK employer of seafarers, cut the hourly rate of pay for ratings employed seasonally—from June to September—from £8.31 to £7.20, which is the minimum wage rate. That is a graphic illustration of the direct impact on UK seafarers.

The situation has a context. For the Government’s purposes, that context is the maritime growth strategy that they commissioned in 2014. That was a good, comprehensive piece of work, and it was welcomed. If anything, it was somewhat overdue, coming the best part of two decades after the previous piece of work had been done. It made a number of recommendations. The most important was that leadership was required from both Government and the industry, including though a more commercial and responsive UK maritime administration within Government and an industry-led promotional body, with more proactive action to replenish and develop the skills needed to maintain our position as a world-leading maritime sector and effective marketing by the industry and Government of what the UK maritime sector has to offer both domestically and internationally to be strengthened.

I could probably do 90 minutes on the maritime growth strategy alone, but in view of the number of others who wish to take part in the debate, I will concentrate on the one aspect that, to my mind, is probably the most significant: training of seafarers. The Minister will know that since the turn of the century, we have had the SMarT—support for maritime training—scheme, which currently holds something in the region of £15 million. The British Chamber of Shipping tells me that it is looking for a doubling of that. I hope the Minister will look at that, because in terms of Government expenditure that is of course a significant ask, but it could bring significant rewards. I hope, though, that when the Minister engages with the industry in respect of that ask, he will not be shy about attaching some strings to any increase in funding.

I am told that a year’s guaranteed employment is on offer for those who are trained as officers under the scheme. That of course would tackle one of the major difficulties that I hear about consistently from constituents who work in the industry: that officers in particular are trained under SMarT scheme funding, but there is no employment for them once they qualify. There has to be a little more detail. We have to do more than simply extend the cliff edge out by one year, so that a situation in which we currently have training followed by no employment does not then become training followed by one year’s employment followed by no employment.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and John Hayes

Thursday 17th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

12. What discussions he has had with officials of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs on enforcement of the national minimum wage for seafarers employed in the North sea.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr John Hayes)]

The right hon. Gentleman will know I am a proud trade unionist. This is an area of great concern to me. I have met my friends in the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, and Nautilus International—I have Nautilus’ charter with me. My officials have been working closely with officials in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and HMRC, as well as stakeholders, on the application of the national minimum wage to seafarers in UK waters more generally.

[Mr Carmichael]

I am grateful to hear that the Minister is taking this matter seriously. It surely cannot be right for HMRC to deem that a ferry service that starts in Aberdeen and finishes in Lerwick is operating wholly outside UK territorial waters. It is nonsense for the body that is supposed to enforce the minimum wage to be undermining it in this way. Will the Government do something to stop this?

[Mr Hayes]

I worked with the right hon. Gentleman in government and he knows of me what I know of him, which is that he does his homework. I have the statutory instrument and the original legislation in my hand as I speak. Let me tell him this: I am committed to reviewing the legislation to ensure that it applies to the offshore sector.

Investigatory Powers Bill

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and John Hayes

Report: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 7th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Carmichael]

I can only regret the tone of the remarks of the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare). Had he said anything about the content of the Bill or the amendment, I might have regretted that as well.

There are a number of matters on which I wish to touch today. I should like to speak first of all in relation to the review, which has formed so much of today’s debate. I very much welcome the appointment of David Anderson, QC. He commands respect and confidence in all parts of the House. As the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) said earlier, it is significant and important that, first of all, he has a remit that looks at the necessity of these provisions and also that he has been able to select for himself the team with which he will be working.

I very much hope that the report will be produced in time for the Bill to be given the benefit of it when it is considered in the other place. I say to the Minister that if it is a question of a week or two here or there, notwithstanding the deadlines to which we are all working, it would be proper for the Government to take the view that it is best to get this report right rather than to get it out quickly. For my part, I am disinclined to think that David Anderson would have taken on this job if he were not able to do it in the time that is allowed to him, but, as we all know with these matters, sometimes the unexpected happens and sometimes it is not always easy to get to the truth of things. I do hope that there will be a degree of flexibility among the Government’s business managers, not least if we need a Government day to debate the report, so that the House has its voice heard.

[Mr John Hayes]

I will, if I may, suggest to the right hon. Gentleman, whom I worked with in government and whom I know very well, that the scope of the report should be a matter for David Anderson. For example, if he were to want to take into account the experience of other countries—this is something that the right hon. Gentleman and the SNP spokesperson called for—that would be a matter for David Anderson. We are not attempting to tie his hands in any way. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, it is my view that we need to get this review completed, so that we do not pass something into legislation without the information that emanates from it.

[Mr Carmichael]

I am grateful to the Minister for that. We are now best served by allowing Mr Anderson to get on and do the job that we have given him. I merely say in passing that it would have been better if we had given him that job some time ago, so that this House might have had the benefit of his conclusions when debating this whole matter. None the less, I welcome the conversion of the Government, however late in the day it may have come, to the need and to the acceptance of what even the Labour party has said, which is that the operational case for the extent of the bulk powers that the Government have sought to introduce in this Bill has not yet been made. The operational case that they have published has been vague, to be kind to it, and it has certainly been lacking in any persuasiveness.

We will look very closely at David Anderson’s conclusion with regard to the necessity of these powers, because that should have been the first test that was set and that was required to be met. I take very little issue with the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), or indeed the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras, when they talk about the protections that they think should be built into the Bill. Protections are necessary only if the powers are first judged to be necessary, which comes to the very heart of the points made by the hon. Member for North Dorset. The Bill has very much been a work in progress and I wonder whether we would have had the 104 Government amendments we had yesterday and the 20 that we have today, never mind those tabled by the Intelligence and Security Committee, by those on the Opposition Front Bench and by the Scottish National party, if the House had taken the approach to the Bill and its scrutiny that was being urged on us a few minutes ago.

On the question of bulk personal datasets, I share the substantial concerns that have already been expressed. That brings me back to the objection that I have already spoken about—to the operational case. That is another aspect of the Bill that the Government have failed to explain. The operational case is perhaps even more opaque than anything else in the Bill. Although the abuses—let us use that term—outlined by the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) and acknowledged by the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield might be at the lower end of the scale, I have a strong suspicion that it was because they were at the lower end of the scale that they came into the public domain in the first place. When we are dealing with something that strikes in such a fundamental way at the relationship between the citizen and the state, there is, frankly, no such thing as a trivial abuse. Any abuse is serious, any abuse is to be taken seriously, and that is why I thought that the hon. and learned Lady was right to bring them to the House’s attention.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Alistair Carmichael]

May I, through the right hon. Gentleman, tell the Minister that, when he says he will speak to people in the House and others, those others really must include the National Union of Journalists?

[Mr Hayes]

indicated assent.

[The Solicitor General]

indicated assent.