National Minimum Wage (Offshore Employment) (Amendment) Order 2020

Baroness Northover Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Viscount for introducing this statutory instrument, and his officials for their very useful Explanatory Notes. The noble Viscount’s party opposed the minimum wage when it was first introduced by the Labour Government. We supported its introduction as long overdue. There was concern at the time that paying the minimum wage might price people out of jobs, but that proved not to be the case. It is interesting and encouraging to see how times have changed, with widespread support for the principle. The debate has now moved on to a discussion of the more substantial living wage, as the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, said. I am sure that we will come back to that as we come out of Covid, with the Government talking about levelling up yet facing an economy in crisis.

When the national minimum wage was introduced in 1998 and then applied in 1999 to offshore workers, it did not include seafarers, and this SI remedies that. It is surprising that it has taken more than 20 years to do so, as my noble friend Lady Burt noted. The SI excludes boats that are in transit through our waters, and I note the UN definition of those with right of innocent passage. That rather begs the question of whether we should include in the minimum wage those invading us, which would certainly be very generously turning the other cheek.

As the notes explain, the SI aims to include those whose work is on, for example, fishing vessels and dredgers in UK territorial waters and the UK sector of the continental shelf and other seafarers working domestically in UK territorial waters. It is striking to note that the question of whether they should be covered was raised more than a decade before the working group was set up. I am glad that the group included the maritime unions as well as the UK Chamber of Shipping and shipping companies, and that it seems to have made very clear and agreed recommendations. Has any estimate been made of the nationalities of those covered? What proportion are UK nationals? What proportion come from the EU and what proportion from the rest of the world? Are there any other groups which as yet have not been properly included in minimum wage legislation? If there are, what plans are there to remedy that?

I welcome this statutory instrument and look forward to the noble Viscount’s response.