UK Maritime Industry

Chris Stephens Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the future of the UK maritime industry.

I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allowing us the opportunity to debate this most important industry today, and I am grateful to see so many colleagues from across the House present. We have probably gone beyond the point in the year where we should be wishing each other a happy new year, but given that today we are on the old new year, I can wish you, Mr Walker, and indeed those residents in parts of my constituency such as Foula, where they still keep the old new year, a happy old new year. I say that because the people of Foula—like, indeed, people in island communities throughout the country—can maintain their lifestyle because of the dedication, commitment and professionalism of seafarers. Without seafarers, we who live in island communities simply could not exist in the way we do. Of course, that is true of the nation as a whole because the United Kingdom is an island nation.

The UK maritime industry faces a number of fairly significant challenges. Those are not new. We have been on a track that has taken us mostly down—occasionally up—for some decades. I will start, however, with a rare piece of good news. Hon. Members will have heard me speak before about the situation pertaining to the arrangements involving Seatruck, which provides the freight ferry to the Northern Isles that serves Orkney and Shetland. It was announced yesterday that Serco, which holds the franchise for the service, and Seatruck, which provides the ferries, have been able to do a deal that guarantees that the ratings on the ferries will be paid the minimum wage at the very least. It remains to be seen whether the collective bargaining agreement between the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers and NorthLink for the remainder of that franchised public service will be extended to those ferry services, but the guarantee is at least something to welcome.

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. Does he agree that it would be helpful if the shipping Minister were to announce today that the national minimum wage would be paid to all seafarers across the United Kingdom?

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) on securing this debate.

I thought I would take only a moment or two to discuss seafarers, but the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond) goaded me with her interpretation of the national shipbuilding strategy, so I will say something about that, although I doubt whether I will take five minutes.

On the principal issue of seafarers and the national minimum wage, I welcome the Minister’s remark that a chord has been struck. I want to take this opportunity to applaud the actions of the Scottish Government, in particular the Minister for Transport and the Islands, Humza Yousaf, who shares a constituency office with me. He knows that I have been on at him about this issue for a while. It is good that a deal seems to have been secured, or at least an agreement in principle, that will ensure that the services operated by Seatruck, which is contracted by Serco Northlink, will now pay its employees the national minimum wage. Many of us in the House today have been concerned about the ill treatment of workers in the maritime industry.

Representatives from various agencies deserve great credit for working hard to find a solution to a complicated situation, including Transport Scotland. I have not been a fan of Transport Scotland for many years, because I was a trade union activist who had to deal with it when I was employed by Glasgow city council. This is a rare occasion when I applaud it for dealing with the matter.

It was manifestly disgraceful that seafarers were being paid as little as £4 an hour—I think the actual figure was £3.66 an hour. I hope the Minister will announce a legislative timetable for ending pay discrimination in the UK shipping industry, which the RMT union has called for and which the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) emphasised. It is not right that shipowners have been cutting the wage bill because they can discriminate against seafarers by paying them less than the statutory minimum wage.

If practices that we have heard about today took place on dry land, the enforcement agencies would be acting almost immediately. I hope the Minister will tell us what discussions are taking place with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to address the situation and ensure adequate enforcement, because the out-of-sight, out-of-mind attitude must be replaced with action.

The hon. Member for Portsmouth South goaded me with her comments about the national shipbuilding strategy, which contrasted with the excellent remarks by the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), who, like me, is proud that he was born in the great city of Glasgow, the home of world shipbuilding.

Sir John Parker’s report does not say that shipbuilding should be moved from elsewhere; it caveats that position. There is a flaw in the report where it says that different ships and different Navy ships have been built concurrently on the Clyde. That was the case with the Irish shipbuilders, where my father worked when they were building ships for the Royal Navy and the Malaysian Navy at the same time.

There is shipbuilding on the Clyde because of the tenacious campaigning by the trade union movement over decades to ensure work on the Clyde. I hope we will continue to build ships there because we are the best shipbuilders in the world.