Seafarers’ Wages Bill [Lords]

David Linden Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Not only has 2022 been a year of opportunity, new jobs, higher wages and investment across Dover and Deal, but it has been a difficult and challenging year, with a number of significant and sometimes shocking events occurring around our sea border. Looking back to this time last year, I would not have expected to see a household name, a much-loved part of the Dover landscape, a global company headquartered in the town, become a pariah and a disgrace, not just in the maritime community, but in the business world. That is what the directors of P&O Ferries made it in March 2022. P&O’s management is a total disgrace, and it has put a stain on the name of this great company. In March, I wrote to the Insolvency Service, calling on it to consider director disqualification action against the named directors of P&O Ferries Ltd and its parent company, P&O Ferries Holding Ltd, on the basis of the directors’ misconduct.

The Insolvency Service has a responsibility to uphold confidence in directors and to hold them to account for serious misconduct. The response from the service has been wholly inadequate so far. I ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to press the Insolvency Service to step in and do its job—to hold those P&O directors to account for their reprehensible, immoral and unlawful conduct. I still have constituents who have not been compensated properly for lost or stolen belongings. I ask the Minister to meet me to see how my constituents can be helped, so that this matter can finally be resolved for them.

In relation to the well-made comments on the intensity of the channel route, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency looked at these issues for Irish Ferries when it came into Dover and for P&O when it tried to stand up its agency workers and was not allowed to do so because they were not good and ready. I ask the Minister to have a conversation with the agency and then for us to meet further to discuss how assurances can be given that the intensity of the channel route is being properly monitored and considered in relation to the safety of workers and passengers on it.

Looking back to the sackings in March, I was glad to take up an offer from Darren Procter of the RMT union to march with the workers, my constituents in Dover Town, along with other prominent local Conservatives. As the local MP, I supported workers in two previous restructurings of the workforce of P&O, working with the unions and speaking to the management of P&O. It was completely untrue, therefore, for P&O to seek to blame predicted union militancy by RMT for its disgraceful management behaviour, because previous restructurings had been by negotiated settlement.

P&O did not even try to negotiate. It just decided that it would break the law. None the less, it is true that, on the day I marched with the RMT, we did see the ugly face of the militant unions and the Labour party. It is also true that the Labour party saw an opportunity to exploit the shocking corporate behaviour of P&O, just as we have heard that it intends not to fully and unequivocally support the measures of this important Bill today.

As I was surrounded by bused-in, hard-left aggressive militants outside the RMT headquarters in Dover, I was rescued by local union members whom I know and who brought me into the building for my safety. Imagine my shock when I saw the leadership of the RMT—Mick Lynch no less—and other trade union barons holding a Zoom meeting with none other than the Labour leader, the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer). While I was in that private meeting, I was shocked to hear how the Labour leader and the trade union barons were chatting away about exploiting the P&O situation in Parliament for political gain in those coming days, and how the unions could create a winter of discontent, stoked up by trade unions here. It seemed to me, listening to everyone that day, that they were working hand in glove with the Labour leadership.

Back then, in the spring, I thought that it was just wishful thinking on the part of Labour and the trade union barons. Now Mick Lynch has turned into the Christmas Grinch and the winter of union trouble making is well and truly under way—and not a word of condemnation from those on the Labour Front Bench, and I think that we all know why.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

As a Scottish nationalist MP, there is not a lot of love lost between me and the Labour party. It certainly comes as a surprise to me to hear that the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) is very much in cahoots with the unions. I think that he could do an awful lot more to stand up for Labour values. However, at the heart of all of this are the hon. Lady’s constituents who were treated incredibly badly by P&O. The issue here is not the RMT union; the issue here is P&O Ferries, which has acted disgracefully. I urge her to try to get back to that point, which is what the Bill is about.

[Mrs Elphicke]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. As I have made it very clear, as the Dover MP, I have worked very constructively with the RMT, and particularly with the local branch. What I saw that day was the Labour leader on Zoom, and it seemed to me from that meeting that he was looking for political opportunism, rather than having the interests of my constituents at heart. I am therefore very pleased that so many Members on the Opposition Benches now speak so freely about my constituents, but I urge them to fully support the Bill, and not to seek to create division and engage in shameless political opportunism on what they know is a very specific Bill, as they have already done in the Lords.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke), particularly with some of the late Christmas cracker jokes she was deploying in the Chamber there.

As we approach the recess, many of us will have our usual favourite films and programmes to watch as we rest up on the couch, recovering from the excesses of Christmas and new year celebrations. For some it may be “Miracle on 34th Street”, “Home Alone” or that classic “It’s a Wonderful Life”. I personally look forward to the now-annual mockumentary on Netflix, previously called “Death to 2020” or “Death to 2021”. I have no doubt that the March segment of “Death to 2022” will feature the disgraceful behaviour of P&O Ferries and its chief executive officer Peter Hebblethwaite—who would surely make Scrooge look like Bambi—as it chronicles the outrageous decision to fire nearly 800 directly employed seafarers on these islands.

In watching the Netflix mockumentary, I suddenly remember all the appalling things that unfolded in the year just past. However, for many seafarers, including those who live in my East End constituency, the P&O tragedy is much more than a mere three or four-minute segment of a documentary. While the P&O dispute is long buried in most folks’ memories, it is important to understand how and why we came to that position and how we can improve things.

Although the previous Prime Minister—I mean the second-to-last one—had said that Ministers would be taking legal action, the Insolvency Service quietly dropped criminal prosecution of P&O Ferries. While the actions of P&O Ferries were disgusting and deeply unethical, they highlighted some serious weaknesses in employment law, not to mention refuelling the “fire and rehire” issue that continues to plague ordinary workers and be a plaything of unscrupulous bosses in boardrooms across the land. That is why many of us on the Opposition Benches have been disappointed that the long-awaited post-Brexit employment Bill never materialised and why many of us would, frankly, now be surprised to see one this side of a general election.

The Bill before the House tonight—just a day before we rise for our Christmas recess—is obviously not one that should be opposed, but I think there is a broad consensus in the debate, including on the Conservative Benches, that it is not a silver bullet, nor will it fix the problems it seeks to remedy. The Bill needs significant amendment and improvement, as many of my constituents have made clear.

I was struck by the hon. Member for Witney (Robert Courts) referring to the fact that he represents a rural, landlocked constituency in Oxfordshire. Similarly, in my small city constituency I have a number of RMT members, particularly seafarers, who have worked on P&O Ferries. My constituent from Barlanark wants the Bill improved to increase seafarer jobs and build our green maritime skills base. Another constituent from Easterhouse who wrote to me wants to see the Bill amended to promote collectively bargained terms and conditions, as is the case, for example, in France.

Likewise, another constituent believes the Bill must support domestic seafarer jobs on the international routes that keep the economy of these islands functioning and secure. Lastly, an email from a resident of Sandyhills gets to the nub of the issue here, state-sanctioned pay exploitation, highlighting that P&O Ferries pays under £4 per hour on contracts of up to 17 weeks. Ministers regularly stand up at the Dispatch Box and tell us that work is the best route out of poverty—but not, it would appear, for a seafarer.

Many hon. Members have outlined and will outline how the Bill can be improved, particularly as it moves into Committee, but I want to touch on just a few things this evening. I am particularly grateful to colleagues in the RMT, which I am proud to support, for their briefing on this Bill. More generally, I send my continued solidarity and best wishes to their rail members who are engaged in an industrial dispute. I have certainly been proud to join them on picket lines, and I have no expectation that my party leader will ask for me to be fired or anything like that as a result of doing so.

However, coming back to the Bill, it would be fair to say that it must be widened in scope. In my opinion and that of many others, it is too narrowly drawn, a point made by peers when it started its legislative journey in the other place. The Bill would, I believe, benefit from being widened in scope to tackle some of the wider conditions that P&O and other operators use to exploit and recruit crew on pay and conditions that undercut UK-based seafarers and responsible operators.

Fundamentally, in its current form, the Bill does not address the nationality-based pay discrimination on ships that routinely work from UK ports, regardless of flag or crew nationality. There is a real risk that this Bill’s passing unamended would lead to avoidance techniques such as changes to port call schedules, which have already been referred to. Basically, port-hopping becomes more likely the more frequently a vessel calls at a UK port.

The RMT briefing, for example, makes it clear that at 120 calls per year, it would be far easier for operators to make very modest changes to scheduled port calls in order to avoid this legislation, whereas 52 calls would be far tighter and was, I understand, the Government’s intention when the Bill was launched. Looking at the Hansard from when the Bill went through the Lords, I can see no legitimate reason why the Government departed from 52 weeks after the consultation, especially when there was widespread support for it from trade unions.

Baroness Vere is on record in the other place saying:

“I do not think operators would play switcheroo with UK ports because, frankly, their customers would not put up with it.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 26 October 2022; Vol. 824, c. 1506.]

In short, the Minister is saying that it will be all right on the night and we should just leave it to market conditions to dictate the direction of travel. However, I remind Ministers that the whole reason we are in this sorry mess in the first place is precisely a lack of regulation and an increasing tolerance for casino-style decision making on the part of bosses who have shamelessly, and unquestionably, exploited staff. We should learn that leaving it to the market will not necessarily be helpful.

There is one other aspect of the Bill I want to draw to the attention of the House before I conclude. It relates to offshore wind and the renewables sector, something particularly pertinent to Scotland. At the moment, as I understand it, crew working on vessels servicing the offshore oil and gas industry are entitled to protection when it comes to national minimum wage legislation, but that protection is not extended to crew, sometimes on the same ships, who work instead on offshore windfarms in the UK exclusive economic zone. That point was respected by the Minister in Grand Committee in the House of Lords, so it is clearly an issue for the Government. As an MP from Scotland, where we have a burgeoning offshore and renewables sector, that gap concerns me greatly and I believe it must be plugged.

All that makes the point that the Bill before the House tonight falls short of what is expected following the P&O debacle. The unintended consequences of not tightening things up will, once more, lead to future Parliaments having to come back and fix issues that have been highlighted in this debate and will only prolong the injustice faced by seafarers.

I started my remarks tonight by talking about the films we all watch during the Christmas holidays. I rather fear that, if this Bill was made into a film, it could quite easily be called “A Missed Opportunity”. Let us ensure that that is not the case, and instead bring the Bill into dry dock for major repair and improvement when this legislation is considered in Committee.