Decarbonising Rural Transport

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

Thank you, Mr Davies; it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) on securing the debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for facilitating it.

The hon. Member opened the debate very well, setting out a number of issues that are the same across pretty much all rural areas in the UK. As she said, many of the solutions for our towns and cities simply would not suit a rural setting or be as efficient. She mentioned a lack of electric vehicle chargers and the reinstatement of rail lines. She also welcomed the Government’s £200 million active travel budget and plans, although that pales into insignificance compared with the Scottish Government’s investment in active travel, as I will set out.

The hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) mentioned zero-emission buses and the requirement for further Government support. I could not agree more, and I will touch on that later. The hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) made an excellent point about social isolation, and how we need to be careful that rural decarbonisation solutions do not entrench those issues or make them worse. She also made a salient point about capacity issues in our rural electricity grid.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)— I call him the hon. Member for Strangford and Westminster Hall West—gave an excellent speech, as usual. My biggest surprise was that he said he liked something green; that may also be a surprise to some people watching, certainly in Scotland. He mentioned the time it takes to charge a car. In a recent debate in this place, we spoke about the charging issues in Northern Ireland. As an EV owner myself, I would have been unlikely to make the switch if I lived in Northern Ireland, such is the paucity of public chargers over there. He also mentioned the importance of the UK Government’s ZEBRA—zero-emission bus regional areas—scheme, and obviously he has Wrightbus in Northern Ireland. The implementation of that scheme is frankly shocking, but I will touch on that later.

The hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) made an excellent point about the issues with recruitment and retention for all sorts of businesses and services in rural areas because of the lack of connectivity and public transport. That does not help with the brain drain of young people leaving rural areas to go to cities and large towns. She also spoke about the lack of rural rail services in North Shropshire and elsewhere, which leads me to my own remarks.

Scotland has led the way on transport innovation over the years, and our track record on rail decarbonisation is yet another example of that. The world’s first electric railway locomotive was powered by batteries and invented in Scotland. It was designed by Robert Davidson of Aberdeen and first tested on the Glasgow to Edinburgh line. If we fast-forward over a century, one of the first battery trains to be used in regular passenger service was deployed on the Aberdeen to Ballater line. It is powered by clean, renewable electricity provided by the hydro board.

Today, the Bo’ness and Kinneil railway is seeing testing of a class 314 train formerly used as a workhorse on the Strathclyde lines. It has been converted to hydrogen-fuelled operation, and it is being put through its paces by the University of St Andrews, Transport Scotland, Scottish Enterprise and Ballard Motive Solutions. That kind of innovation is one part of the deployment of investment and policy decisions that make Scotland a leader in the decarbonisation of rural transport.

The reopening of Reston station in the Scottish Borders is another such example, with £20 million of investment from the Scottish Government accompanied by £3 million from Scottish Borders Council. That investment will improve bus links to and from the station, making it a hub for an area of the east borders that has been poorly served by public transport. Reston itself is a village with only a few hundred souls, but the integrated transport package introduced by local and national Government has turned it into a major transport centre, giving access to major cities on both sides of the border to a population that was previously either poorly served or not served at all by links beyond the local area.

The Scottish Borders were hit harder than most areas by the post-war retrenchment in rail. Peebles, Eyemouth, Kelso, Duns, Hawick, Selkirk and Melrose—I am starting to sound like a Bill McLaren rugby commentary—were all linked by rail to the wider country and the world. However, post-war mistakes in rail management across the UK, and the Beeching axe, left the borders with no rail links at all for 40 years, until the Scottish Government reopened the Borders railway in 2015. That new route is among the first in line for the next tranche of electrification on Scotland’s railways. After 40 years of isolation from the rest of this island’s rail network, the borders are seeing a bonanza in rail, integrated public transport and decarbonisation, which is surely unmatched by any comparable rural area on these islands.

The Scottish Borders are just one example of how decarbonisation is not constrained to our urban areas. We have seen the Invernet service, which provides commuter rail in the Inverness area, as well as the opening of the Inverness Airport railway station. Reopening the station at Beauly, which has a population of just over 1,000, generated more than 50,000 passenger journeys a year pre covid.

In the north-east, we have seen a step change in rail provision with the full introduction of the Aberdeen Crossrail, which connects Inverurie to Montrose via Aberdeen with regular fast services. Those communities will benefit still further from the rolling programme of electrification in Scotland, with main routes to the central belt, as well as the Inverness to Aberdeen route, becoming wired. The programme will also electrify the Glasgow to Dumfries route—indeed, part of it is being electrified as we speak—giving a huge boost to rural communities along its length. It will also give us scope to look again at the rural stations closed by the Beeching axe and at how we can apply the lessons learned from the Reston reopening to another area in the south of Scotland.

By 2045, every rail line in Scotland bar the West Highland and Far North lines, and the Girvan to Stranraer line, will be fully electrified. That is quite an achievement in a country where modernisation was ignored by this place for decades, until devolution and the Scottish Parliament came along. Clearly, 100% electrification would be preferable, but the economic reality is that electrification cannot always be justified in rural areas. However, that must not mean that more sparsely populated locales miss out on decarbonisation, and lines without full electrification will see the roll-out of innovative and game-changing trains such as battery electric and, potentially, hydrogen trains.

It is not just our rail network that is being transformed through funding from the Scottish Government and Transport Scotland. Fully 20% of the funding and buses on the road as a result of the first round of ScotZEB—the Scottish zero-emission bus challenge fund—went to operators in rural areas, from Campbeltown to Lockerbie and Aberdeenshire to Dumfries and Galloway.

In addition, Loganair has set a target to have a fully zero-emission fleet of aircraft serving Scotland’s islands and rural communities by 2040. Orkney is the hotbed for trials of electric and hydrogen-fuelled planes, with the islands expected to see the first scheduled zero-emission services as it becomes feasible to start rolling out the technology for passenger service. Those air links are a lifeline for the communities they serve, and making them net zero will play a crucial role in Scotland’s journey to being a net zero country by 2045. All this is evidence that decarbonisation is not just about urban and suburban travel; with the right strategy and package of investments, we can push modal shift in rural areas too.

Rural Scotland is also powering ahead in decarbonising private transport. Among the local authorities with the highest per capita penetration of public charge points are Orkney, Na h-Eileanan an Iar, Argyll and Bute, Highland, Shetland, and Dumfries and Galloway. Most of the time in those areas, there is no alternative to private motors, so we want to support infrastructure to ensure that EVs are a practical solution. All those areas have seen a massive increase in public chargers over the past few years; since 2019, their numbers have more than doubled in Orkney and increased by 177% in Argyll and Bute. They are also up 194% in Highland, marrying up with the A9 electric highway, which links the highlands and the central belt. If we are serious about rolling out chargers to the level needed to hit our targets to phase out petrol and diesel cars, the number in rural Scotland needs to continue to increase at its current rate. The Scottish Government have shown the way, and it is for others—particularly the DFT—to learn from their lead.

I cannot let pass an opportunity to highlight Scotland’s transformational active travel budget, which will reach £320 million—10% of Scotland’s entire travel budget—by the end of this Parliament. Bear in mind that that is in a country one tenth the size of that served by the DFT, whose £200 million budget was heralded—no offence to the hon. Member for North Devon. That £320 million investment will upgrade our network for walking and wheeling across the country and, in particular, give extra opportunities for integration with the rest of the public transport network. It is game-changing. I urge the DFT to match that commitment, rather than throwing yet more money into the bottomless pit that is Greater London transport spending.

Scotland is showing that rural decarbonisation can be achieved if the will is there. Making integrated transport a key policy objective, as well as relatively modest investment, can produce huge dividends for communities that were previously isolated from the public transport network. We know that in rural communities there will always be a need for cars in a way that simply is not the case in more urban areas, but providing alternatives to private transport when it is practical to do so and ensuring that the investment is targeted in the right places can help to drive modal shift and drive down emissions, and provide a more sustainable transport system across the board into the bargain.

As I have done many times before, I commend to the Minister the work that the Scottish Government are doing and invite him to study closely what is happening in Scotland, so that the UK Government can follow Scotland’s lead and apply the lessons to rural communities here in England. The UK Government’s reluctance to invest appropriately in this area—as with so many other areas—limits Scotland’s ability to go even further even faster, and it is time for the DFT and the UK Government to get their collective finger out on these issues.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Lightwood]

The hon. Member makes a valid point, and if the Government are serious about installing 300,000 charging points, they need to redouble their efforts. At this rate, we would not get to even 100,000 by the date they have set. Monthly installations would need to rise by 288% to meet that ambition.

[Gavin Newlands]

Just before the intervention from the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards), the hon. Gentleman mentioned that rural areas are missing out in terms of the charging network. I made the point in my speech that in Scotland that is not the case. The areas with the highest penetration of public charge points per capita are Orkney, the Western Isles, Argyll and Bute, Highland, Shetland, and Dumfries and Galloway. That is because the driver was Scottish Government public investment. Down here, the UK Government have relied on private investment. Does the hon. Gentleman think that is why rural areas in England do not have the connectivity that Scotland has?

[Simon Lightwood]

The hon. Member makes an interesting point, and I share his concerns about the Government’s focus in achieving their targets. Obviously, this is a pressing matter for our rural communities, which are being underserved, and if drivers cannot access charging points, they will be far less likely to make the transition to electric.

In London, there are 131 charging points per 100,000 of the population, but in the south-west region the figure is a third of that—44 per 100,000. The hon. Member for Strangford will be interested to hear that the figure is only 19 per 100,000 in Northern Ireland. Indeed, more charging points were installed here in Westminster in the previous quarter than in any English region outside London. The Government must urgently come up with a plan for how they will drastically speed up the roll-out, especially in rural communities, otherwise the campaign to get people to transition their vehicles will be undermined completely.

As the shadow Minister covering buses, it would be remiss of me not to mention the vital role that the sector is playing in decarbonising our transport. That is especially the case in rural areas, where buses can be a lifeline for many, especially the elderly—connecting people with friends and family, and getting people to work, hospital or school.

As the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) said, getting to hospital appointments is really important, but the rural bus network is desperately struggling, and cuts in Government funding have hampered rural routes, leaving behind a patchy network that cannot get people from A to B. I have seen that in my constituency, where several services have been cut altogether and others run at a reduced frequency. One service, which is the only bus covering a village of about 500 people, runs only until 5 pm. Another village service runs only three buses a day.

People cannot get to work, cannot get to the shops and cannot attend hospital appointments with services like that, and they are left having to depend on taxis or the car when the bus does not turn up. That is creating what the charity CPRE calls transport deserts, whereby public transport is severely limited, which stops people being able to do basics such as shopping or meeting friends. In 2020, CPRE found that 56% of small rural towns had become transport deserts or were at risk of becoming a transport desert. I imagine that figure will have risen since then.

In recent years, local authorities have had to step in to support many rural bus services that have become commercially unviable, but reductions in their funding have meant that many routes have been lost. That is why Labour’s plans for franchising could help many rural communities and give them greater certainty over the routes they have. I continue to urge the Government to look at the proposal in more detail.

Furthermore, buses need to be transitioned from diesel. The Government announced that they would deliver 4,000 zero-emission buses in this Parliament, but, as I pointed out during Transport questions in the Chamber last week, only 341 have been ordered and just six are on our roads. At that rate, it will take 23 years to meet the Government’s target. Many bus operators serving rural routes will be relying on Government grants to decarbonise their fleets, so the lack of progress with the scheme is hampering the business planning process and efforts to push forward with bus company investments.

I am pleased that we have had the opportunity to debate this important issue. It is clear that our rural communities want to play a part in the clean transport revolution, but they need more support to do so. Whether we are talking about buses, cycling, walking or cars, there are opportunities for decarbonisation, but rural areas are lagging behind. The Government must match their rhetoric with a proper plan to deliver what they have promised, so that we can see those zero-emission buses on our roads, have enough electric charging points to encourage people to transition, and encourage people to cycle and walk more. The Government must get their act together, and quickly; otherwise, it will be our rural villages and towns that suffer the most.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Jesse Norman)]

What a delight it is to see you in the Chair, Mr Davies. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) on securing this debate on decarbonising rural transport. I am very aware of this issue as a constituency MP; in Hereford and South Herefordshire, we have many of the issues that have been described. I do not mean to disappoint my hon. Friend at the outset, but I am not going to make Treasury policy here and, least of all, as a former Financial Secretary to the Treasury, a few weeks before a Budget. Nevertheless, a wide range of issues have been raised and it is important to engage with them all.

As my hon. Friend rightly noted, buses are at the centre of the public transport network, but even more so in rural areas than in many urban areas. I and colleagues recognise their important role in providing sustainable transport options and independence to people who live in the countryside. They also have an essential role to play in achieving net zero by 2050 and in creating the cleaner and healthier places to live that we all aspire to have.

On decarbonisation, I am sure that my hon. Friend will join me in celebrating Devon’s recent success in joining the Government-funded ADEPT Live Labs 2 programme for decarbonising local roads in the UK. I am delighted that Devon will carry out a carbon-negative project on the A382, including the Jetty Marsh link road. That is part of a suite of corridor and place-based interventions, trialling, testing and showcasing applications in connection with the Wessex partnership, an exciting project that will be provided with more than £12 million for the three-year programme.

As colleagues will know, the national bus strategy was published in March 2021, with the long-term aim of making buses more frequent and reliable, easier to understand and use, and better co-ordinated and cheaper. The strategy asked all local transport authorities to develop a bus service improvement plan, setting out how they would improve services. It also stated that local transport plans must be clear on

“how interventions across local transport modes will drive decarbonisation in their area.”

I am delighted that Devon received £14.1 million in BSIP funding, £1.87 million of which is being targeted at bus priority measures that will benefit routes into Barnstaple and to North Devon District Hospital. I was also delighted to hear about GWR’s work in my hon. Friend’s constituency, where a bus-branch line has been introduced between Barnstaple and Lynton and Lynmouth, co-ordinating bus and rail timetables to offer a more integrated travel experience for passengers. I hope that there will be more to come in the following year.

The bus strategy makes it clear that the needs of rural transport users should be given equal consideration to those of users in urban areas. However, I recognise that it can be challenging to provide conventional bus services for rural areas, which have widely dispersed populations and consequent travel patterns that are hard to cover effectively. That is why demand-responsive services, which have been discussed today, can be used in some places to meet their needs, and work is under way to assess whether that can be more effective than traditional public transport solutions.

Colleagues will be aware of the £20 million rural mobility fund, which supports 17 innovative demand-led minibus trials in rural areas. They use app-based technologies so that passengers can book a journey through their smartphone, and intelligent software then works out the right route to pick up and drop off passengers, given the demand. The Department has made sure that the services use accessible minibuses and can still be booked through a website or with a phone call so that no one is excluded from using them.

As the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) pointed out, demand-responsive services are not the perfect solution to every challenge. Other schemes need to be trialled, and have been, but have proven not to be sustainable. A balance needs to be struck between providing a useful service that is responsive and frequent and running too much mileage cost-ineffectively, with too few passengers. That is why it is so important that each scheme should participate in a detailed monitoring and evaluation process, so that the Department can learn about the most effective approaches.

Some of the pilots use zero-emission vehicles. The scheme in Essex has been electrified since day one, providing a zero-emission demand-responsive service to rural areas around Braintree, and Surrey County Council has started to roll out its electric minibus route on its Mole Valley connect service.

On buses more broadly, colleagues will know that, in 2020, we committed to introducing 4,000 zero-emission buses and, ultimately, to achieving an all zero-emission bus fleet. It is nice to hear the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) rightly supporting the superb achievements of Wrightbus in Northern Ireland with regard to not just electrification, but its work on the Hydroliner, using hydrogen technology.

The approach to zero-emission buses will support our climate ambitions, improve transport for local communities and support green jobs across the country. Since 2020, the Government have funded an estimated 3,452 zero-emission buses across the UK, some 1,400 of which have been supported by funding from the zero-emission bus regional areas, which has rightly been highlighted. Great progress has been made, with more than 500 buses ordered so far under the ZEBRA scheme, including 117 electric buses that have been ordered for four different local authorities, as announced in the House last week.

Buses are not the only zero-emission vehicles on our roads. It is right to think about the question of zero-emission vehicles more widely, as well as the charging infrastructure network, mentioned by several colleagues, that needs to be as accessible, affordable and secure in rural areas as elsewhere. Last March, the Government published their electric vehicle infrastructure strategy, which set out plans to accelerate the roll-out of the network. We expect at least 300,000 public charge points to be installed across the UK by 2030. There are already over 37,000 open-access public chargers on UK roads, with more than 600 new chargers added to our road network each month on average, and public charging devices have more than tripled in the past four years. That is in addition to the hundreds of thousands of charge points in homes and workplaces. We believe that we are on track to meet local expectations.

[Gavin Newlands]

I like the Minister’s comments on the ZEBRA scheme, even though it has been an utter shambles from start to finish. Scotland has more zero-emission buses on the road in a country that is a tenth of the size.

On chargers, the Government launched Project Rapid, and the Labour Front Bencher, the hon. Member for Wakefield (Simon Lightwood), mentioned the number of chargers in the UK. Scotland already has 73% more rapid chargers per head than the rest of the UK. In the last quarter of last year, the number increased by nearly 15%, more than double the rate at which England increased its rapid chargers—the east and west midlands rate was 4.3%, Yorkshire was 5% and the south-east was 3.3%. Project Rapid needs to change its name, does it not?

[Jesse Norman]

There is no doubt that the question of how we get lots of rapid chargers into motorway service areas and other parts of the trunk network is complex, because it requires long-term solutions based on translating large amounts of electricity through distribution network operators and the national grid into those areas. I was slightly surprised to hear the hon. Gentleman bragging about the Scottish Government’s achievements. He may want to look at the Daily Business published in August last year, which said that Scotland was “bottom” of the EV charging league for growth and described that as

“an embarrassing blow to the country that hosted the COP26”.

The hon. Gentleman should look not just at the number that have been installed, which perhaps is not surprising given the level of income per head that Scotland receives under the Barnett formula. If my county of Herefordshire was miraculously and sadly disentangled from its current place and floated north to abut on to Scotland, the rate of funding per head would go up by over £2,000, so perhaps it is not so surprising that the funding settlement is different and that has different effects. The Scottish record is not one to be proud of as regards the growth of charge points, and he may want to look again at the numbers he described.

We have also been looking at public and industry funding to support local authorities with the roll-out of charge points. Just last month, we announced a further £56 million of public industry funding. In Devon, there are currently 442 public charge points, of which over 100 are rapid and above, which is pretty much in line with the UK average per person and possibly even slightly higher in relation to rapid charging. That is a good start, but there is plenty still to do.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Thursday 2nd March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

Although we support a zero-emission vehicle mandate to accelerate the switch to zero-emission driving, the Government need to get a grip on it. Businesses—be they manufacturers, dealerships or fleet purchasers—cannot plan, and consumers are in the dark. That chimes with the overall approach to zero-emission driving, with just over 7,000 EV charging installations last year when 33,000 are required annually to meet the 300,000 target. Will we hear more about the mandate, the charger network expansion and equalising the VAT levied on home charging versus street charging in the upcoming Budget?

[Jesse Norman]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that I will not comment on the Budget; as a former Financial Secretary, I will certainly not attempt to trespass on the Treasury’s prerogative on tax issues. What he will know, of course, is that the vast majority of that investment is coming from the private sector. Of course, that will itself be massively boosted by the zero-emission vehicle mandate. I met one of the largest charge point operators only this week, and they were perfectly clear that the one thing that will do more than anything else, not just to reduce carbon but to support the development of that industry and that transition, is the mandate, which we will publish, as I say, in the near future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

Decarbonising aviation is difficult, and no one would say otherwise, but there are quick wins to reduce carbon, such as airspace modernisation, which is likely to cost under £30 million, and sustainable aviation fuels, which will be the bridge fuel until future forms of propulsion are introduced. The Government have provided some funding for SAF plants in England and Wales, but the support is dwarfed by support offered elsewhere. Without a CfD model in place to support SAFs, the Government will not get their five plants operating by their target date, and they are nowhere near their long-term targets for SAF use, are they?

[Jesse Norman]

It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman raises the question of airspace modernisation. He may not be aware that the environmental benefits are already in place. The introduction of free route airspace in 2021 over Scotland is estimated by National Air Traffic Services to save the carbon dioxide equivalent of the power used by 3,500 family homes every year. He is right that this is a complex issue, but it is also one on which the Government are taking a wide range of energetic measures, and we will continue to pursue those, as we have described.

Draft Airports Slot Allocation (Alleviation of Usage Requirements) Regulations 2023

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2023 General Committees

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Gray. Like the Labour party, we will not oppose the regulations, as we have not opposed the changes on the various other occasions when this issue has come up since the pandemic.

I do not propose to detain the Committee for long because the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East and the right hon. Member for Leeds Central raised the two points that I wanted to raise. We support the Government’s general approach to the slots issue but, like the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East, I would like to see an analysis of the impact of the measures thus far, particularly given the point made in the explanatory notes about the potential impact on new entrants to the market.

On entrants new and old to the market, the right hon. Member for Leeds Central made a good point about the Flybe slots potentially going to British Airways. Loganair is based in my constituency, so I have a vested interest in its opportunity to get some of those slots. I would like to hear the Minister respond robustly to that point, which I may take up with him after the Committee. With that, I shall sit down and let him respond.

Electric Vehicles: Infrastructure

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Westminster Hall

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

That is the aim, Mr Bone. It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair. I congratulate the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) on securing the debate and highlighting a crucial part of these islands’ journey to net zero.

As has been highlighted, the hon. Gentleman posed a question: are we really ready to transition to zero-emission vehicles? As the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) said, any objective respondent would have to say an emphatic no. I hear what he said; having studied the figures many times over the last few years, I know that those for Northern Ireland are atrocious. I certainly would never have switched to an EV if I was living in Northern Ireland with that network. His points about road pricing were also well made.

The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), who is no longer in his place, made a good intervention about excess renewable energy and problems accessing the grid. That is becoming an ever-increasing problem, and the Government and National Grid need to get a grip on the issue of the grid. The hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) spoke of the improvements to charging and the strategic road network in Scotland.

I agreed with almost every word that the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) said. This is one of the very few debates in which I have listened to Conservative Members and found it hard to disagree with a single word. Well, the Minister is still to speak, but hitherto I have not disagreed with a word that a Conservative Member has said. [Interruption.] It is probably me who needs to resign, rather than the hon. Member.

My Scottish colleague, the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone), made some very good and fair points about charging. The highlands—apart from Altnaharra—have benefited from enhanced infrastructure over the last few years, compared with probably anywhere else in the country outside London. In my county, Renfrewshire, we still have free public chargers. We are moving to a paid model, but at a reasonable price. The figures that he mentioned seem quite high when we are trying to move people over to electric vehicles.

The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) spoke of the discrepancy between domestic and on-street VAT, which the Government need to get a grip on. Lastly, the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) spoke of a different inequity in charging infrastructure—not just from a postcode lottery point of view, but for those homes without a driveway on which to park their car.

I am the SNP member of the Transport Committee, which has been engaging with this subject over a number of years, including in our current “Fuelling the future” inquiry. The resulting report was agreed just yesterday and will be hitting the bestseller list any day. It is clear that Scotland has led the way compared with England and, indeed, the rest of the UK outside London; London has had great results for some time. Over the last year, the number of public charging points per capita has increased by no less than 33% in Scotland. That is ahead of England, even allowing for Scotland’s head start. Inner London has largely dragged England’s figure along with it.

The hon. Member for North Antrim mentioned the figures for rapid chargers. We have 73% more rapid chargers per capita than south of the border, and in just the last quarter of last year there was an increase of 15% in the number of rapid chargers. The UK Government’s target of 300,000 public chargers by 2030 is looking more and more like a pipe dream rather than a reality in making the switch to net zero. We can also see the difference that a wider network of public chargers makes to the uptake of battery electric vehicles. In the year to September 2022, there was a 16% higher increase in the number of EVs on the road than there was in England. There is still a great deal to do in Scotland, and an ever-diminishing timeframe in which to do it, but that progress should be encouraging.

I have said many times here and in the main Chamber that the Scottish Government’s approach should be exported down south, because they are doing something right while the UK Department for Transport is lagging behind. Moreover, if the UK Government were to get anywhere near their annual targets for charger installations, that would allow Scotland to ramp up our charger installation to a point where we were getting close to the required amount. 

We are also lagging miles behind Norway, where more than 50% of new car sales are now fully electric, with another quarter coming from hybrid. They are on course to meet their goal of phasing out all private petrol and diesel cars within the next two years, which is a phenomenal achievement in such a short period of time. I would say this, wouldn’t I?—but imagine that: a small, energy-rich, independent northern European country with control over its own finances and infrastructure, setting ambitious targets and taking the radical steps needed to meet those targets. It will never, ever catch on.

[Jamie Stone]

We were doing so well until then.

[Gavin Newlands]

We can’t agree on everything!

On electric public transport, it is only due to the Scottish Government’s continual action that the UK Government feel able to proclaim that they might meet the 4,000 buses targets set by the previous, previous Prime Minister, three years ago. Only this week Ayrshire has benefited from another two dozen zero-emission buses serving local communities, which will be on the road next month—they are not added to the stats while awaiting a tender, which I am afraid has been the Department for Transport’s way of pockling the stats whenever anyone—more often than not, me—asks how the 4,000 buses target is being met.

The former Prime Minister may have forgotten the words, but the wheels on the electric bus are very much going round and round in Scotland. Indeed, without the hundreds of buses funded under the Scottish Government’s ScotZEB and SULEBS—the Scottish zero emission bus challenge fund and Scottish ultra-low emission bus scheme —the UK Government’s target would be in tatters, despite them having no control over those Scottish schemes.

Even with smaller-scale initiatives, such as the extra financial support available for domestic charge points in Scotland compared with elsewhere, there is a clear gap, and it shows no sign of being closed. That extra support for domestic infrastructure is particularly well targeted to rural areas where the additional need for state support in transitioning to electric is well recognised.

I should declare that, as an EV owner myself, I was able to access the interest-free car loan scheme in Scotland that was available at the time, in addition to the home-charging top-up grant. That is the key difference in approach. When we have such important environmental targets on shifting drivers over to zero-emission cars, which are still usually more expensive—some often far more expensive and beyond the reach of most households —we need a Government that make zero-emission driving available to all without slashing and then ultimately removing any carrot they had dangled before the market was mature enough and costs low enough to ensure much more equitable access.

Whether it is rural or urban, what is clear is that, across a spectrum of measures, the UK Government’s offering is just not up to scratch, either to fulfil current needs or to take on board future demand. On the Government’s 300,000 chargers target, with current figures, we need to install 32,860 per year to meet that target. Last year, despite an increase on the previous year, 7,680 were installed. That is miles behind the target, and that sort of progress will prevent the phasing out of petrol and diesel cars by the same year.

There is still time to ramp things up and accelerate deployment. As I said, the Transport Committee’s “Fuelling the future” report will be out shortly, but we can look at its “Zero emission vehicles” report from 2021, where we see recommendations that have been ignored by this Government. It was an excellent report, ably drafted by the Chair at the time—I am not sure what happened to him.

Time is against me, so I will raise two or maybe three points from that report. The Committee recommended that the Government intervene to support the second-hand market in electric vehicles. The Scottish Government did that with their interest-free loan scheme. The Committee recommended that all charge points should be interoperable. We spoke about that point at length, but we are getting nowhere fast on interoperability. People who rely on public charging infrastructure should get value for money. Finally, and more importantly, the Government have to address the discrepancy between the 5% VAT and the 20% VAT incurred at public charge points.

I hope to hear the Minister address his own report when he responds. I hope he does respond to those issues, because if we are serious about a net zero economy, it cannot just mean action at one end of the supply chain for the end consumer. It has to include an industrial strategy that reflects innovation and modernisation of production and supply. Unfortunately, that is currently just not happening in the UK. We are falling way behind the curve. We need to make Project Rapid move a little less glacially, and we need to do so as soon as possible.

Seafarers’ Wages Bill [Lords]

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Holden]

I understand what the hon. Lady is saying and I will address that point directly in a moment, after I have gone through the main points of why we are pushing back on this suggestion. The rationale for the high-frequency criterion is to ensure that seafarers affected by the policy are only those with close ties to the UK by virtue of their working on services that regularly call in UK ports. That covers the overwhelming majority of passenger ferries. We have assessed this using Department for Transport data, which has also been backed up by the Chamber of Shipping’s written evidence to the Public Bill Committee. Crucially, this focuses the Bill on the short-sea services, clearly justifying the seafarers’ connections to the UK and therefore a UK-equivalent level of pay protection. Reducing the frequency with which services must call at UK ports before coming into the scope of the Bill’s requirements to include weekly services would dilute the concentration of the Bill in protecting seafarers with the closest ties. It would then bring into scope some deep-sea container services which we do not feel can legitimately be said to have close ties to the UK. Services that might visit many ports in a foreign country, perhaps coming to the UK once a week, would also be included, which gives rise to the question of whether we would be legislating for another country.

Furthermore, the national minimum wage equivalence will apply only in UK waters and therefore would extend to a cargo service dropping off once a week for a matter of hours, with marginal if any impact. The proposal therefore has multiple downsides, and I hope the hon. Lady can understand why we are looking at it in that sphere.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

I hear what the Minister says and understand his point about which services may be collected under the proposal, but surely there is a soft spot between 52 and 120 that we can all agree on?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Kane]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, the former Minister, for all his work in this area. I know that he was extraordinarily committed and was as upset as everyone else in this House—he put in a hard stint as Minister for aviation and maritime. He is right that the sector is complicated, interlinked and international, but that should not stop us doing the right thing. If seafarers are here, they are here. That is why we are pushing for 52 port calls, and we genuinely believe that that is the way to strengthen this legislation, but I thank him for his intervention.

Turning to amendments 39 and 49 that appear in my name and those of my colleagues, it is vital that the terms and conditions collectively bargained for are upheld. There are currently seafarers who are paid more than the equivalent of the national minimum wage, and we would not expect those in receipt of this pay to enter a race to the bottom. Good employers, of which there are some in the sector, are already paying above the UK national minimum wage, and we seek to ensure that pay and conditions for their workers are protected, not dissembled or undermined by provisions contained within the Bill. In addition to maintaining the Bill and the conditions of individual seafarers, these amendments would reassure other countries, such as France, Belgium, and Ireland, with which we are seeking to make bilateral agreements, that we are not undermining them, which would make negotiations easier.

Amendment 40 is designed to shore up previous provisions under regulations, which extended the entitlement to be paid above the national minimum wage to those working in the offshore gas and oil sector bound by the UK continental shelf, which extends 200 miles from the coastline of the UK. This amendment equalises the basic rights of seafarers in the UK offshore energy sector, which we know will be a growth industry of the future. The Government and the offshore wind industry cannot rely on the good will of individual developers to commit to voluntary schemes such as the real living wage.

Failing to support this amendment would highlight not one, but two anomalies within the Bill. First, any seafarer who works out of a UK port to an offshore oil or gas installation and then returns to the UK port will not be entitled to the protections offered by the Bill. As we move towards a just transition and increased reliance on offshore wind, we must ensure that those who work in the energy sector are protected. We must future-proof future industries—it makes no sense to do that retrospectively.

Secondly, any seafarer working from a UK port to an installation on the UK continental shelf and returning to a UK port is already entitled to protection of the national minimum wage, regardless of the flag of the vessel or their nationality. That is entirely as it should be. The Government must act as soon as possible to correct the lack of this protection for all seafarers, regardless of nationality or flag of vessel, working in the UK exclusive economic zone. Let us get it right first time for current offshore oil and gas workers and for future workers in offshore sectors that we know will become increasingly important as we head towards cleaner, greener energy. The exclusion of offshore energy workers from the legislation seems short-sighted.

Importantly, amendment 41 would enable the House to consider and approve regulations that may be made under the powers of the Bill; whether that is opening regulations up to further scrutiny in relation to the definition of work in the UK, regulations related to accommodation charges levied upon them, which could lead to earnings falling below the national minimum wage, or regulations related to surcharges, all should be brought before the House so it can affirm them. It is National Apprenticeship Week. We need to build on the work the Maritime Skills Commission is doing on ratings and cadet training to ensure growth in decent seafarer jobs in this country. Wider employment protections and fair pay agreements are part of that future.

I am grateful, as I said, to the Minister for moving on the harbour surcharges and for clarifying that the surcharges will be used for seafarer welfare. That is really welcome. Ports and seafarers all around the country will be affected by the Bill, so it is vital that the Bill is right. We have worked hard to ensure that the concerns of seafarers are heard, as voiced by their unions, the RMT and Nautilus, who I thank for their energy and expertise on this Bill. We need this Bill to be as robust as possible, and have sought to amend it where possible to ensure that. I thank the staff of the House and Members from across the Chamber for all their hard work on the Bill.

[Gavin Newlands]

I start, rather unusually, by thanking the Minister, in the same vein as the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane), for accepting some of the changes that both we and the Labour party suggested during Committee stage—notably, on setting a national rather than a harbour-specific tariff, setting a deadline for objections to the level of fines to be levied and ensuring that the levy is used for seafarer welfare.

We will obviously not vote against the Bill. It is a better Bill than when it entered Committee, but it still falls short in a number of areas. I understand that the Government by and large, as is the way with most Bills, want to keep the focus of the Bill as narrow as possible and the Opposition tend to want to widen the focus of the Bill to ensure that as many people as possible are protected by it, and to tighten up provisions already set out in the Bill for the very same reason.

The Government’s nine-point plan was set out a number of months ago but, if it is not adrift and approaching the rocks, it is struggling under very low power indeed. But the Minister need not worry; we are here to strengthen the Bill. In that vein, I will speak to amendments 30 to 33 and 36 to 38, and new clauses 4 and 5. I also fully support the amendments and new clauses tabled by those on the Labour Front Bench.

In fact, I will start with Labour new clause 2, which deals with issues relating to the seafarers charter, including roster patterns. Before I do so, I have to ask: where is the seafarers charter? Everyone was hoping and expecting to see it before Report. It is entirely suboptimal, to say the least, that the passage of the Bill will conclude without us having had sight of the charter. I certainly hope the Minister agrees that that is not the position that he would have wanted to be in at the start of the process.

[Grahame Morris]

That is an important point. The Government are laying so much store by voluntary agreement in the application of the seafarers welfare charter, or the seafarers charter—it has had various names during its transition. The Minister said that there had been consultation and that further consultation was going on, including with the UK Chamber of Shipping. My understanding is that that includes Seatruck and Condor Ferries. They are long-term bad bosses and abusers of seafarer rights, so I hope that they will not have input into the Bill, which could further undermine its provisions.

[Gavin Newlands]

I thank my Transport Committee colleague. I could not agree more. I will very shortly cover the fact that the agreement is voluntary and that we do not even know what is in it, yet here we are, concluding the remaining stages of the Bill.

As was mentioned on Second Reading and in Committee, roster patterns are every bit as important as the wage issues addressed by the Bill, because a tired and overworked crew is a dangerous crew at sea. We know that crew at P&O Ferries are sometimes being asked to work for 17 weeks straight. That is not just an issue of fairness at work; it is an issue of human and environmental safety. We know the reasons behind the Herald of Free Enterprise tragedy. If seafarers around our shores are working 17 weeks straight with no oversight and no action, sooner or later we will sadly be talking about another tragedy—one that is entirely preventable.

Similarly, on wages and pensions, we know what many seafarers are expected to put up with. The key point of the Bill is to prevent wages from falling below the national minimum wage equivalent, but we hope that will have the additional impact of improving wages and conditions across the board in the industry. As I asked the Minister in Committee:

“What good is a voluntary charter when we have operators such as P&O Ferries, which was content not only to break the law”––[Official Report, Seafarers’ Wages Public Bill Committee, 17 January 2023; c. 69.]

but said that it would do so again? Putting those elements of the charter—which sadly does not exist—on the face of the Bill would at least give the Government firm legal ground in assessing how the legislation has benefited the industry and its employees.

Again, new clause 2 calls for and commits the Government to nothing more than a report from the Secretary of State on the main issues dealt with by the charter. If the Government are serious about a real seafarers charter developed in partnership with trade unions and aimed at protecting exploited workers, they have nothing to fear from accepting the new clause.

While I am on the subject, given the lack of any contrition whatever from P&O Ferries, is it not time that its royal charter was revoked? DP World should derive no benefit from that charter, which it inherited when it bought P&O Ferries. One cannot talk about P&O Ferries without talking about Mr Hebblethwaite, a man who has so far escaped entirely scot-free despite admitting that he broke the law and would do so again. The Government and the Insolvency Service have been signally unable to bring him and/or any other P&O Ferries or DP World executives to account for their actions. New clause 4, which was tabled my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) , whose thunder I wish not to steal, would ensure that people such as Hebblethwaite would be liable for their crimes by introducing an offence that is punishable by disqualification as a director.

New clause 5 was tabled following contact from a number of concerned industry representatives that are unclear about the Maritime and Coastguard Agency’s enforcement of harbour authorities. In Committee, the Minister spoke about how clauses 4 and 5 allow the Secretary of State—via the MCA—to request information to ensure compliance. However, no passage in the Bill clarifies the role of the MCA in enforcing harbour authorities to comply. In essence, I would like to hear more from the Minister about the role of the MCA in the enforcement of national minimum wage declarations.

As I have said, we seek to widen the scope of the Bill to ensure that all those who should be protected are protected. Amendments 30 and 33, and Labour amendment 40, which the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East spoke to, were tabled to ensure that those working in the renewables sector are afforded similar protections to those in the oil and gas sectors and on the regular ferry services that the Minister mentioned. The Minister’s answer in Committee was unsatisfactory in my view and, I am sure, for those who work in the sector. If he will not accept the amendments, will he set out his plans to ensure that those workers do not end up an anomaly?

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Newlands]

As I said on Report, it remains profoundly disappointing that the seafarers charter is not with us before this Bill concludes. I therefore remain disappointed by the final version of the Bill. I rather fear, as the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) said on Report, that we will be back here again following another maritime scandal. That said, I genuinely hope that the Government are right in their assertions on various aspects of the Bill, but in my opinion it remains a missed opportunity.

I would like to thank a few folks. I thank the Clerks for their assistance, particularly Anne-Marie Griffiths, who has been a great help to us and, I am sure, other Members on the Back Benches. I also thank Nautilus, the RMT, Eurotunnel, the Law Society of Scotland, the TUC and the STUC for their assistance with briefings. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), who I have suffered greatly—sorry, who has helped me greatly during the Bill’s passage. I thank Labour colleagues on the Bill Committee and, indeed, the Minister, who has listened perhaps more than most Ministers in Bill Committees I have been on. He gave us a number of concessions, despite my misgivings about where we are with the Bill overall.

One person I will not be thanking is Peter Hebblethwaite. He should be in a jail cell, as far as I am concerned. It is disappointing that the Minister could not accept new clause 4. The one small silver lining is that P&O Ferries’ actions, after a summer that saw British Airways, British Gas et al. treat their workers with utter contempt through fire and rehire threats, finally moved the needle enough to force this Government to act to protect workers against rogue employers. Perhaps we will actually see a meaningful attempt to address fire and rehire next.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed, with amendments.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill (Programme) (No. 2)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),

That the following provisions shall apply to the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill for the purpose of supplementing the Order of 12 July 2021 in the last Session of Parliament (Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill: Programme):

Consideration of Lords Amendments

(1) Proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion two hours after their commencement.

(2) The Lords Amendments shall be considered in the following order: 10, 1 to 9, 11 and 12.

Subsequent stages

(3) Any further Message from the Lords may be considered forthwith without any Question being put.

(4) The proceedings on any further Message from the Lords shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour after their commencement.—(Steve Double.)

Question agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

Cross-border rail services run by Avanti and TransPennine Express have been shambolic. Last week alone, TransPennine Express could not point to a single day when it ran the emergency timetable it had promised. On two days, Avanti had only one and two trains on time the entire day running out of Glasgow Central. In contrast, publicly-owned LNER was running a much better service. Is there not a lesson here that the private sector model has failed both workers and passengers and it is time to follow Scotland’s lead and bring rail operators under public control?

[Huw Merriman]

Perhaps another way of looking at it is that on the east coast there is competition with open access, whereas on the west coast there is not. The hon. Gentleman might feel that we are not doing enough on private enterprise and competition. I am rather keen that we look at open access and see whether we can do on the west what has been done on the east. However, he is right that performance has not been good enough. I take your point on Avanti, Mr Speaker; your interventions inspire me to ensure that my weekly meetings on turning around Avanti performance continue—but if that performance is being turned around, I must say a big thank you to the staff who work on the Avanti services day in, day out, because we need to motivate them that this can work. TPE is a little further behind and I think we will be discussing it further. I am keen to work with the hon. Gentleman to get better services on TPE.

[Gavin Newlands]

ScotRail, which is publicly owned and controlled, pays the highest track access charges of any single rail operator, despite repeated requests to complete rail devolution and transfer control of Network Rail to Holyrood. Meanwhile, the Transport Committee heard last week from Mick Lynch, who said:

“When there is a Network Rail strike, they shut Scotland and large parts of Wales. They choose to run the parts that connect to England.”

Does the Minister agree that Scottish rail passengers get a second-class service in this UK system? Is it not time that he turned over responsibilities to a Government who have recently settled two rail disputes?

[Huw Merriman]

When there is industrial action on the scale that we have seen impacting Network Rail, we implement the key route strategy, which sees about 20% of the network remain open. That can be patchy, because we tend to focus on the areas that are strategically important for freight. That is our driving mechanism for determining when lines open. I would like to see more open, and of course there may be legislation around the corner that will allow that to occur—the hon. Gentleman will no doubt be happy with that outcome.

Seafarers' Wages Bill [ Lords ] (Second sitting)

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 17th January 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Harris.

At the close of the morning sitting, Mr Davies happily interrupted me in full flow about the Laffer curve. I often hear hon. Members talk about the Laffer curve, and earlier the Minister referred to all the tax giveaways implemented by this Government, but I remind Government Members that we are the most taxed society in modern history. Government Members enjoy talking about the nanny state and postcode lotteries, but I worry about how the clause will be implemented by different harbours. The Secretary of State will have enormous powers—a Labour Secretary of State could be implementing the regulations—and will have to play judge and jury between the various ports, harbour companies, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and others. That is my big worry about the clause.

I rise to speak in favour of amendment 64 in my name and the names of Opposition members of the Committee. The Bill as drafted poses a risk that the surcharge regime will be different between harbours, and too small to have any effect on operator employment practices. Operators could choose to pay the surcharge to continue to use the ports, avoiding any penalty charge set out in clause 9. Will the Minister tell us what happens to penalties if they are charged? Where do they go? Will he seek to fund onshore mariner and seafarer welfare services from the charges? I am keen to hear more about that.

Many operators do not just run ferry services but operate ports as well—P&O itself operates a port. So the Government are potentially asking operators to fine themselves, which is perverse. Ministers must think again.

I note that the Secretary of State said he would use retained powers to decide which port could enforce fines, but he must set a national tariff for surcharges and designate a Government agency to collect them. Agreements and publication of the tariff of surcharges are subject to secondary regulations set out in clause 7. That could undermine the unlimited fines that can be imposed on operators for offences created elsewhere in the Bill, because the tariff will be based only on the differential between the amount paid the seafarers and the national minimum wage equivalence for UK work. Our amendment would give the Secretary of State the powers to set a national tariff of surcharges, which the harbour authorities would then enforce under direction. That would prevent ports from being prosecuted by competitors, and prevent harbour authorities from competing on the level of surcharge company operators would have to pay. That surcharge should not be given to the harbour authorities to use as they see fit, but should clearly be given to support seafarer welfare facilities. It would be wrong for operators to spend on their own businesses the fines levied for exploitation of seafarers. That is why we support amendments 53 and 54 in the names of SNP colleagues.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Harris. I will address amendments 51, 52, 55, 56 and 58, which stand in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East. We will also be supporting amendment 64—we have signed the amendment —in the name of the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East.

Ultimately, we want this legislation, in whatever form it takes at Royal Assent, to stick. That is what we are seeking to ensure today. The surcharges and penalties envisaged have to be realistic to have any effect. The hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East raised the possibility of operators who own ports surcharging other operators who use those ports. If we end up in a position where operators allege sharp practice on the part of other operators and take legal action, it is workers who will be caught in the middle. P&O Ferries can afford the lawyers; poorly paid staff cannot. Setting a national tariff will remove the element of discretion from harbour authorities and ensure that all harbours and all operators across the board pay the same surcharge, regardless of which harbour has jurisdiction.

With all due respect to the harbour authorities, shifting the onus to the Secretary of State would also be a clear sign of how seriously the Government will take infringements. It is one thing for an operator to take on a port, but quite another to decide to take on the Department for Transport, if they know they are in the wrong. The likes of P&O might have deep pockets, but ultimatel, there will be no escape from a law that is properly enforced by the state.

As things stand, the level of surcharge that will be levied on operators in breach of the legislation is set entirely by the harbour authority, with reference to the regulations that will be laid at some point by the Secretary of State. My concern is that if the level of surcharge is set too low—we spoke this morning about the level of fines that could be levied—there would be no or very little disincentive for operators to pay below the national minimum wage equivalent. We saw with P&O that even flagrant lawbreaking was no disincentive whatever.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I completely agree with the line the hon. Member is pursuing here—that the fines should present a disincentive to breach the provisions of the legislation—but would he clarify a point on the minimum surcharge? The amendment says it would be

“no less than 300 per cent of the difference between the amount calculated as the national minimum wage equivalence for the operator and the amount in total paid by that operator”.

We learned in the debates on the previous clause that more than 50% of the savings that P&O were making were not from wages but from the changes in roster patterns. Should that be taken into account as well?

[Gavin Newlands]

I thank my colleague on the Transport Committee for making that point. It is very important, and he is absolutely right. I spoke about the impact of rostering on Second Reading. I am sure we will come on to the seafarers’ charter and the issues around that later on. My amendment seeks to amend the Bill in front of us, but I would love for us to be taking the whole situation into account, rather than just the wage. We will discuss that point in more detail a bit later on.

The Insolvency Service refused to undertake criminal proceedings against P&O Ferries or its corporate leadership, despite Mr Hebblethwaite’s appearance in front of the Select Committees’ joint hearing, when he freely admitted that he and his colleagues conspired over a lengthy period of time to systematically break the law and treat their workforce dreadfully. P&O clearly took the view that the chances of facing any real penalty for their actions were slim and, ultimately, they were proved to be right.

The Bill sets no minimum level of surcharge that would be levied on operators found to be in violation of the law. If the surcharge is set at a rate lower than the difference between compliance and non-compliance, there is nothing to prevent rogue operators from paying below the national minimum wage equivalent, making a declaration to that effect, paying the surcharge and still sailing away with full pockets, exactly as P&O Ferries did. [Interruption.]

[The Chair]

Order. I remind colleagues not to have private conversations during Committee sittings.

[Gavin Newlands]

Thank you, Ms Harris. Amendment 50 would make clear the cost operators would face if they were caught flouting the law. It is deliberately punitive. We picked 300%, but I would be happy to go higher.

The amendment would also have the effect of continually updating itself through reference to the national minimum wage equivalent rate, rather than to an absolute cash figure. We know that those involved in drafting statutory instruments will have their work cut out to say the least over the coming months if the Government’s Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill is passed. My amendment would save them the trouble of updating this legislation every time that the rate needs to be updated. Indeed, the Government’s own response to the consultation on the Bill stated:

“We envisage that the rate of surcharge will be set by the SHA with reference to the NMWe deficit, which is the difference between the amount that seafarers are actually paid and the amount they would have been paid if they had qualified for NMW for that work.”

All our amendment would do is ensure that the reference to that deficit is fixed and a deterrent, rather than just a price that they pay for doing business.

I am sure that the current Secretary of State wants to see rogue operators caught and held to account, but he may not always be in this place or be the Minister. If future Ministers and Secretaries of State place less value on seafarers’ wages and conditions, they can amend the regulations, without much recourse to this place and probably without much fuss, to remove any deterrent effect that a surcharge may have. Of course, it is open to set a surcharge higher than 300%, but my amendment would ensure that the minimum is fixed in statute and cannot be amended without a new Bill and Act, thus making it more difficult to remove.

I would be happy to hear from the Minister what the level of surcharge is because, to be honest, it was quite difficult to pick up what he was saying in his oration before the Committee adjourned this morning. It was rather like a horse-racing commentary, so I did not quite pick up his opposition to our amendments. Maybe he is backing our amendments; I did not actually hear. I would be happy to hear what he actually thinks about these issues.

I will now speak to amendments 53 and 54. The Bill makes no orders or compulsion on where the proceeds of any surcharge levied by harbour authorities should go, as the hon. Member—and sometimes Friend—for Wythenshawe and Sale East said. Given that the reason for the surcharge is the mistreatment of workers, it seems apposite that the proceeds of a crime such as this should be directed to its victims. It would remain open to the Secretary of State to direct money to the harbour authority in question to spend on welfare facilities for seafarers, but that would be a decision for the Secretary of State, not for the harbour authority. Equally, it would be open to the Secretary of State to spend the money directly through the Department for Transport or other agencies, or to divert it to one of the many charities and trade unions that provide welfare services to seafarers in our ports and harbours.

We all hope that no surcharges will actually need to be levied under the legislation; equally, we all know that P&O Ferries is one of a number of operators that do not treat their staff with the respect and dignity that they deserve. When harbour authorities and the Secretary of State start to exercise their powers and collect surcharges, we need to ensure that those moneys do not disappear in a black hole somewhere or get set aside for the general running costs of a port. Unfortunately, that is exactly what the Bill, as it stands, allows. I would be happy to hear some clarification from the Minister regarding exactly where these moneys will go and whether the regulations will make clear that the surcharges are not to be spent keeping the lights on or building more infrastructure to handle the implications of Brexit. That is not what should happen. My amendment would end that possibility once and for all.

I forgot that I had so many amendments to speak to. Amendment 57 is essentially aimed at ensuring that any objections to a surcharge being levied are made in a reasonable timeframe. It is not too great a stretch of the imagination to foresee a company—again, such as P&O Ferries—being levied with a surcharge, procrastinating on payment and, months later, objecting to the surcharge, thus prolonging the process even further. Setting a time limit would prevent these kinds of frivolous uses of the objection procedure while still allowing genuine objections to be lodged. I can see nothing in the Bill to prevent objections being lodged and then withdrawn, so it would still be open to trade unions and others to lodge on a holding basis, as it were, while retaining the right to explore their options along the way. If the Minister will advise what time limits for objection will be in the regulations when laid, I may well be happy to withdraw that particular amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Newlands]

On Government amendment 15 and the tariff of surcharge being at the discretion of harbour authorities, how much consideration has the Department given to the possibility of surcharge shopping and other conflicts of interests, both of which have been raised here and in the other place?

[Mr Holden]

That is a fair point. We have considered the matter, but we will be setting a national tariff in regulations following wide consultation, which will then be looked at by the individual harbour authorities. The cost implications of operators changing routes in order to shop around between what we expect to be minor cost differences mean that we do not expect it to be a particular issue.

Amendment 57 would allow for regulations setting a time limit under which an objection to a surcharge can be made. We think it is unlikely that there will be delays in objections to surcharges, but we are none the less happy to continue to consider that point ahead of Report, because it is important to get these things right and to have the right disincentives. We do not want to create strange situations that could act against seafarers’ interests.

Amendment 13 agreed to.

Amendments made: 14, in clause 7, page 5, line 32, leave out second “the” and insert “a”.

See Amendment 13.

Amendment 15, in clause 7, page 5, line 33, leave out from “regulations” to end of line 35.

This amendment is consequential on the removal of clause 11(3) (see Amendment 34).

Amendment 16, in clause 7, page 5, line 37, at end insert—

“(6A) A duty to impose a surcharge is subject to any direction given by the Secretary of State under section 11(2)(a).

(6B) A harbour authority which fails to comply with a duty to impose a surcharge is guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale.”

See Amendment 13.

Amendment 17, in clause 7, page 5, line 39, leave out paragraph (a).

See Amendment 13.

Amendment 18, in clause 7, page 5, line 43, after “notification of” insert “the imposition of”.

This is a drafting clarification.

Amendment 19, in clause 7, page 5, line 44, at end insert—

“(7A) Regulations may make provision requiring a harbour authority that has imposed a surcharge to notify the Secretary of State if so much of the period within which the surcharge must be paid as is specified in the regulations has expired without the surcharge having been paid in accordance with regulations under subsection (7)(d).”

See Amendment 13.

Amendment 20, in clause 7, page 6, line 6, at end insert—

“(10) In this Act, ‘surcharge’ means a charge under section (Imposition of surcharges: failure to provide declaration in time), (Imposition of surcharges: in-year declaration that is prospective only) or (Imposition of surcharges: operating inconsistently with declaration).”—(Mr Holden.)

See Amendment 13.

Clause 7, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 8

Questions to surcharges

Amendments made: 21, in clause 8, page 6, line 9, leave out paragraph (a).

This is consequential on Amendment 13 and the amendments relating to it.

Amendment 22, in clause 8, page 6, line 36, leave out subsection (7).

This is consequential on Amendment 13 and the amendments relating to it.

Amendment 23, in clause 8, page 6, line 41, leave out paragraph (a).—(Mr Holden.)

This is consequential on Amendment 13 and the amendments relating to it.

Clause 8, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 9

Refusal of harbour access for failure to pay surcharge

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[Grahame Morris]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Harris. In this group, I will speak to amendment 70 in my name and to new clause 6.

The Minister explained the reasoning behind his proposal to refuse access to a harbour. Amendment 70 proposes that the ship should be detained within a port. That is far more in line with international maritime law. The denial of harbour access is a matter of some concern. For harbour authorities or, indeed, the Secretary of State to suspend access is dangerous and likely to be ineffective. I therefore support the detention of non-compliant vessels within a UK harbour. The trade unions, the RMT—National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers—and I believe Nautilus International, also support that view, in order to provide a punishment for non-compliance that is more in line with international maritime regulatory standards governing operators’ behaviours.

I respectfully point out that the Maritime and Coastguard Agency’s port state control powers, which already exist under the maritime labour convention, are the only mechanism for inspecting crew employment and welfare standards. Every month, foreign flag vessels detained following those inspections are posted by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency on the Government’s website. The power that I propose would be a welcome addition to the port state control responsibilities that the MCA discharges for foreign flag vessels working from UK ports.

Only denying access to ports is not a realistic or sustainable punishment, especially as it relies to some extent on vessels not sailing to the UK if they are found to be non-compliant. Amendment 70 and new clause 6, in relation to vessels that fail to pay the surcharge, would be much more effective. There is also the possibility that capacity in another port would be blocked, if a ship were detained outside the port, perhaps in another harbour or even in a different jurisdiction. It is not clear whether the bilateral agreements the Government are negotiating—the Minister referred to them earlier, in particular that with France, but there are also those with Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Denmark and Norway—would take account of that. I would be interested in the Government’s response to that point.

There is a welfare issue. It is outside the scope of this Bill, but there have been occasions where, certainly during the course of the pandemic, a number of vessels were laid up. I do not know if comes under the category of force majeure. Many tens of thousands—even hundreds of thousands—of seafarers were unable to access proper conditions. I know there were issues about the spreading of infection and so on, but putting that to one side, surely in terms of welfare it would make far more sense to detain the vessels within the port, rather than outside.

[Gavin Newlands]

I rise to speak to amendment 58. I am minded to support amendment 70 and new clause 6 in the name of the hon. Member for Easington. Perhaps counterintuitively, I am looking to add another exception to the list that could allow a rogue operator’s ship access to harbour, because I do not want seafarers or workers caught in the middle. As things stand, where an operator has been refused access for not paying the surcharge even when a crew welfare issue has been identified, such as a long overdue change of crew, the Bill would allow harbour authorities to continue blocking access to the operator. That could put the crew in the middle of a tug of war between the harbour authority and the operator.

We do not want a situation where the harbour authority is legally able to prevent access to a port when a ship has genuine need to seek access to ensure the safety and health of its crew. I know that most harbours take their responsibility for crew welfare seriously, but we do not want a situation where rogue operators are able to say, “We would love to take crew welfare seriously, but we couldn’t access the nearest harbour because we didn’t take it seriously in the first place, by paying below the national minimum wage.” There should be no excuses when it comes to employee safety.

Adding crew welfare to the list of exceptions to the harbour authority’s right to refuse access would provide some extra piece of mind for seafarers, and ensure that they have the protections, not the operator. It is the seafarers we are looking to protect. The amendment would clearly not prevent harbours from refusing access where the five conditions do not apply and, on that level, does not seek to water down the options available to hit those who refuse to pay a surcharge.

The Neptune declaration was established during the covid pandemic as it became clear that public health restrictions on access to ports were severely impacting on the capacity for ships to change over. Part of that declaration is a commitment that operators should make all reasonable efforts to accommodate crew changes, including when the vessel has to make a reasonable deviation. That should apply even as we have moved beyond the worst of the pandemic, and our legislation should reflect that declaration, which is why we have tabled the amendment.

[Mike Kane]

I rise to signal our support for amendment 70 and new clause 6 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Easington, who spoke well about seafarer welfare.

To give a personal example, over the past 30 years, my wife and I have enjoyed the hospitality, archaeology and beauty of the Orkney Islands. Over those 30 years, we have seen the number of cruise ships docking at Kirkwall go through the roof. There are days when the visitor numbers can double the population of the islands. When I visit the beautiful St Magnus Cathedral in the heart of Kirkwall, I now see—around the back or further up the high street—the welfare lines of mariners waiting for handouts or warm clothes, or going to the post office to send telegrams or money back home to their loved ones. Those lines get longer and longer every year.

I echo the concerns that the power for harbour authorities to suspend access to operators that are not paying crew at least the national minimum wage in UK territorial waters is probably dangerous and ineffective. I would welcome the Minister’s consideration of that. By denying ships access to those harbours, we are denying those crews, who are some of the poorest people in society—they are flown in from all over the world to give us the leisure experience we want on cruises—access to give welfare to those back home. That is less a political and more a humanitarian issue that our ports and harbours increasingly have to deal with.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Holden]

Members on both sides of the Committee are raising a similar issue about welfare. As an additional safeguard, the Secretary of State has the power to direct a harbour authority not to comply with its duty to refuse access. That will ensure that access is not denied—this has to be in rare circumstances for the Bill to work—where it would cause damage by disrupting key passenger services and supply chains. There are rare instances in which the Secretary of State has an overriding power, but on the broad swathe of trying to provide welfare, our view is that that is covered already under clause 9(3).

[Gavin Newlands]

Will the Minister tell us what part of clause 9(3) would cover the welfare of seafarers? Clause 9(3)(a) is on force majeure and paragraph (b) is on overriding safety concerns—might it be that one?

[Mr Holden]

The Bill states that

“a harbour authority may not refuse access to a harbour—

(a) in cases of force majeure;

(b) where there are overriding safety concerns;

(c) where there is a need to reduce or minimise the risk of pollution;

(d) where there is a need to rectify deficiencies on the ship.”

Both force majeure and overriding safety concerns for the crew, as well as for the ship, would be covered.

Members can be reassured that the list of exceptions directly reflect the circumstances in which access to a port may be provided. Existing legislation— namely regulation 13 of the Merchant Shipping (Port State Control) Regulations 2011, SI 2011 No. 2601— also covers this issue. I therefore think that the area of safety and crew welfare in exceptional circumstances is covered by legislation and the extra powers that are available to the Secretary of State.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Holden]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his generous assessment of my ability to describe the Bill’s provisions.

Government amendments 32 to 34 redefine the circumstances in which directions may be given to harbour authorities by the Secretary of State. As the powers are now duties, there is no longer a need for the Secretary of State to direct harbour authorities to exercise their functions. If they do not exercise those functions, they will be liable for prosecution, so the Secretary of State does not need to intervene. Amendment 15 to clause 7 is consequential on that change.

[Gavin Newlands]

I rise to speak to amendments 59 and 60, which, as the Committee will be pleased to hear, I can dispose of in fairly short order. On clause 12, I will speak to amendments on removing some of the Secretary of State’s untrammelled powers. That argument happens in just about every Bill Committee—certainly every Bill Committee that I am on—because scrutiny and accountability are a good thing. I know that it is out of fashion for Governments to willingly draft scrutiny into legislation these days, but amendments 59 and 60 seek a stakeholder consultation before the Secretary of State can direct harbour authorities, which would provide for an additional layer of scrutiny.

A requirement on the Secretary of State to consult will help to ensure the openness and transparency of the Secretary of State’s actions. Imposing a duty to consult will ensure that any guidance is exposed to critical comment from stakeholders, which may improve said guidance. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee said that the power in clause 11 was “a completely open-ended power”, and that the whole Bill could therefore be modified by directions that are not subject to any form of parliamentary scrutiny.

The Government accepted that argument in the other place in relation to clause 3 and amended it appropriately, so I would be very keen to hear the Minister’s explanation of why the same principle is not applicable to clause 11, taking into account that, in responding to the points about the powers to direct in clause 11, Baroness Vere said:

“We have looked very carefully at the powers of direction for the Secretary of State in Clause 11. We have concluded that to remove them would significantly reduce the effectiveness of the Bill. These powers of direction form an important part of the compliance mechanism under the Bill.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 26 October 2022; Vol. 824, c. 1513.]

Our amendments do not seek to remove the powers, merely to add a layer of scrutiny. [Interruption.] I slow down as I am about to conclude, to allow the Minister to get back to his seat. What could possibly be wrong with an additional layer of scrutiny?

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[Mr Holden]

I thank both the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North and my right hon. Friend for their views on this. Just to be clear, Opposition amendment 59 would require the Government to consult with relevant stakeholders before issuing guidance. As per amendments 31 to 35, tabled in my name, there is no longer a provision for statutory guidance, given the responsibilities under the new duty. However, as we intend to provide some guidance to harbour authorities, I would assure hon. Members on both sides of the Committee that we intend to consult widely on any guidance that is issued, and it is unnecessary to say as much on the face of the Bill.

On the points that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings raised about the broader maritime growth strategy, I would be very happy to write to him with any specific updates that we have. I know that this is an important area that he feels passionate about.

Opposition amendment 60—this will be similar to my response to amendment 59—would require the Government to consult with relevant stakeholders before issuing directions. As per amendments 32, 33 and 34, tabled in my name, directions can only be made to instruct the harbour authority not to comply with its duties in a particular way. The need to use those powers of direction might arise when there are issues of welfare, national resilience, or the need to import medical supplies, and a ship should not be refused access. Such scenarios may be very time-sensitive, and the need to consult could significantly slow down that process. We assure hon. Members that we will consult where possible, but on that specific point—it is the reverse, as it were—it would not be appropriate to make that a legal requirement on the face of the Bill because of those issues.

Amendments 37 and 38, tabled in my name, change the power to make a direction to specify a harbour authority in respect of a particular harbour regarding the power to make those regulations. That is consequential on the amendments to convert harbour authority powers into duties, as, now that harbour authorities are required to request declarations, impose surcharges and refuse access to harbours, it is important that they have clarity on the relevant harbour authority for a particular harbour. The amendments will further ensure consistency and reduce the administrative burden of giving directions on a case-by-case basis.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 10 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 11

Guidance and directions

Amendments made: 31, in clause 11, page 8, line 2, leave out subsection (1).

This removes the Secretary of State’s power under the Bill to give guidance to harbour authorities, in consequence of changing harbour authorities’ powers into duties.

Amendment 32, in clause 11, page 8, line 6, leave out

“exercise, or not to exercise, any of their powers under”

and insert

“not do anything they would otherwise be under a duty to do by reason of”.

This and the following amendment redefine the circumstances in which directions may be given to harbour authorities.

Amendment 36, in clause 11, page 8, line 16, leave out subsection (6).—(Mr Holden.)

This is consequential on Amendment 31.

Clause 11, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 12

Regulations

[Gavin Newlands]

I beg to move amendment 61, in clause 12, page 8, line 33, leave out subsection (3) and insert—

“(3) A statutory instrument containing (whether alone or with other provision) regulations made by a Minister of the Crown under any of the following provisions may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament—

(a) section 3 (power to request declaration);

(b) section 4 (nature of declaration);

(c) section 7 (imposition of surcharges);

(d) section 9 (refusal of harbour access for failure to pay surcharge).

(3A) Any other statutory instrument containing regulations made by a Minister of the Crown under any provision of this Act is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.”

This amendment ensures that regulations under clauses 3, 4, 7 and 9 of the Bill are subject to the affirmative resolution procedure.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 66, in clause 12, page 8, line 33, leave out

“is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either”

and insert

“may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by resolution of each”.

Clause stand part.

[Gavin Newlands]

I was on tenterhooks there: I was not sure whether I would have to leave expeditiously for the Standing Order No. 24 debate application in the Chamber, but thankfully that has been resolved.

As trailed when I spoke previously, amendment 61 seeks to amend the legislation in a similar fashion to Labour’s amendment 66. I am not precious about which amendment the Minister accepts. Clause 12 concerns the power to make regulations by statutory instrument and currently sets out that regulations made under the legislation are subject to the negative resolution procedure, as is always the case these days—other than for those in respect of clause 15, I should add in fairness. Given the potential nature and impact of the provisions that may be made by regulations under clauses 3, 4, 7 and 9, it would be appropriate for such regulations to be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure, to enhance the scrutiny of the regulations of this Parliament. At one point, the Government were keen for this Parliament to “take back control”. I hope the Minister can exert that with these amendments.

[Mike Kane]

I rise to speak in favour of amendment 61, in the name of the SNP Members, and amendment 66. The proposal is self-explanatory but important. The regulations under the Bill hand very broad powers to Ministers. It would be important for the House to consider and approve the regulations that will be made.

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[Mr Holden]

Clause 12 empowers the Secretary of State to make regulations to provide further details on the implementation of the Bill’s provisions. The regulations made under the legislation will be subject, as it stands, to the negative resolution procedure. The regulations may make different provisions for different cases, for example to take account of different types of ship services, such as freight ferries and container ships, and different non-qualifying seafarers—for example, there may be different surcharge rates according to age. The regulations may also confer discretion on specified persons and contain consequential, supplementary, incidental or transitional provisions. This provision gives the Government the flexibility to adapt the regulations as needed to ensure that the Bill’s provisions are effectively implemented and to achieve the Bill’s policy objectives as quickly as possible.

Amendments 61 and 66 seek to ensure that regulations under clauses 3, 4, 7 and 9 are subject to the affirmative resolution procedure, rather than the negative resolution procedure as currently. We expressly considered why it is appropriate that each regulation-making power was negative in our delegated powers memo, and the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee did not raise any concerns about the procedure for the remaining regulation-making powers in the Bill. Indeed, the only regulation-making power that the Committee recommended be subject to the affirmative procedure has now been removed from the Bill.

Although we have tweaked certain regulation-making powers, we do not consider that this changes the appropriateness of the negative procedure, and we will be providing a supplementary delegated powers memorandum for the Committee to consider in due course. Switching to the affirmative procedure is not a good use of parliamentary time and would slow down the implementation of the Bill. I request that the amendments be withdrawn so that we can get on with protecting seafarers as quickly as possible.

[Gavin Newlands]

I thank the Minister for that response. Surely it is for Parliament to decide the best use of parliamentary time. I think we have let the Minister off with enough this afternoon, so I will push the amendment to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

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[Gavin Newlands]

I rise to support new clause 5 and must start by congratulating or commending—through heavily gritted teeth, it must be said—the DFT drafting team for drafting the Bill so narrowly that the only recourse we have is to ask for reports on the protections for seafarers on these very important issues.

New clause 5 follows the work done on the seafarers’ charter, work which unfortunately appears to be stuck in the long grass. One of the reasons given by the Minister in the Lords to oppose the original amendment by Lord Tunnicliffe was the 90-day timeframe. The hon. Member for Dover has just said that she does not want to wait. The original amendment was for 90 days; we have had to up that to six months, because the Government rejected that amendment and referred to six months.

The issues outlined in the new clause are real and serious. We have reports of seafarers employed by P&O Ferries—that is, the people employed to replace those they sacked illegally—working 17 weeks straight on board. That is simply unacceptable. A tired and overworked crew is a dangerous crew at sea.

[Karl Turner]

The crucial point about safety is that the Dover to Calais run involves an incredibly fast turnaround and the work is incredibly intensive. It is not just that these exploited seafarers are working 17 weeks on, 12 or 13 hours a day, seven days a week. They are going to and fro, and the most dangerous part of that run is pulling into the harbour and coming back out. The work is intensive and incredibly dangerous. Does the hon. Gentleman agree?

[Gavin Newlands]

I could not agree more—rather them than me. It is bizarre that sometimes we argue around the fringes of these issues. We are talking about such dangerous and onerous work for weeks on end, and we are quibbling over whether we pay them the national minimum wage or not. It beggars belief. We cannot trade safety for the profits of DP World.

This is not just an issue of fairness at work. It is an issue of human and environmental safety. It is just over 30 years since the Braer wrecked on Shetland and caused an ecological disaster that I suspect we all remember well, even three decades on. If we have seafarers around our shores working 17 weeks straight with no oversight and no action, sooner or later we will have another Braer or, even worse, a Herald of Free Enterprise.

Similarly, on wages and pensions, we know what many seafarers are expected to put up with. The key point of this Bill is to prevent wages falling below the national minimum wage equivalent, but we also hope it will have the additional impact of improving wages across the board in the industry. If minimum wages go up, there could be benefits for those who are already earning more than that floor.

We know that the Government currently support a voluntary charter for seafarers, and the Minister repeated that again today. I say in all sincerity to the Minister and the Government Members sitting behind him: what good is a voluntary charter when we have operators such as P&O Ferries, which was content not only to break the law but to sit in front of a Select Committee and freely admit to breaking it? A voluntary charter has about as much legal effect as the back of a fag packet, and if P&O Ferries is happy to break the law, it will not look back as it smashes a charter to shreds.

Putting these elements of the charter in the Bill will at least give the Government firm legal ground in assessing how this legislation has benefited the industry and its employees. Again, the new clause calls for nothing more than a report, as the hon. Member for Dover said, on the main issues from the charter. It commits the Government to nothing, except a report. If the Government are serious about a real seafarers’ charter developed in partnership with trade unions and aimed at protecting exploited workers, they have nothing to fear from accepting this new clause.

I turn to new clause 7 in the name of the hon. Member for Easington, and supported by myself and my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East. Last July, we saw the publication of the nine-point plan for seafarers. No. 6 on that plan was to develop a statutory code for “fire and rehire” practices, and failures to engage in employee consultations. Sadly, that has progressed no further.

Members may remember that I have certainly highlighted and challenged companies that have used fire and rehire over recent years since its first big deployment in this country by British Airways. Many Opposition Members have repeatedly asked the Government to bring in legislation to end it, as is the case in most of Europe, with some of us introducing multiple Bills to that effect. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, the Government felt that a simple change to guidance would solve the worst of the problem.

Fire and rehire seems to be used disproportionately in the transport sector, by British Airways, Menzies Aviation and Go North West to name just three. Elements of it were deployed by P&O Ferries last year—another charge to add to its self-declared rap sheet, which the RMT said amounted to one of the

“most shameful acts in the history of British industrial relations”.

While some Government Members may have views that differ from mine on the RMT, I hope they would at least agree with them on the depths to which P&O Ferries plumbed last year.

Seafarers are particularly vulnerable to fire and rehire. The particular circumstances of the maritime industry, surrounded by international treaties and conventions, mean that workers are subject to greater exploitation overall than those on land. We saw with P&O how that exploitation can be deployed by a company that is happy to willingly and publicly break the law and make no secret of it. It is a practice that has absolutely no place in a modern society. Our workplaces are not those of a Dickensian novel, yet the legislation that regulates the power dynamic between employer and employee is stuck in the Victorian age.

The UK is almost unique in Europe on fire and rehire. Most other countries in Europe have embraced modernity and made their employment laws fit for the future. P&O Ferries could not have pulled off its scam in most European countries, just as BA’s parent company did not attempt fire and rehire in Ireland or Spain. New clause 5 would not prevent fire and rehire in itself—amendments 71 and 72 tabled by me and my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East would have offered greater protection but they were deemed out of scope, so I will not refer to them any further in case I am called to order by the Chair.

However, new clause 5 would ensure that any instances, attempted or otherwise, in connection with seafarers within scope of this legislation are reported by the Secretary of State to Parliament. That will give this place the opportunity to again look at legislation not only in this specific sector, but also across the whole economy. Hopefully by that time, Government Members will finally have made the jump from warm words to tough action, and we will see legislation put on the books to put an end to fire and rehire and an end to these rogue companies. It quite frankly a disgrace that the UK lags so far behind the rest of our neighbours. We can start the process of remedying that disgrace and dragging our employment laws into the 21st century by adopting this new clause.

[Sir John Hayes]

I rise briefly to address new clause 5, which has much to recommend it. The hon. Gentleman was right to talk about a seafarers’ charter, which has been long called for. He was right to recognise the need for engagement with the trade unions. When I was the Minister, I had a positive dialogue with the RMT maritime section, as my former shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East, will know. It is also right, as I said earlier, that we understand that pay should be seen in a broader context, as the new clause recommends. I called earlier for a strategy that looked at the whole maritime sector, pertinent to the matters we have been discussing today, which would identify common concerns across ports, business services, manufacturing, engineering, science and all the other ancillary industries linked to maritime.

It seems critical to recognise that seafarers are particularly vulnerable to exploitation because of the peripatetic nature of their employment. Where people take advantage of that vulnerability, we need to act. We have moved on from the dark days when economic liberalism prevailed and we thought the free market would solve everything—at least I hope we have. This country has a proud maritime past. One thinks of great seafarers such as Drake, Captain Cook and Lord Nelson, who are heroes, whatever the liberal bourgeoisie, with their doubt-filled, guilt-ridden preoccupations, may think. We can have a maritime future that is just as great, but that must be built on the right terms and conditions, pay and circumstances for our seafarers.

My only reservation about the new clause, which is why despite teasingly suggesting that I might support it, I will not, is that it does not actually go far enough. I would want to do still more. The Government are to be commended for introducing the legislation, and my hon. Friend the Member for Dover in particular is to be commended for championing the interests of seafarers on the back of the awful events that have been reflected on today, when P&O behaved so disgracefully. I say to the Minister let this be the beginning of new thinking about how we can revitalise the maritime sector by doing right by the people who work in it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Holden]

I do speak for the Government but, on the specifics of what BEIS has been up to, I urge the hon. Member to speak to a BEIS Minister. But I do understand the broad thrust of his point. Where we are taking action here today is regarding seafarers.

The hon. Member makes quite an important point: how many consultations and reports can be had? The Opposition are currently proposing two more reports in their new clauses 5 and 7, both of which seek to legislate for the Government to produce a report. The first seeks to legislate for the Government to produce a report within six months of the Bill being passed on its implementation and monitoring. A number of the points that are sought to be included in such a report are well beyond the scope of the Bill. As hon. Members have said, the Bill is focused very much on the remuneration of seafarers who do not qualify for the national minimum wage. Six months after the Bill has been passed, there will be little to report on—hopefully very little indeed, as people will be complying with it. Indeed, the Bill will not be brought into force until secondary legislation is in place, and it is not expected that that will be the case within a short space of time after the Bill has passed.

Let me turn to the detail of the new clause, in particular subsection (2)(a). As a matter of course, we will be conducting a post-implementation review of the Act within five years of it being passed that will cover pensions and pay, as covered in the impact assessment. In any event, pensions and roster patterns are outside the scope of the Bill, and any effect on rostering would be indirect and challenging to distinguish from other factors.

Subsection (2)(b) goes beyond the implementation and monitoring of the Bill itself, and is therefore out of scope. We do not have plans to legislate further than is necessary, but that does not mean that we will not take action on areas beyond the matter of minimum pay, which we all know is not the only aspect of seafarer welfare that requires attention. As hon. Members have mentioned, as part of the nine-point plan, a new seafarers’ charter will be launched as a voluntary agreement, which aims to improve long-term employment and welfare conditions for seafarers. It covers a far wider range of employment protections than is currently covered by the Bill.

[Gavin Newlands]

The Minister confirms again that the seafarers’ charter, when it is published, will be voluntary. Does he think that P&O Ferries and other operators—perhaps Irish Ferries—will sign up to the charter?

While I am on my feet, I forgot to say in my earlier contribution that I also add my thanks to everyone on the Committee, given that this is my last contribution on the Committee. I thank the team, the Clerks, the Doorkeepers, Hansard and of course yourself, Ms Harris, and your glamorous assistant this afternoon, Mr Davies, who chaired us so ably this morning.

[Mr Holden]

I hope that people do sign up. The entire aim of the Bill is not to have people being fined but to drive best practice, so I hope that, in time, operators that have not operated in a positive way towards employees in the past, in a way that we would like to see, will sign up.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Newlands]

Does the hon. Gentleman not share my astonishment at some of the comments from the hon. Member for Dover and the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings, who said they could not support new clauses and amendments because they did not go far enough—that ire should be directed at the Minister—yet here we have a new clause that confers personal liability and they cannot back that either?

[Karl Turner]

I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman. This new clause would provide an actual deterrent to prevent other bad employers from copying what happened with P&O Ferries. I can see that I am testing the patience of the Chair, so I am going to conclude there. Thank you for your indulgence, Ms Harris.

Seafarers' Wages Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 17th January 2023 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Copies of written evidence that the Committee receives will be made available in the Committee Room and will be circulated to Members by email.

We will now begin line-by-line consideration of the Bill. The selection and groupings list for today’s sittings is available in the room. It shows how the clauses and selected amendments have been grouped together for debate. Amendments grouped together are generally on the same or a similar issue. Please note that decisions on amendments do not take place in the order in which they are debated, but in the order in which they appear on the amendment paper. The selection and groupings list shows the order of debates.

Decisions on each amendment, and on whether each clause should stand part of the Bill, are taken when we come to the relevant clause. A Member who has put their name to the lead amendment in a group is called first; other Members are then free to catch my eye to speak on all or any of the amendments in that group. I ask Members to stand in the normal way if they want to speak on a particular amendment, including the SNP spokesman as well—that would be really helpful. A Member may speak more than once in a single debate.

At the end of a debate on a group of amendments, I shall call the Member who moved the lead amendment again. Before they sit down, they will need to indicate if they wish to withdraw the amendment or seek a decision. If any Member wishes to press any other amendment in a group to a vote, they will need to let me know in advance.

Clause 1

Services to which this Act applies

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

I beg to move amendment 42, in clause 1, page 1, line 10, leave out “any kind” and insert “every description”.

This amendment would bring the definition of ship into line with that under the Merchant Shipping Act 1995.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 67, in clause 1, page 1, line 11, at end insert—

‘“place in the United Kingdom” includes energy installations within the UK Exclusive Economic Zone.’

Clause 1 stand part.

Amendment 43, in clause 2, page 1, line 14, leave out paragraphs (a) and (b) and insert—

‘(a) who is employed or engaged in any capacity on board any ship providing a service to which this Act applies,

(b) whose employment or engagement on board the ship is carried out in relation to the provision of the service, and’.

This amendment would bring the definition of seafarer into line with the definition of “seaman” under the Merchant Shipping Act 1995.

Clause 2 stand part.

Amendment 48, in clause 4, page 3, line 18, leave out “or its territorial waters” and insert

‘, its territorial waters, or within the Renewable Energy Zone as specified by The Renewable Energy Zone (Designation of Area) Order 2004.’

This amendment would ensure that seafarers engaged in work supporting offshore wind installations are covered by Act.

[Gavin Newlands]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Davies, and to lead this worthy but anaemic debate. On that basis, I hope that the Minister will be generous when discussing the amendments before us. The amendments are in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East.

A couple of these amendments are straightforward. Amendment 42 would change the definition of a ship or vessel, and amendment 43 would ensure consistency in the definition of a seaman. The amendments are intended to ensure that the legislation aligns with existing definitions of both “seaman” and “ships” in the Merchant Shipping Act 1995. I thank the Law Society of Scotland for highlighting these issues.

Having differing definitions in law between the Bill and existing legislation for no apparent good reason—although we will hear what the Minister says—does not seem to be a particularly efficient route to go down. After all, the workers that the Bill is intended to cover are already seamen under current definitions and, on the face of it, the Bill does not aim to change that.

Similarly, if there is already a legal definition of a ship in statute, it seems useful to maintain that definition here. Indeed, when the Bill was in the House of Lords, Baroness Vere made a similar point in relation to the definition of a harbour, pointing to the existence of the Harbours Act 1964. Therefore there should be no reason why a similar principle cannot apply in this case. If there are good reasons why a new definition specifically relating to the provisions in the Bill is needed, I will be happy to hear it, but logic would suggest that using the existing definitions would be far simpler.

Amendments 67 and 48 are designed to deal with the fact that workers operating in the renewables industry, which will be increasing exponentially in the coming years, are currently excluded from the Bill. There are two methods of dealing with that under the amendments. They relate to the UK exclusive economic zone and to the renewable energy zone. The exclusive economic zone almost entirely matches the renewable energy zone, save for an area just under 200 miles north-west of Cape Wrath and more than 100 miles north of North Rona. Because our proposal is aimed particularly at protecting those seafarers engaged in work supporting renewables installations in UK waters, it seemed more appropriate to try to use the renewable energy zone rather than the EEZ, but we have given both a try. If the Minister wants to accept either, I will be perfectly happy with whichever one he chooses.

At the moment, the Bill’s extent is limited to the UK and its territorial waters—that is, the 12 nautical mile limit. That excludes the EEZ and REZ, which go to 200 miles. Our proposal would simply ensure that ships and seafarers engaged in work to support renewables installations were not inadvertently omitted from enjoying legislative protection simply because those zones are not listed in the Bill while territorial waters are referred to.

I note that the Minister in the Lords, Baroness Vere, had to correct the record after incorrectly stating that these workers were already covered by national minimum wage legislation. Workers in the oil and gas industries are entitled to national minimum wage protection. It would be ludicrous if their colleagues doing the same difficult and dangerous job, but supporting renewable industries, were denied the right to protections and to national minimum wage equivalence. This is, on the face of it, a fairly minor proposal. However, it would help to protect thousands of workers—a number that we hope will grow hugely over coming years—and would ensure that renewables were not just better for the planet but better for our workers.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

Would it be convenient to discuss amendment 67 at this point, Mr Davies?

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[Mr Holden]

I thank the hon. Member for his point. Everybody will be covered if on a boat that moves to and from those platforms at least 120 times a year, but the expansion of the UK’s exclusive economic zone to cover that area would bring, as other hon. Members have said, particular complexity regarding international maritime law. I will come to that when we address the amendments to clause 2.

[Gavin Newlands]

I hear what the Minister is saying—that workers will be covered under the Bill if they visit a harbour 120 times or more per year—but that might not be the case for some. Clearly, the hon. Member for Easington and I are not going to get what we desire in this Committee this morning. Would the Minister commit to the Department for Transport looking at this issue six months after the passage of the Bill to see who is actually being covered by the legislation?

[Mr Holden]

I will happily write to the hon. Gentleman before Report with any further details.

For the reasons I have set out, we cannot accept amendment 67, but I do understand the concern about the national minimum wage entitlement for workers on energy platforms in the EEZ. Offshore wind farms and the renewables sector are critical to meeting our net zero target. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy regularly reviews the national minimum wage legislation to ensure that it is fit for the current workforce and businesses. We hope that this national minimum wage equivalence legislation will also reflect those changes over time as well.

[Mr Holden]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention—[Interruption.] I did not quite catch what the hon. Member for Glasgow East was saying from a sedentary position. My hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn raises some important points. I know she has been a massive campaigner, whether on that nuclear power station in her patch or, as she has raised more specifically today, on the issues around the freeport and the port of Holyhead, which is crucial for our work across the Irish sea. I can confirm to her that the sector is incredibly important, and we recognise how important such jobs are for her community and for coastal communities around the country. That is one of the reasons we are bringing forward this legislation today.

Clause 2 sets out what is meant by a non-qualifying seafarer. This is a person who

“(a) works on a ship providing a service to which this Act applies”—

as defined in clause 1—

“(b) whose work on the ship is carried out in relation to the provision of the service, and

(c) who fails to qualify for the national minimum wage in respect of that work merely because, for the purposes of the National Minimum Wage Act 1998, the person does not work, or does not ordinarily work, in the United Kingdom.”

Paragraph (c) clarifies why they are referred to as “non-qualifying”—they do not meet the criteria—and that is why they need the protection that this Bill provides.

I appreciate that the intention of amendment 43 is to bring the definition of seafarer into line with the definition of “seaman” under the Merchant Shipping Act 1995, as is the intention of the amendments to clause 1 in the name of the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North. However, it is vital that we maintain consistency with the terms used in other employment legislation, such as the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 and the National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015. That is where the terminology in the Bill comes from.

There is a risk of incorrect interpretation if we were to accept the amendment, as it may lead to the Bill being interpreted differently from other employment legislation, which is not our intention. Therefore, we need to retain the word “work” in this Bill, rather than moving to “employed or engaged”, as the amendment seeks. There are lots of different connotations of the word “employed” in particular. I hope the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North can see from what the Government are proposing that we do intend to cover all the issues he raises.

Amendment 48 seeks to extend the application of the Bill to the exclusive economic zone. Although we hope that appropriate wage rates will extend beyond our waters—indeed, we are having international conversations with partners, particularly those around the North sea, to try to ensure that—this Bill has been carefully calibrated after thorough consultation to focus on work undertaken close to the UK as part of ensuring that the Bill does not interfere with rights and obligations under international law, in particular the United Nations convention on the law of the sea. However, as discussed on amendment 67, seafarers on services from UK ports to offshore wind installations in the EEZ would be covered by the Bill for the portion of their journey that takes place in UK territorial waters, provided that the service calls at a UK port 120 times a year.

[Gavin Newlands]

I thank the Minister for his comprehensive response. I hear what he is saying on the definitions. The amendments on the definition of vessel and seafarer were intended as probing amendments to ascertain why there was a difference. We will keep an eye on any potential unintended consequences, but I will withdraw the amendment. I am disappointed by what the Minister said about those in the offshore renewable industry. I hear what he said: he thinks that they will be covered. He has promised to write to me before Report; if the issue is not dealt with satisfactorily, we may well revisit it on Report. However, on the basis of his answers and his promise, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 3

Power to request declaration

[Mr Holden]

I beg to move amendment 1, in clause 3, page 2, line 3, leave out subsections (1) to (3) and insert—

“(1) Subsection (2) applies where a harbour authority has reasonable grounds to believe that ships providing a service to which this Act applies will enter, or have entered, its harbour on at least 120 occasions during a relevant year.

(2) The harbour authority must, within such period as is determined by regulations, request that the operator of the service provide the authority with a national minimum wage equivalence declaration (in the rest of this Act, an ‘equivalence declaration’) in respect of the service for the relevant year.

(3) The duty under subsection (2) is subject to any direction given by the Secretary of State under section 11(2)(a).

(3A) A harbour authority which fails to comply with subsection (2) is guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale.”

This is the first of a number of amendments concerning national minimum wage equivalence declarations. Taken together, they impose a duty on harbour authorities to request declarations (as it stands, the Bill confers a power to do so). Declarations are to be requested in respect of years determined by regulations and must be provided within a period set out in regulations. Also, as a drafting change, “national minimum wage equivalence declaration” is abbreviated to “equivalence declaration”.

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[Mr Holden]

I thank my hon. Friend for those points. They are particularly important. I do not think that we would be here today if it was not for her huge campaigning efforts on behalf of her constituents in relation to the awful actions of P&O. I absolutely agree with her that how this is implemented must be taken into account. I am sure that her port will be consulted as part of the broader consultation as regulations are brought forward, and I urge her and other interested hon. Members to take part in the consultations as we move forward.

Amendment 1, tabled in my name, turns the discretionary power to request an equivalence declaration into a mandatory duty—this is quite an important change, which hon. Members mentioned at earlier stages—where the harbour authority has reasonable grounds to believe that ships providing a service will enter, or have entered, its harbour on at least 120 occasions during a relevant year. Reasonable grounds may include a service’s schedule in previous years, or may arise from the normal communications that a harbour authority would have with operators using its ports.

The period within which a harbour authority must request an equivalence declaration will be determined by regulations, which will come forward. A harbour authority that fails to comply with its duty to request an equivalence declaration will be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale. The duty will be subject to directions made by the Secretary of State, which I will discuss in further detail when we come to clause 11, which has an important bearing on this aspect of the legislation.

This amendment is part of a larger set of amendments that will also make the formerly discretionary powers for harbour authorities to impose surcharges, and to refuse access to their harbour, into duties, which is something that Opposition Members raised extensively at earlier stages. As things currently stand, where a harbour authority does not exercise its powers in the circumstances provided for in the Bill, the Secretary of State has powers to direct harbour authorities to do that. We want to see it turned into a duty because, through continued engagement with port stakeholders, we have been informed that harbour authorities are unlikely to exercise their powers without being directed to, and the direction-making power actually was intended as a back-up power and was not intended to be used as the primary means of ensuring that the regulations are met and a minimum wage equivalent is paid. It would be a significant administrative burden on the Department if every instance had to have an imposition from the Secretary of State, and that would undermine the effective functioning of the legislation.

The change from discretionary powers to duties will strengthen the Bill by ensuring that harbour authorities must request declarations, impose surcharges and refuse access to their harbour where appropriate, without requiring the intervention of the Secretary of State at every juncture. The intention is that we will ensure that operators of services in the scope of the Bill are made subject to the requirements, and the process will be made simpler for harbour authorities.

Amendments 2 and 5, tabled in my name, are consequential on amendment 1. Amendment 2 expands the existing power in clause 3(4) by adding a new paragraph that allows regulations to make provision

“as to the period within which equivalence declarations are to be provided”

by operators. Where an operator does not provide an equivalence declaration within that period, the harbour authority must impose surcharges under the new clause 2. This ensures that the point at which their duty begins to apply is clear to harbour authorities.

Amendment 5 makes provision for declarations to relate to a fixed relevant year, starting on a date to be set out in regulations. Providing a fixed relevant year will ensure that harbour authorities and operators are all working to the same period, providing consistency and certainty for harbour authorities to comply with their duties, reducing administrative burdens and making enforcement much more straightforward.

[Gavin Newlands]

On amendment 5, was any thought given to the possible unintended consequence of setting a specified date in regulation, namely that it might allow operators to consider means of circumventing the legislation through port hopping? As was passed on to me, it is Nautilus’s belief that, for that reason, it should be a 12-month rolling period. Has the Department considered that?

[Mr Holden]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. I will come to the broader concerns around port hopping that hon. Members have raised at previous stages. We do not think it will be an issue. I will come back to the hon. Gentleman at a later stage; if he continues to have an issue, perhaps he can raise it then.

Amendment 5 makes provision for declarations in a fixed year. These amendments are therefore necessary to ensure the effective functioning of the Bill, and will do just that.

Amendments 3 and 4, tabled in my name, abbreviate

“national minimum wage equivalence declaration”

to “equivalence declaration”—that is all. This is a minor drafting change intended to improve the Bill by simplifying a frequently used term.

Amendments 39 and 40 to clause 14 are consequential on amendments 1 and 5, and give the phrases “equivalence declaration” and “relevant year” the same meaning as in clause 3.

Amendment 7, tabled in my name, allows for equivalence declarations to be provided before, during or after the year to which they relate, and for declarations to relate to part of a year. The amendment will prevent any gaps in coverage in declarations and requires harbour authorities to request a declaration whenever it becomes clear to them that a service is in scope of the Bill. A harbour authority must request a declaration from an existing service before the relevant year starts if it has reasonable grounds to believe that a ship will call at its harbour 120 times during the year. In the event that, part way through a year, a harbour authority has reasonable grounds to believe that ships providing the service will have entered the harbour at least 120 times, it must request a declaration part way through that year, or at the end of the year if it was not clear until that point.

Amendment 6 removes subsections (5) and (6) of clause 3, which provide for the offence of operating inconsistently with an equivalence declaration. New clause 1 provides for an offence adapted to the proposed new system for equivalence declarations. Amendment 6 and new clause 1 therefore also cater for the fact that an equivalence declaration may, as a result of amendment 7, be provided before during or after the relevant year to which it relates.

Subsections (2)(a) and (3)(a) of new clause 1 mean it will be a criminal offence to operate a service inconsistently with a declaration from the start of the relevant year or at the time a declaration is provided during a relevant year. This will ensure that the new offence covers all circumstances in which an equivalence declaration may be requested, and provides legal certainty to operators as to when they may be guilty of an offence.

Clause 13 provides definitions of “harbour” and “harbour authority” that align with the definitions in the Harbours Act 1964 in England, Wales and Scotland, and the Harbours Act (Northern Ireland) 1970 in Northern Ireland. This will ensure consistency with existing legislation and help to clearly identify the relevant authorities for the purposes of the Bill. The clause also currently provides that where there is more than one harbour authority in respect of a harbour,

“the Secretary of State may by direction specify which of them is to be treated as the harbour authority in respect of the harbour”

for the purposes of the Bill. This provision is intended to avoid any uncertainty as to which is the relevant harbour authority for a particular harbour, and avoid multiple harbour authorities exercising powers in respect of a single service, which will help to ensure that the Bill’s provisions are applied consistently and effectively.

[Gavin Newlands]

I thank the Minister for giving way once again. Perhaps I should have intervened slightly earlier, as I have a query about amendment 7. The amendment allows for declarations to be made for part of the year. As it stands, declarations relate to 120 visits a year. If it is a partial year—say six months, for ease—will it still be 120 visits over those six months, or will it be a pro rata number of visits for that partial period?

[Mr Holden]

My understanding is that it is for the whole year. The schedules for these operators are based on a whole year; it is very rare that they are not. These are big operations that do not dip in and out. They are not easy to set up; they often involve long-standing arrangements with port authorities, and are based on the whole year. However, if the hon. Gentleman would like to write to me following this sitting, I will obviously respond to any particular issues or examples he wishes to raise.

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[David Linden]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point, which gets to both the nub of the issue and a source of real concern for me. He is right to talk about the colander effect, and not making the legislation sufficiently tight means that in many cases companies will exploit the measure, as has he eloquently outlined. Let us be honest: the legislation was introduced because a company sought—within the law—to exploit people, and it would be a dereliction of duty by the House and by the Committee if we did not seek to tighten the Bill in such a way as to ensure that industry cannot get away with using such practices.

[Gavin Newlands]

My hon. Friend has referred to the House of Lords, but on Second Reading in this place, the Secretary of State said in terms of the number of visits to harbour:

“We think the definition in the Bill at the moment will capture the vast majority of the services we wish to capture.”—[Official Report, 19 December 2022; Vol. 725, c. 66.]

The Secretary of State referred to “the vast majority”, but this relates to the national minimum wage. Why should we be happy with a majority, rather than ensuring that all employees get the minimum wage?

[David Linden]

Even if people were not around last night, it will not come as a huge surprise that the Government are not particularly wild about standing up for workers’ rights. We on this side of the Committee happen to be of the view that we should be doing everything we can to try to support workers—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich chunters. I am more than happy to give way if he wants to stand up and speak. If he wants just to make a wee bit of noise behind the Minister, he is welcome to do so.

We support returning to the stricter criterion of 52 calls per year, which is what amendment 45 seeks to do. This is a key test of the Government’s commitment to seafarer welfare, and they failed in the Lords when they narrowly defeated Lord Tunnicliffe’s amendment that aimed to restore the criterion of 52 annual harbour calls.

National minimum wage and domestic employment law are difficult to enforce and apply in the maritime sector. That is why employers such as Stena Line, which employs UK crew on international routes from UK ports in Cypriot-registered vessels, enter collective bargaining agreements with domestic maritime trade unions. The UK Chamber of Shipping estimated that up to 45 major ferry routes served the UK economy in 2020, but that is subject to change. For example, P&O closed Hull-Zeebrugge in October 2021, but DFDS opened an unaccompanied freight service between Sheerness and Calais earlier that year.

In my view, the Bill should cover crew working for operators of containers, bulk carriers, cargo ships and vessels working in the offshore energy supply chain, as well as ferries. In 2018, the RMT estimated that extending the national minimum wage to cover domestic and offshore energy routes would bring 13,000 seafarer ratings into scope. The impact assessment for the Bill estimates only the cost to employers, not the number of seafarers who would be covered by the Bill.

I am concerned that the Government have dismissed out of hand the unions’ concerns over avoidance techniques. Port hopping, as we often refer to it, remains a genuine avoidance technique that becomes far easier to use the more frequently a vessel calls at a UK harbour. At 120 calls per year, it would be far easier for operators to make minor changes to scheduled port calls in order to avoid the legislation. A threshold of 52 calls, which was in the Government’s original proposals, would be far tighter. It was changed only after consultation with industry, although the trade unions supported 52 calls. I go back to the point that if the Bill is about protecting workers—the very workers who were so cruelly shafted by P&O—then it is incumbent on the Government to listen to the voices of those workers and trade unions, not the voices of industry. That is the whole reason we are here.

Disappointingly, the Minister in the Lords, Baroness Vere, was unconvinced that that avoidance technique could be used. She said:

“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.]

The translation of that is, once again, “Leave it to the markets. The markets will dictate.” If we have learned anything over the course of the last few months in this House and during the P&O debacle, it is that simply leaving it to the markets is not a great idea. I am not reassured that the logistics market will self-regulate. The recent merger between Cobelfret and Seatruck Ferries, two operators who have been paying seafarers below national minimum wage on regular international services from UK ports for years, frankly, also increases the prospect of avoidance techniques.

I hope that has outlined just some of our concerns on the issue. For those reasons, I will formally seek to divide the Committee and vote against Government amendment 1.

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[Mike Kane]

I rise to speak in favour of amendment 63 and new clause 8. My hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield gave specific examples of deductions made by Irish Ferries and P&O; as he said, this is all about compliance. In his nine-point plan, the right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps), now the Business Secretary, pledged to involve His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in ensuring compliance with minimum wage legislation, but the Bill does not include a direct role for HMRC, which is the only expert in minimum wage compliance. That is like delegating something to a port and harbours board, to the Maritime and Coastguard Agency or to anybody, but it is not the Government taking responsibility for the matter. That clearly must be addressed, and I ask the Minister to address it. Port operators are not experts in minimum wage compliance or in establishing whether the minimum wage is being properly enforced.

Maritime and Coastguard Agency officials will need to be trained in labour market enforcement issues, and HMRC national minimum wage enforcement officials will need to be trained in seafarer and maritime employment practices and law. What provision is there in the Bill for that? I do not see much at all. However, the Department for Transport told the trade unions that His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has stated that there is no disproportionate risk of seafarers not being paid the national minimum wage. If this is not enforced properly, it is wide open, and I think most Members with any common sense will think it is wide open. On 24 March, Peter Hebblethwaite, the former chief executive officer of P&O Ferries, openly admitted to a joint sitting of the Transport Committee and the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee that P&O Ferries was paying an average well below the national minimum wage. How does clause 5 tackle what Peter Hebblethwaite said to this House?

Amendment 63 would ensure that an inspector may request from His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs or the Maritime and Coastguard Agency such information as is necessary to ensure that the operator is compliant with the national minimum wage. Further, complaints of non-payment of the national minimum wage have been consistently submitted to His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. [Interruption.] I am slightly interrupted by the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings—that will be His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs on the phone right now, agreeing with my comments to the Committee. Complaints have been submitted by the RMT on behalf of foreign seafarers, but the third-party process does not require His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to report back on the outcome or progress in investigating those complaints. How will we, as elected Members, and the industry see how the measures in the Bill progress once they have been implemented by Parliament? There is no provision for that. Amendment 63 would ensure a timescale for response of 14 days, so that the outcome of the measures in the Bill will be crystal clear and transparent.

[Gavin Newlands]

I rise to support amendment 63. Given the stroppy point at the end of the Minister’s last contribution, I reassure him—[Interruption.] Oh, it was a humorous point; well, that is for each individual to judge. I point out to the Minister that the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) has been retained as the Scottish Government’s ferries tsar from now on, so we will not have to worry about that. For the purposes of Hansard, that was sarcasm, lest I have to correct the record at a later date.

The point that has just been made is essentially this: as the Bill currently stands, the Government are hiding behind harbour authorities by expecting them—and with the amendments before us, now compelling them, under fear of prosecution—to carry out the enforcement work. Given the complex nature of the issues we are dealing with, I understand what the Government are doing, but maritime employment rules and minimum wage rules are complicated.

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency will need to be trained in labour market employment issues. HMRC employment enforcement officials responsible for enforcing the minimum wage will need training in seafarer and maritime practices and maritime law. Additional resourcing and time will potentially be needed to make this work. The MCA is responsible for the enforcement of the Bill’s powers, but is not named or listed in clause 6 or anywhere else. A dual role for the MCA and HMRC national minimum wage inspections must be clearly established, otherwise the Bill could have unintended consequences for qualifying seafarers’ existing national minimum wage rights.

The nine-point plan included a specific action to ask HMRC to dedicate UK national minimum wage resource to the maritime sector. The Department for Transport has told trade unions that HMRC has since stated that there is no disproportionate risk of seafarers not being paid the national minimum wage. I have no clue how it has come to that conclusion, given everything that has gone on, and that statement is despite Peter Hebblethwaite’s open admission to the joint Select Committee on 24 March that P&O ferries are now paying an average well below the national minimum wage, not to mention the evidence amassed by the RMT and detailed in annex 2 to its briefing.

The Government should consider using redundant Brexit customs processing facilities built at great expense in ports that host operators and vessels in scope of this Bill to provide bases for the inspectors from the MCA, HMRC and the International Transport Workers’ Federation, which will assist in the enforcement of the legislation. The MCA and the ITF perform essential port state control functions to protect and uphold minimum international seafarer welfare standards in the maritime labour convention. It is for that reason that we support new clause 8 in the name of the hon. Member for Easington.

I suspect the Government may not accept the new clause, but it would be pretty obscene if we were to see evidence of nationality-based pay discrimination. We very much support the new clause. I hope the Minister is generous, for a change.

[Grahame Morris]

I support the arguments put forward by my colleagues on the Front Bench. Will the Minister give some clarification? I noted what I thought was an assurance in his comments. Our amendment 63 is an attempt to make the enforcement process clearer, in terms of ensuring that the inspectors have the requisite not just powers but information, from HMRC in particular, in order to carry out the task that the Bill assigns to them. I wonder whether the Minister could clarify—maybe I am missing something; I heard him say that it would be the Maritime and Coastguard Agency that would be the inspectors. Could that function be delegated to the harbour authority or to staff of the harbour authority acting on behalf of the MCA? I would appreciate if he could clarify that point in his summing up.

Nationality-based pay discrimination is the elephant in the room. We must get to grips with it. I realise that the issue is incredibly complicated because of international treaties, but we need to get to the kernel of the issue because this is what is happening. Unscrupulous ferry operators in the sector are displacing UK-based seafarers on a “fire and rehire” basis, which Labour finds anathema.

There were Conservative MPs who were incandescent at the tactics employed by P&O Ferries on 17 March—St Patrick’s day—in that terrible action it took. We must see if we can address that, and the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North made a good suggestion about using the expertise from the International Transport Workers’ Federation as part of the collective effort, particularly where the issues relate to seafarers from overseas. I wonder if the Minister might consider not only that, but the suggestion to use the facilities that were built—at some cost to the public purse—for the Brexit customs processing facilities and consider whether those not being used adequately could also be used for that purpose.

[Mr Holden]

I would like to provide some clarification on the points made initially by the hon. Member for Easington. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency is the relevant enforcement agency, not the harbour authority. Furthermore, it would be unlawful to delegate powers in this space to harbour authorities, so I wanted to make that clear. In response to a point made by the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency does not need to be named in the Bill because it enforces on behalf of the Secretary of State. This is normal drafting for Government agencies that are subsidiaries of Departments.

The Department has obviously engaged extensively with HMRC on this issue. The truth is, as this is not enforcing national minimum wage legislation but trying to get the national minimum wage equivalent, the amount of information that HMRC holds in respect to many of these people is either nil or incredibly limited, as many of them will not be UK taxpayers. HMRC has been clear that it is happy to share anything it can to make enforcement easier, but it is not in the exact same space. HMRC already enforces national minimum wage for seafarers who qualify for it, but within this legislation we reflect that much of that falls out of the normal scope of UK legislation.

[Gavin Newlands]

On that point, if I can refer back to the point I made in my speech, does the Minister agree with HMRC—despite all the evidence to the contrary: not just P&O, but many other operators—that there is no disproportionate risk of seafarers not being paid the national minimum wage? Does he think that that is credible?

[Mr Holden]

Sorry, could I ask the hon. Member what the disproportionate risk was in reference to?

[Gavin Newlands]

Of seafarers particularly not being paid the national minimum wage compared to other sectors.

[Mr Holden]

Part of the issue here is that we are trying to address the national minimum wage equivalence. This is beyond normal UK territorial extent, which is the issue at stake here, which is why we are doing legislation that goes beyond our normal boundaries and does butt up against some of those international maritime obligations that we have, whether that is the case for inland ferries or anything else within the UK. I am not an expert on what HMRC has said, but I assume that what it has said is correct. I imagine there are other elements in the broader economy, where perhaps there are greater language barriers and piecework, where HMRC targets the normal national minimum wage legislation and where it sees the greatest abuses. That is why I am sure HMRC is quite clear in its thinking.

I urge Members, based on what I have said in response to the amendments, to withdraw them, and, if not, to support the Government and vote down the Opposition’s amendments.

Lifeboat Services: Search and Rescue

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Davies. I thank the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) for bringing forward this important debate. I also thank the Backbench Business Committee, of which I am a former Member, along with you, Mr Davies, and the hon. Member for Torbay.

The hon. Member for Torbay started the debate extremely powerfully with a lot of good points. There will be a huge amount of consensus, which is unusual, particularly from the SNP in this place. I will detail that particularly when I get to the speech made by the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross). The hon. Member for Torbay rightly said that search and rescue is carried out by a number of governmental and independent organisations and agencies. He also mentioned the Penlee lifeboat, which lost all eight of its crew in 1981. The right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) has just powerfully described that incident, and I will come to that when I sum up his contribution. The hon. Member for Torbay mentioned that there were nearly 10,000 taskings last year, and made an important point about preventive work through education and training. He rightly highlighted the excellent work of his own local lifeboat in Torbay.

The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) was absolutely right to mention how treacherous the waters can be off the north-west coast of Scotland. He also made what may appear to be a lighter point about the sheep rescue and how important it would have been to the crofter—and no doubt to the sheep themselves. That put me in mind of another rescue; I think it was the Skye lifeboat that helped to refloat some stranded dolphins last summer. It is not just humans that the RNLI supports.

The hon. Member for Aberconwy (Robin Millar) made many better points than he made in the independence debate just weeks ago. I did not catch their names, but he made a good point about four volunteers who have served for 40 years with the lifeboat service. I add my thanks and gratitude. That makes the wider point that many who serve in the RNLI have done so for a long time, and that must be recognised. He also mentioned the Nicola Faith tragedy, in which three lives were sadly lost.

It would not be a Westminster Hall debate without the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). He mentioned coastal activities, including sailing and surfing. The one I was interested in was pier jumping. He confessed that he partook in that activity himself. It is not clear whether that was last week or some time ago, so we are unsure whether his pier-jumping speedos have been retired. Now that I have loaded up that image, I will come to the hon. Member for Moray. It is very rare—in fact, probably unique—that I agree with every word that he said.

[Jim Shannon]

I think the hon. Gentleman can finish now.

[Gavin Newlands]

I should probably sit down at that, yes. I will not put that on my leaflets, obviously.

The hon. Member for Moray brought up the National Independent Lifeboat Association, which I very much support. That leads me on nicely to the hon. Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall). I thank him for his work in setting up that organisation. He was right to say that this debate is essentially a moment of consensus when we can thank all those who volunteer and put their lives at risk on our behalf to save those in distress at sea. He also made the point that they do it all by raising their own money. I add my thanks and gratitude to all those who fundraise for, and donate to, the RNLI, making possible all its excellent work, which we have all spoken about.

That brings me on to the hon. Member for Clacton (Giles Watling), who said he was a proud yachtsman and talked about how he shared water safety training with a local school. He, too, reiterated the vital importance of such training for youngsters in school at all ages. As he said, one only has to reflect on the tragedy in Solihull in recent weeks to realise that we must do more in that regard.

The hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) spoke about the impact on the volunteers—the risk they take and the unsocial hours—but also about the impact on the families, which is something we do not always mention, so that was a very welcome point. She also mentioned her new year’s day dip. Rather her than me.

The last speaker, whose constituency I have forgotten—

[Sir Julian Lewis]

New Forest East.

[Gavin Newlands]

Of course; I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that reminder. He spoke about the Mumbles lifeboat. I visited Mumbles on a rugby tour over 20 years ago, when a number of us had to be rescued that night—albeit thankfully from the Mumbles mile and not, it must be said, at sea.

The right hon. Gentleman also mentioned—quite rightly and powerfully, as I said earlier—the Penlee disaster. We should all go online and watch “Cruel Sea”, the documentary he highlighted, which I was unaware of. I will certainly go away and look at it, and I thank him for telling us about it. Hopefully it is on iPlayer.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

It is on YouTube.

[Gavin Newlands]

So it is there for all of us. In the spirit of consensus, I would like to pay particular tribute to lifeboat services in the south of England at this moment, amidst the record small boat crossings. I will not repeat all the statistics that the hon. Member for Torbay helpfully set out at the start, but the numbers are simply huge. Obviously, there are 238 lifeboat stations and 240 lifeguard units. As has been said, the RNLI was founded nearly 200 years ago, and in that time it has saved nearly 143,000 lives. In 2021, it saved 296 people. An average of 35 people are helped every day by RNLI crews.

I want to highlight a couple of people, if I may, who were decorated in the King’s new year’s honours list. An MBE was awarded to Dupre Strutt, a mechanic at the RNLI Kirkwall lifeboat station and a retired area lifesaving manager for Scotland. Dupre was part of the fabric of Kirkwall lifeboat station and had followed in his father’s footsteps, having grown up in the station. Since joining in 1983, Dupre has given 39 years of service to the RNLI, during which time he has been directly involved in over 300 rescues, saving over 60 lives.

Similarly, a volunteer mechanic and lifeboat operations manager at Kirkcudbright lifeboat station, William “John” Collins, has been awarded at a BEM for his dedication to the RNLI and the community in the town. He joined the station in 1991 as a mechanic, a role in which he continues to this day, alongside his duties as LOM. Outside of the RNLI, John is employed as the local school bus driver. During the pandemic, he extended that role to deliver essential food supplies around the area.

Of course, Scotland, with its long coastline and 790 islands, has a long tradition of life on the seas and, of course, facing the dangers that can be inherent in that, whether that is winter storms off the Atlantic, fishing boats in distress or leisure craft running into trouble, often with inexperienced people at the helm. Scotland is absolutely indebted to the RNLI, so if I may, and so that I do not miss any out, I will list the stations. They are, from the south-west: Portpatrick, Stranraer, Girvan, Troon, Largs—I will give the list to Hansard, so do not worry if I rush through it—Arran, Campbeltown, Tighnabruaich, Helensburgh, Islay, Oban, Tobermory, Mallaig, Barra, Kyle of Lochalsh, Portree, Leverburgh, Stornoway, Lochinver, Thurso, Wick, Longhope, Stromness, Kirkwall, Aith, Lerwick, Invergordon, Kessock, Buckie, Macduff, Fraserburgh, Peterhead, Aberdeen, Stonehaven, Montrose, Arbroath, Broughty Ferry, Anstruther, Kinghorn, Queensferry, North Berwick, Dunbar and Eyemouth—and I nearly mentioned Berwick-upon-Tweed, but that is only half-Scottish, so I shall leave it out.

We are also indebted to the independent and inshore rescue services, including at Dornoch, as well as the Glasgow Humane Society, Loch Lomond, Nith and the Moray Inshore Rescue Organisation, which I am delighted the hon. Member for Moray mentioned. Obviously, a lot of assistance, or co-ordination, goes to the RNLI through the Coastguard Agency. The coastguard is also 200 years old.

I want to make one point as I conclude, although I do not want to stray too far from consensus. I want to talk about the channel, but briefly, as I appreciate that my speaking time is nearly up. Last year, a record 45,000 people succeeded in crossing the channel, and we know there have been tragedies and a huge number of rescues there. We have always called for and maintained that there should be a safe and legal route so that the coastguard and the RNLI are not put in the position of having each day to save lives in the busiest shipping lane in the world.

Some of the rhetoric deployed has been deplorable, and Nigel Farage compared the work of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and of the RNLI to

“a taxi service for illegal trafficking gangs”.

On the back of that, the RNLI received the most donations in its history in response to a single event—more than £200,000.

We can all castigate such rhetoric, which is deployed by some, but I want to finish on a note of consensus. I say thank you to all who are involved in the RNLI and those who co-ordinate our search and rescue services. In particular, I pay tribute to all those who sadly lost their lives in attempting to rescue others on our behalf.

Seafarers’ Wages Bill [Lords]

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the brand-new Chair of the Transport Committee, and, as someone who serves on the Committee, may I say that it is relief to hear that he is not a lawyer? I also pass on my best wishes to Members—most Members, even in my own party—and Clerks and staff for a very Merry Christmas, and a happy new year when it comes.

When the previous, previous Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps), brought forward the nine-point plan to protect seafarers, I genuinely welcomed the action outlined that day. However, the strength of his words must be followed by the strength and urgency of actions. We welcome the intent behind the Bill to tackle companies that fail to observe even the most basic employment rights while operating from ports in the UK but, clearly, there are areas where this Bill could, should and must be strengthened.

Before I come to the substance of the Bill, could the Minister give us a little more detail on the Government’s progress with their overarching nine-point plan? Clearly, today we are attempting to deal with point No. 1. Point No 7 is on taking action against company leaders who break the law. Earlier this year, P&O and its parent company DP World, achieved the rare—perhaps unique—feat of uniting the Institute of Directors, the TUC, the CBI and the RMT, alongside Nautilus and Members across the House, in their condemnation of P&O’s actions against its staff. The chief executive, Peter Hebblethwaite, appeared before a Joint Committee of Parliament and admitted that his company deliberately broke the law when it dismissed 786 employees with no consultation and no notice.

Mr Hebblethwaite still hangs around P&O Ferries like a bad smell—an albatross around the neck of a company that is now a byword for corporate greed and bullying. He recently had the honour of being named the worst boss in the world by the International Trade Union Confederation, beating out the likes of the chief executive officers of Amazon, Starbucks and Emirates airlines. That is quite an achievement for a relative newcomer. I am sure that his trophy will have pride of place on his mantlepiece.

It is doubtful that P&O’s reputation will ever recover—quite rightly—but as it stands, it is clear that provisions in the Bill will need to be beefed up in Committee. I hope that the Secretary of State and his ministerial team are feeling festive, because I have a list for them. I am sure the House would agree that I have been very good this year.

First on the list is roster patterns. For reasons passing understanding, the Government suddenly rejected the previously agreed roster pattern in the seafarers’ charter to commission further research into roster patterns and crewing levels. That was despite the collectively agreed standard in place at Stena and DFDS, and evidence of the danger that crew fatigue poses to maritime safety.

The RMT gave an example of P&O staff having worked one week on, one week off, as has been mentioned, on the Dover-Calais route where 75% of the jobs were lost. The agency crew who replaced them work much longer—in the case of Indian Able Seafarers, up to 17 weeks for at least 12 hours a day, seven days a week without shore leave. P&O is making bigger savings from that dangerous change to roster patterns than it is from the sub-national minimum wage rates of pay.

Crewing levels must be addressed. For those who do not know, crewing levels are the ratio of full-time-equivalent positions required to maintain the vessel in service for each rank or role required. P&O used operate with a crewing factor of four. They now operate with a crewing factor of just over two. That does not sound safe or advisable. The charter must be incorporated into the Bill if it is to be properly effective. The fact that those operators that seek to exploit workers are complaining should tell the Minister all he needs to know.

The Government defeated amendments in the Lords to reinstate the Government’s previous position of setting the qualification threshold at 52 visits per year. The 120-visit threshold may well allow operators to port hop or design routes to avoid having to make declarations about the national minimum wage equivalent. We must also ensure that accommodation costs cannot be deducted from the national minimum wage equivalent. P&O could potentially deduct over £1,000, and Irish Ferries nearly £500, from a non-qualifying seafarer’s wage if the accommodation offset is available to it under secondary regulations in the Bill.

While extending national minimum wage coverage is welcome, we would like to see ways of introducing other employment protections that are available to those working on land in the UK, such as better rights to redundancy pay, sick pay and consultation, and a clear statement in legislation of exactly how much those rogue operators who try to avoid compliance with the new regime will forfeit to the Exchequer. We will also be looking for assurances on the kind of action that the Government and port operators will be empowered to take against rogue employers. We all saw Mr Hebblethwaite brazenly sitting in front of the Committee happily agreeing that he and his colleagues had broken the law, knowing that the likelihood of any sanctions against them as controlling minds was minimal. Making something against the law is not the same as making people comply with that law. We want to see a sanctions regime that has teeth. The Insolvency Service is still dragging its feet, citing a lack of legal clarity as to whether the dismissed seafarers worked outside Great Britain. The Government must accept amendments to the Bill to close these legal loopholes if they are truly committed to preventing a repeat of the unlawful actions of P&O.

It might be outside the current scope of the Bill, but I would like to see the Government take the lead internationally to amend and improve the current maritime law to boost employment rights for all seafarers around the world, as those changes would also improve the lot of maritime workers here. As a result of this Government merely announcing action, the French Government were prompted into taking similar action. That shows that there is an appetite elsewhere to improve the lot of seafarers across borders and across the water. In the UK Government’s own words from just a few years back, the UK is one of the world’s leading maritime nations, so perhaps it is time to leverage that leadership into a fairer deal for workers across the world, rather than only for those—while fully appreciating our international obligations—who will be covered by the Bill. We also need to ensure that all those who serve the ever-growing offshore wind sector are protected. This Bill does not protect most of those workers.

I very much agree with the Law Society of Scotland’s view that it is unclear how harbour authorities will resource, upskill staff and cover costs to be able to undertake these additional tasks and obligations. Enforcement will be needed for these measures to be of the greatest benefit, and this will require sufficient resourcing. We also anticipate that processes will require to be set up between the Secretary of State, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and the harbour authorities to manage the requirements, powers and duties in the Bill in practical terms. It also points out, notwithstanding the point that the Secretary of State made in opening the debate, the deviation of the description of a vessel in this Bill from the description in the Merchant Shipping Act 1995, which includes every description of vessel used in navigation. This should be addressed not just for consistency’s sake but to close any loopholes that this may unintentionally open.

There is quite a lot to fix, and we have only one Committee day to do it. I think it is fair to say that the Government’s record on workers’ rights has been deplorable. With this one Bill, the Tories claim to be supporting workers while they plan others that will roll back workers’ rights and attack the right to collective bargaining. This Bill will make welcome but small changes for a small number of workers while at the same time the Government are promising new anti-union laws for millions of others. What was originally planned as a limited transport striking law designed to prevent railway strikes seems to have morphed into a wider anti-union move that the Tories claim will save lives and prevent disruption. Despite their claims, it is the Tories themselves who are responsible for this winter’s disruption.

All of this is on the back of the Government’s appalling response to fire and rehire, which has seen hundreds of thousands of workers faced with the threat of redundancy or a lower wage. I am sure that workers who were forced out or who are on inferior contracts at British Airways, British Gas, Go North West, Tesco and Menzies Aviation, to name but a few, will be pleased that the Government are trying to do something, but they will look at these plans and think, “Where was our help in our time of need?” The Government had plenty of opportunity. I brought forward three Bills to deal with fire and rehire, and the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) had a private Member’s Bill, but the Government thought that a simple change to guidance would deal with it. I totally agree with the question from the Labour shadow Secretary of State: where is the code? We were promised it long before now and we have not heard a thing about it.

It might be churlish of me—but I hope the House will allow me a bit of festive churlishness—to point out that the RMT that the UK Government were working closely alongside in March this year, when P&O Ferries put in motion its despicable actions, is the same RMT that the UK Government have been baiting in public and in private over its industrial dispute with employers. Perhaps if other areas of the Department for Transport could revisit that spring spirit and fuse it with some festive spirit, they might remember that trade unions and workers are there to help improve working conditions and will work with Governments of all political stripes—even this one—rather than be reviled and demonised for their work.

I will stop now before I am accused of turning even more into Ebenezer Scrooge. In the Christmas spirit, I will close by saying that this is a welcome Bill that we very much support in principle, but we need to work with the Government to improve it, alongside the trade unions and staff whose working conditions will be improved by it. I look forward to that work and hope that it is as constructive as the Minister has been thus far.