Seafarers’ Wages Bill [Lords]

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

The legislation will ensure that seafarers with close ties to the UK who are working on frequent services to UK ports have to be paid at least an equivalent to the UK national minimum wage while they are in our waters. As the hon. Gentleman points out, for those aged 23 and over, the current rate is £9.50 an hour. From April 2023, it will be £10.42 an hour. That is clearly significantly higher than the amount the hon. Gentleman just set out. That is the point of the Bill: to discourage the sort of behaviour we saw from P&O earlier this year.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

Just to amplify the point from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), the chief exec of P&O gave evidence to the Transport Committee indicating that it was common practice to pay below minimum wage level. On the Dover-Calais route, P&O staff used to work—this is the UK-based ratings—one week off, one week on rotas. It is not just about wages. Currently, agency staff, including Indian able seafarers, are working at least 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for up to 17 weeks with no shore leave. That must be a risk to health and safety. Does the Secretary of State remember the Herald of Free Enterprise and the impact of stress and tiredness? Surely, it is about more than just wages?

[Mr Harper]

It is about more than just wages. That was one of the things covered in the nine-point plan, but we are working on other things, including various seafarers’ protections and measures with our international partners. This specific Bill is to deal with the specific issue of what seafarers are paid. The hon. Gentleman is quite right that the issue is wider than that, but the Bill deals with what they are paid. It is focused on that, and I hope it gets the support of the House.

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[Mr Harper]

We do not think that the responsibility on harbour authorities will be particularly onerous. Their job will be to receive declarations, not to investigate or do compliance work; those responsibilities will fall to the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. As with all our agencies, it will be a question of setting priorities. As the hon. Gentleman can see from the fact that we are introducing primary legislation on the matter, improving services for seafarers is indeed one of our priorities.

[Grahame Morris]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

I will take another intervention from the hon. Gentleman, as he is a member of the Select Committee on Transport, and then move on.

[Grahame Morris]

The Secretary of State is being generous in giving way. On the point about harbour authorities being charged with collecting the surcharge, is there a conceivable conflict of interest where a shipping company owns a port or has an interest in a harbour authority?

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point that illustrates why I will have legal powers to enforce whether a port levies the surcharge: to deal with any issues where there is a conflict. He makes a perfectly fair point, and we have thought about how to deal with it.

Our analysis shows that the arrangement that we have set out will capture the vast majority of ferries to the UK, but without including services such as deep-sea container services or cruises. Those services will remain out of the Bill’s scope, because they do not call at UK ports frequently enough that the seafarers working on board could be said to have sufficiently close ties to the UK.

We will continue to engage with industry throughout the passage of the Bill. We intend to consult on regulations and supporting guidance, which will include setting the framework within which harbour authorities will set their tariffs for surcharges and the method of calculating the national minimum wage equivalent rate.

It is important to remember that the Bill is just one part of a wider plan to protect seafarers’ welfare. It will not solve all the issues brought to light by P&O Ferries’ actions, but it is an important step. That is why we continue to discuss seafarer protections and welfare with a range of close European partners, including discussions about the creation of minimum wage equivalent corridors to encourage the payment of fair wages on entire routes. To continue to improve the protection of working conditions for seafarers, we are developing the voluntary seafarers’ charter.

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[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

P&O Ferries’ actions earlier this year to make 800 seafarers redundant and replace them with agency staff on just over £4 per hour were shameful, illegal and immoral, and they were rightly condemned across the House at the time, and indeed in this debate. But I must say that that would never have happened in the first place if former Ministers had listened to the warnings from the RMT and Nautilus International, and many others, about the loopholes that put maritime workers at particular risk. That advice should have been heeded in the past. The Government could have strengthened protections for workers, and they still can, to end the immoral practice of fire and rehire. That needs to happen.

In the aftermath of this shameful episode, the then Prime Minister and the Government promised that these issues would be dealt with, and that there would be clear and serious consequences, and of course better protections. Six months on, we are yet to see the legal action that was promised materialise, as has been pointed out by the shadow Secretary of State. Although this Bill steps forward, it falls short of the employment protections promised. Indeed, the Secretary of State referred to its narrow scope and its limited impact, and focused on those issues.

The Bill does not take the opportunity, desperately needed, to effectively restore collective bargaining for ferry staff, and raise employment standards across the board. Other hon. Members have referred to rostering, hours and shore leave. What about pensions, apprenticeships and training, an issue mentioned by Members from across the House? Those are other areas where workers can be exploited, and we all know that P&O ferries and others will do exactly that.

The Bill is also a missed opportunity to get the detail right on protecting seafarers. We know the P&O Ferries will exploit any loophole it can, so let us make the protections for seafaring staff ironclad. We need to ensure that a minimum wage equivalent has the tools for strong enforcement measures. We need to end clear existing loopholes that employers such as P&O Ferries and many more are able to exploit, such as moving between ports to avoid the necessary regulations that have been placed in the Bill and operating ferry services while collecting national minimum wage fines as a port authority—there is a clear conflict of interest there, as was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) and the new Chair of the Transport Committee, the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart). While amending this legislation to ensure these loopholes are closed and protections are enforced, we still need justice—social justice, employment justice—for the 800 P&O staff and their families, and those responsible need to be held to account.

[Grahame Morris]

I share my hon. Friend’s anger and outrage at those job losses and the way those men were treated by P&O. Does he share my outrage that the Government have subsequently given £50 million to P&O’s parent company, DP World, in order to facilitate the freeports at Southampton and London Gateway? Is that not absolute nonsense?

[Mike Amesbury]

I concur on that, and the smell of hypocrisy is somewhat nauseating across the Chamber.

We are still without answers as to why the CEO of P&O Ferries felt empowered enough to tell Parliament—to tell the Select Committee—that they were breaking the law. Why have they still have not faced the consequences for their actions? Why have heads not rolled? Why are Ministers not stepping in to ensure that that happens? Again, we are talking about not only justice for the seafarers concerned and their families, but creating that landscape of good employment and good employment practices in this country.

In conclusion, the P&O Ferries scandal must be the end of the exploitation of seafaring staff in this country, but in its current state the Bill falls far short of that. It is a starter for 10, which I will certainly be supporting it, along with His Majesty’s official Opposition. However, I will also be supporting amendments that will make it far stronger, to ensure that we have a race to the top, rather than a race to the bottom on employment rights. Finally, let me wish everybody a merry Christmas and a happy new year.

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[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I appreciate being given the opportunity to speak in this important debate. I declare an interest as a proud member of the RMT parliamentary group, and I support the maritime sector and our seafarers, as well as those involved in the dispute in the rail sector with Network Rail and the train operating companies.

I was present in the House when the actions of P&O became apparent on St Patrick’s day. Those actions represent the lowest point in industrial relations in this country for many years. There are some parallels with Tiny Rowland, the unacceptable face of capitalism, and some of the excesses that went on with the asset stripping of Michael Slade and others, but this is about as low as it gets.

I was buoyed up by the response from Ministers, including the hon. Member for Witney (Robert Courts), the former shipping Minister, who was incandescent. I was under the impression that the will in the House and the country was such that measures would quickly be brought before the House to take P&O Ferries to task—to fine it and to take appropriate action against its chief executive. The chief executive was arrogant and flippant in his presentation to the joint session of the Transport Committee and the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee; he was almost boastful that he had not consulted with the unions and had broken the law. I am therefore disappointed that it has taken nine months—we are now in December; it is almost January—to have a Bill intended to address the issues. I will support the Bill, but I have reservations and I hope that it is possible to improve it in Committee or even on Report.

Certainly, the Government cannot claim that the issue came as a bolt from the blue, because the unions, particularly the RMT, warned them about it in 2020 when an order was introduced to extend the national minimum wage to seafarers in UK territorial waters. It then warned them again in 2021 when there were issues with Irish Ferries, which was operating services between Dover and Calais and undercutting P&O and DFDS. I will outline some of my concerns with the Bill, in the hope that we can secure the best deal for seafarers, which is an outcome that I hope hon. Members on both sides of the House want to see.

Successive Governments have convened legal working groups on seafarers and the national minimum wage. I think the first was in 2009. We have a major problem with seafarer care that the minimum wage alone cannot address. We were promised a review of the Equality Act 2010 regulations, but that has not happened, which is a major failure in the Government’s seafarer policy. The powers in the Bill to make secondary regulations disguise the complexity and the narrowness of the legislation. I ask the Minister: will the UK national minimum wage age bands apply to the national minimum wage equivalence declaration? P&O, of course, dismissed apprentices, as well as hundreds of directly employed seafarers, but does the Minister consider a £4.81 hourly rate for apprentice seafarers fair? The Maritime Skills Commission’s ratings review, which is extremely welcome, should look at this aspect of the Bill, but it is vital to avoid putting in place any more barriers to training more ratings in the UK.

As well as training, the Government must facilitate employment opportunities. I fully understand the sentiments expressed by hon. Friends who represent ports where there are opportunities, particularly for young people to have a career at sea, but the Government have a role in ensuring that those jobs are not taken by agency workers from overseas.

When the Bill was in the other place, the noble Lord Hendy discussed the lack of national minimum wage protection for crew working in the offshore wind and offshore renewable supply chain beyond the UK territorial waters limit. Crew working on vessels servicing the offshore oil and gas industry across the UK continental shelf are entitled to protection under national minimum wage legislation, but crew working on offshore wind farms in the UK exclusive economic zone—sometimes on the same ships—are not. That is unfair, and it leads to serious exploitation.

There is exclusion of UK seafarers from a growing labour market directly linked to the UK economy. It is incredible: there will be 100,000 new jobs in the North sea, but young men and women from the coastal communities will not have the opportunity to take up those positions. Those jobs, and that market, are funded by the UK taxpayer. Also, operators should be prohibited from deducting accommodation costs. My colleagues have already mentioned how much Irish Ferries and P&O were deducting.

Rosters have been mentioned. The Bill recognises to a certain extent that national minimum wage avoidance is a problem in the UK shipping industry, but it does not fully cover wider employment rights issues, such as the hours and roster patterns that seafarers work; neither do the raft of secondary powers that the Bill creates. On Report in the other place, the Minister openly stated that the Government are not seeking to influence roster patterns—I believe that the Secretary of State said the same thing today—or any other employment conditions through the Bill. To give this legislation a greater chance of successfully countering the actions of P&O, Irish Ferries and others who are trashing UK seafarer jobs and the maritime skills base in order to increase their profits, the seafarers’ charter should be put in the Bill.

On the seafarers’ charter, we really need a maximum roster pattern of two weeks on, two weeks off, in the ferry sector. I urge the Minister to work with the Labour party and the trade unions on the Bill, and on the seafarers’ charter, so that we get this right, restore jobs, get fair pay agreements, and start training programmes in the ferry sector. Members have pointed out that P&O is making bigger savings from its changes to roster patterns than it was from having rates of pay that were below the national minimum wage.

In the other place, the Government rejected the previously agreed roster pattern in the charter. It is commissioning further research on roster patterns and crewing levels. That is despite a collectively agreed standard being in place in Stena Line and DFDS. I refer the Minister to Cardiff University’s crew fatigue study for P&O in 2012, the EU Horizon 2020 project, and the World Maritime University’s EVREST report. All that evidence has been shared with the Government. I am surprised and disappointed that the Government have not taken action to tackle low-cost operators, particularly in view of the issues of crew fatigue and safety.

Others have raised the issues of port-hopping and avoidance techniques. I asked the Secretary of State about that when he appeared before the Transport Committee. The criteria are too loose; we need to have a look at that. Port-hopping remains a genuine avoidance technique, and it becomes easier to use the more frequently a vessel calls at harbour. I support the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers and Nautilus International in specifying that the threshold in the Bill should be 52 calls at a harbour per year per vessel, rather than the 120 that the Government suggest.

In conclusion, the Bill is an opportunity to mandate better pay and employment standards, to restore the principle of collective bargaining conditions at P&O and across the ferry sector, and to ensure fair pay and safe, decent employment conditions for decent, hard-working seafarers. The Bill’s scope must be widened to tackle avoidance techniques, and to help to standardise fair pay and collective conditions, starting in the ferry sector. I hope that the Minister will address the concerns that I have raised, and ensure the best possible deal for seafarers.