Draft Code of Practice on the Right of Trade Unions to Access Workplaces; Draft Trade Unions (Right to Access Workplaces) Regulations 2026

John McDonnell Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2026 General Committees

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I apologise, as I will need to speak and then leave as I have a Bill to present in the Chamber—I am keeping my eye on the business. I declare my interests as well; I am the chair of the RMT parliamentary group.

I want to raise one of the RMT’s concerns. I welcome the Minister’s commitment to see this all through—it is an excellent piece of work—and to have a review very shortly afterwards. I want to put something on the agenda for that review, if that is possible. Let me go through some of the details. The union itself, and the seafarers’ unions overall, welcome the new regulations but they do not improve the situation for access for seafarers. In fact, they simply repeat the restrictions we already have in section 8 of the Merchant Shipping Act 1995, which was introduced at the height of the Conservative Government’s introduction of anti-trade union legislation and attack on trade union rights.

The regulations now mean that trade unions will only be able to improve access on UK-flagged ships, whereas in the recent period we have seen a large number of companies flagging in other countries. That means, for example, that the RMT will not, as a result of the access regulations, be able to organises seafarers on P&O Ferries, Irish Ferries, Cobelfret and a whole range of other merchant ships registered overseas, even though they call at UK ports on a daily basis.

When this issue was raised in the House of Lords, in an amendment tabled by our friend Lord John Hendy back in 2025, Baroness Jones gave the commitment that the Government would

“explore how they could secure the objectives behind my noble friend’s amendment.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 21 July 2025; Vol. 848, c. 69.]

At that point, John Hendy’s amendment sought to apply the provisions of the access arrangements to seafarers working on ships with a sufficient link to Great Britain. That link, as the Minister will know, was 120 calls at an individual port. Ideally, that is where we want to go. It is just a matter of wanting to get in the review, as rapidly as possible, the right form of words to give the protection that the Government intend for all workers. We do not want to be in a situation where seafarers remain vulnerable, as they have been, for example, at P&O.