Draft Seafarers (Insolvency, Collective Redundancies and Information and Consultation Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2018 Debate

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Department: HM Treasury

Draft Seafarers (Insolvency, Collective Redundancies and Information and Consultation Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2018

Karl Turner Excerpts
Tuesday 6th February 2018

(6 years, 1 month ago)

General Committees
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Karl Turner Portrait Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
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It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. We are supportive of the instrument, but we are concerned that the Government are late in implementing it. We also have some wider concerns.

In 2013, the European Commission issued a draft seafarers directive, extending employment and social directives to cover seafarers’ place of work. The seafarers directive called on member states to transpose the directive into domestic law by 10 October 2017. We are now in February 2018. Will the Minister explain why it has taken three years to finally put this into UK law and why the Government have missed the deadline for doing that within the three-month period?

The delay in transposing the directive into UK law has affected seafarers’ rights, especially those on offshore supply vessels who have been made redundant in recent years. Oil and Gas UK estimate that 13,000 jobs were lost in the industry in the first half of 2017—a staggering number of potential job losses. The RMT estimates that between 700 and 1,000 seafarers’ jobs have been lost on offshore supply, diving support and drilling vessels, as well as hundreds of jobs at North sea companies, since the seafarers directive was passed in the European Parliament in 2015. In some cases, the modest protections in the draft regulations would have provided better protections for seafarers who have been made redundant. I hope that the Government will reflect on the impact that their delay has had on workers who have been made redundant.

The growing decommissioning sector is likely to mean competition for contracts to carry out this work. It is unclear whether the protections set out in the draft regulations will apply to seafarers working on foreign-registered vessels who carry out that decommissioning work. Will the Minister confirm whether those workers will be covered?

The Opposition support the draft regulations, as I said, but we think the Government could go further. I am concerned that if the Government’s post-Brexit aim for seafarers’ employment rights is to go no further than the EU and to abide by the minimum standards in international regulations such as the maritime labour convention, it will lead to a loss both in jobs and in skills. The seafaring industry is rapidly losing skilled people, because not enough people are being trained. Will the Minister say what further steps the Government intend to take on employment rights for seafarers, especially with respect to the national minimum wage and equality? I urge her to bring forward the planned five-year review of the impact of the provisions to coincide with the post-Brexit period, including any transition period, to ensure that the UK statutory framework equalises protection for seafarers and land-based workers.

I would be grateful if the Minister addressed those points. We support the draft regulations and hope that they will be the start of a much needed process of improving employment rights for seafarers in the UK.