Transit Visas (UK Trawlers)

Mark Harper Excerpts

Wednesday 28th November 2012 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) on securing the debate, which I know is important to his constituents. I am, of course, looking forward to visiting his constituency some time in the new year, when I am sure we can discuss the matter further.

I am also pleased to see the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) in the Chamber. I know he has a long-standing interest in this matter from a constituency and a wider Northern Ireland perspective. I listened carefully to what he said, and I will draw his remarks to the attention of the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), who has responsibility for fishing. He works closely with people from all parts of the United Kingdom when we set out our policy on fishing and fishing quotas, and when we have debates in the European Union. Thankfully, my job today is not to talk about wider fishing policy, but to talk about the specific issue of crewing and visas.

The use of non-European economic area crew on UK vessels has been an issue for several years, and I know that it is an ongoing concern for my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport. The issue has also been raised in Northern Ireland and with colleagues who represent constituencies in Scotland, where fishing is also an important industry. The subject is complex and wide-ranging, and its scope goes beyond immigration. The concern raised by my hon. Friend’s constituent and the Catholic Church in his constituency is about the living and working conditions of people employed in the sector, and I know that that concerns my hon. Friend, too.

I will set out the background of the visa regime for those who work in the sector. Non-EEA migrants can come to the UK to join ships that are currently in the UK but operate outside UK territorial waters—those ships that mostly operate more than 12 nautical miles beyond UK territorial waters. Because those people are joining ships that operate outside the UK, they do not fall under the scope of normal immigration rules, which means they do not need permission to work. However, they do need permission to enter the UK to join the ship—effectively to transit, hence the title of my hon. Friend’s debate. To do so, they must obtain permission to join the ship, either by way of a visa issued overseas, or with the permission of an immigration officer at the UK border. Those provisions are necessary to allow international vessels to change crew, thus allowing fresh crews to arrive in the UK to join ships and outgoing crews to leave ships and return home.

Within the fishing industry, the arrangements mean the UK’s deep-sea fleet has been able to bring in non-EEA fishermen without prior permission to work because the fleet operates mainly outside territorial waters, which is a perfectly legitimate use of the immigration system. Migrants entering through that route are not migrant workers in the usual sense, so the system is not a loophole through which employers can bring in non-EEA workers to carry out work that is not deemed to be sufficiently skilled, as the work is largely taking place outside the UK. We recognise the need for migrant labour in some specific and highly skilled roles in the United Kingdom, but, as my hon. Friend said, businesses should be looking to the local labour market for opportunities to fill lower-skilled roles. That is why non-EEA nationals cannot come to work on vessels that operate within the 12-mile limit—the inshore fleet—under the “to join ship” provisions.

[Jim Shannon]

One of the problems in Plymouth and the area I represent is around incentivising local people to go out on the fishing boats. The danger is apparent, and there is also a skill level that has to be achieved. Those on the boats have great skill, because they also fillet the fish. As the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) asked, how can local people be more incentivised to participate in the job opportunities on fishing fleets?

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman raises a good point. I chose my words with care. I did not say that the work was low-skilled, but that it was not sufficiently skilled to meet our criteria. The Migration Advisory Committee, which is the expert committee that the Government often commission to consider the appropriate skill level required for jobs before we allow people to come to the UK from outside the EEA, did not think the jobs were sufficiently skilled. He raises an important point, however, which I think was the nub of the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport: in an environment in which UK nationals are without work, what is the industry doing to ensure that we can train UK or EU nationals to the appropriate skill levels so that they can staff the inshore operations without needing to bring in people from outside? I will touch on that later.

Visas would not be issued for people to come to work on inshore vessels. People who work—or employ people to work—on vessels in the inshore fleet after they have come to the UK on a “to join ship” visa, or sought to enter at the border to join a ship, are breaking immigration law and behaving unlawfully.

Some years ago, it became apparent that some in the UK inshore fishing fleet were using non-EEA labour to crew their ships. The UK Border Agency made it clear that that was not acceptable and that immigration rules needed to be enforced in that area. However, genuine concerns were raised at the time, including by the Scottish and Northern Ireland Governments, that the UK fishing fleet relied on non-EEA labour and that immediate enforcement of the immigration rules would have a significant and negative impact on that fleet.

In light of those concerns, in March 2010, the previous Government introduced temporary—I stress the word “temporary”—concessions that allowed for up to 1,500 visas to be issued to non-EEA fishermen to work on the UK inshore fleet to give it sufficient time to transition to using local labour for such jobs. In other words, that was to give it time to identify the labour requirement and put in place the relevant training mechanisms so that people could gain the appropriate skills to staff our inshore fleet.

Those concessionary arrangements came with strict conditions. Permission was granted only after appropriate assurances were given that the workers would be paid the minimum wage and—this addresses the point raised by my hon. Friend—that they would be given suitable onshore accommodation when their ships were in port. The take-up of the concession was relatively low. The route was extended last year, and we closed it down for good this August. We will no longer grant permission for non-EEA migrants to work on inshore UK fishing vessels.

The point at the heart of my hon. Friend’s concerns was about how we enforce the rules and ensure that people are playing by them. I shall also address the living and working conditions on board the vessels, which clearly concern him and his constituent, because although the UK Border Agency is not responsible for enforcing that part of the law, and thus I will not go into incredible detail on this, our officials do some work in that area and we work closely with other agencies.

The “to join ship” visas for the fleet that operates outside our territorial waters are granted in the same way as any other visa. They are issued only when a UK Border Agency official overseas or on the border is satisfied that the applicant meets the requirements of the rules. The official therefore has to be satisfied that the applicant is genuinely joining a ship at a UK port and that that vessel will be leaving UK territorial waters in the near future.

The British Chamber of Shipping has expressed concerns that “to join ship” visas are increasingly difficult to come by, particularly for ships that are tied up awaiting cargo, sailing instructions or repair. Our officials rightly question whether crew are actually required in such circumstances, given that the ship will not depart port imminently. The individual circumstances of each application are examined by officers from the UK Border Agency and UK Border Force on a case-by-case basis. Our Border Force officers will always question fishermen and other crew seeking to enter the UK. If they have any doubts about the individual, the company or the vessel that they are joining, they will refuse entry to the United Kingdom.

UK Border Force also regularly undertakes enforcement action to ensure that those who employ non-EEA fishermen do so legally. Border Force cutters regularly patrol UK waters, monitoring vessels, gathering information and intervening when appropriate and necessary. The monitoring allows us to ensure that vessels using non-EEA crew who are here on “to join ship” visas are indeed operating outside UK territorial waters. Alongside that, regular enforcement visits are conducted to ensure that those working on board vessels have the right to do so.

If we find people working illegally on vessels, we treat them in the same way as any other immigration offender and they are liable to removal from the UK. If employers employ people illegally on inshore fleets, they are liable to fines of up to £10,000 for each illegal worker employed. As with all our enforcement activity, we do not accept people hiring outside the immigration rules, and we seek to deal with that in a tough manner.

During the course of enforcement activities on vessels, Border Agency officers may come across unsuitable living and working conditions. There have been tragic consequences of such conditions. My hon. Friend may be aware of the fire on a fishing boat in 2008 in which two Filipino and one Latvian crew member were tragically killed.

Border Force and UK Border Agency officers are concerned primarily with enforcement of the immigration rules and do not have enforcement powers in areas such as employment rights or health and safety, but we certainly do not close our eyes to those things. If, in the course of enforcing immigration rules, Border Force and Border Agency officers come across such conditions, they will draw them to the attention of the appropriate enforcement officials in other agencies, such as the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, with which we have close working relationships. Our enforcement activities are often multi-agency efforts involving the police, the MCA and other agencies, so not only do we enforce immigration rules, but our partners enforce rules on employment rights, the minimum wage and health and safety conditions.

We will continue to work to ensure that all those who do not have a right to work here cannot do so, that those who have a right to work on ships outside UK territorial waters can do so, and that any rogue employers who exploit vulnerable workers, as my hon. Friend suggests, face the full extent of the law. If the inshore fishing fleet requires people to work in the industry, it should look first to the domestic labour force and ensure that people there are appropriately trained.

My hon. Friend raised a point about the International Labour Organisation convention. That, of course, is a matter for the fisheries Minister, so I will draw my hon. Friend’s remarks to his attention and ensure that my hon. Friend receives a reply outlining the Government’s position on the ratification of the convention from officials in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs or the Minister.

The hon. Member for Strangford raised a point about training and skills, which are devolved issues. I know that the Scottish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive are working to provide training to the local work force. The Governments, as well as the industry in those parts of the United Kingdom, are engaged in efforts to ensure that the local work force is appropriately skilled for our inshore fishing fleet.

I think that I have covered all the issues raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, and I say again that I look forward to visiting his constituency in the new year, when we can no doubt talk further about these matters.

[Oliver Colvile]

I look forward to welcoming my hon. Friend to Plymouth, when we will certainly want to talk about these issues with the organisation, and I take my hat off to the Apostleship of the Sea, which runs a good, effective operation in Plymouth for migrant workers who need help. Occasionally, the organisation finds that migrants do not have food and therefore has to provide them with some, and their living conditions can also be bad.

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful for that extra detail. When I visit my hon. Friend’s constituency to talk about a range of issues, if it will be at all possible to talk about that to people at first hand, it will be a valuable opportunity.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this debate and for the interest shown by the hon. Member for Strangford.