Seafarers’ Wages Bill [Lords]

Natalie Elphicke Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman raises a very good point. The point of the Bill and the nine-point plan is to ensure that ferry operators that want to operate in a responsible way are not forced out of business or forced to drop their standards by unscrupulous operators. He also makes the point that services to Plymouth are incredibly important; speaking as a south-west Member of Parliament myself, I want to make sure that they can continue.

[Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

May I draw attention to the much better behaviour that we have seen from DFDS, which operates out of the port of Dover? On port-to-port agreements, will my right hon. Friend confirm that some of the issues that have been raised—including rosters, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency’s overview of the intensity of the Dover-Calais route, and matters outside the simple question of wages—can be better addressed within that framework between our two nations?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend has put an enormous amount of work into the matter, following P&O’s behaviour. She is focused at all times on solving the issues on behalf of her constituents; I know that her conversations with my predecessors focused on fixing the problem in the long term and on supporting operators that want to raise standards in the sector. I thank her for all her work.

The charter that we are developing, in conjunction with the maritime industry and various social partners, will enhance the core employment protections available to seafarers. As part of that plan, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy will introduce a new statutory code of practice to address fire and rehire, which it will publish for consultation in due course. My Department is also taking steps to encourage more ships to operate under our flag and to improve the long-term working conditions of seafarers beyond pay protection, as my hon. Friend has just set out.

The measures in the Bill will help to ensure that employees working on vessels that make regular visits to UK ports can no longer be exploited by unscrupulous operators. Following the mass sacking earlier this year of P&O Ferries staff, some of whom had worked for the company for four decades, we promised to act. The Bill demonstrates that we are doing so. We are sending a message to every operator: if you want to serve UK ports on a regular basis, and if you want to carry passengers to and from our country, you must meet our high standards. I commend the Bill to the House.

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[Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Not only has 2022 been a year of opportunity, new jobs, higher wages and investment across Dover and Deal, but it has been a difficult and challenging year, with a number of significant and sometimes shocking events occurring around our sea border. Looking back to this time last year, I would not have expected to see a household name, a much-loved part of the Dover landscape, a global company headquartered in the town, become a pariah and a disgrace, not just in the maritime community, but in the business world. That is what the directors of P&O Ferries made it in March 2022. P&O’s management is a total disgrace, and it has put a stain on the name of this great company. In March, I wrote to the Insolvency Service, calling on it to consider director disqualification action against the named directors of P&O Ferries Ltd and its parent company, P&O Ferries Holding Ltd, on the basis of the directors’ misconduct.

The Insolvency Service has a responsibility to uphold confidence in directors and to hold them to account for serious misconduct. The response from the service has been wholly inadequate so far. I ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to press the Insolvency Service to step in and do its job—to hold those P&O directors to account for their reprehensible, immoral and unlawful conduct. I still have constituents who have not been compensated properly for lost or stolen belongings. I ask the Minister to meet me to see how my constituents can be helped, so that this matter can finally be resolved for them.

In relation to the well-made comments on the intensity of the channel route, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency looked at these issues for Irish Ferries when it came into Dover and for P&O when it tried to stand up its agency workers and was not allowed to do so because they were not good and ready. I ask the Minister to have a conversation with the agency and then for us to meet further to discuss how assurances can be given that the intensity of the channel route is being properly monitored and considered in relation to the safety of workers and passengers on it.

Looking back to the sackings in March, I was glad to take up an offer from Darren Procter of the RMT union to march with the workers, my constituents in Dover Town, along with other prominent local Conservatives. As the local MP, I supported workers in two previous restructurings of the workforce of P&O, working with the unions and speaking to the management of P&O. It was completely untrue, therefore, for P&O to seek to blame predicted union militancy by RMT for its disgraceful management behaviour, because previous restructurings had been by negotiated settlement.

P&O did not even try to negotiate. It just decided that it would break the law. None the less, it is true that, on the day I marched with the RMT, we did see the ugly face of the militant unions and the Labour party. It is also true that the Labour party saw an opportunity to exploit the shocking corporate behaviour of P&O, just as we have heard that it intends not to fully and unequivocally support the measures of this important Bill today.

As I was surrounded by bused-in, hard-left aggressive militants outside the RMT headquarters in Dover, I was rescued by local union members whom I know and who brought me into the building for my safety. Imagine my shock when I saw the leadership of the RMT—Mick Lynch no less—and other trade union barons holding a Zoom meeting with none other than the Labour leader, the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer). While I was in that private meeting, I was shocked to hear how the Labour leader and the trade union barons were chatting away about exploiting the P&O situation in Parliament for political gain in those coming days, and how the unions could create a winter of discontent, stoked up by trade unions here. It seemed to me, listening to everyone that day, that they were working hand in glove with the Labour leadership.

Back then, in the spring, I thought that it was just wishful thinking on the part of Labour and the trade union barons. Now Mick Lynch has turned into the Christmas Grinch and the winter of union trouble making is well and truly under way—and not a word of condemnation from those on the Labour Front Bench, and I think that we all know why.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

As a Scottish nationalist MP, there is not a lot of love lost between me and the Labour party. It certainly comes as a surprise to me to hear that the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) is very much in cahoots with the unions. I think that he could do an awful lot more to stand up for Labour values. However, at the heart of all of this are the hon. Lady’s constituents who were treated incredibly badly by P&O. The issue here is not the RMT union; the issue here is P&O Ferries, which has acted disgracefully. I urge her to try to get back to that point, which is what the Bill is about.

[Mrs Elphicke]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. As I have made it very clear, as the Dover MP, I have worked very constructively with the RMT, and particularly with the local branch. What I saw that day was the Labour leader on Zoom, and it seemed to me from that meeting that he was looking for political opportunism, rather than having the interests of my constituents at heart. I am therefore very pleased that so many Members on the Opposition Benches now speak so freely about my constituents, but I urge them to fully support the Bill, and not to seek to create division and engage in shameless political opportunism on what they know is a very specific Bill, as they have already done in the Lords.

[Richard Burgon]

We do not seek to oppose the Bill. We seek to strengthen it and improve it, but I do have a question for the hon. Member. She has repeatedly referred in her speech to “trade union barons”. Will she take this opportunity to make it clear that trade union leaders—of the RMT and other unions—are not barons, because they are elected by their members? Would it not be helpful to stop using this silly, right-wing tabloid language of “barons”? They are not barons. They are elected leaders—elected by many more people than some Conservative Prime Ministers.

[Mrs Elphicke]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I think he has made his point about his choice of language, in the same way that I have made mine.

As we look forward to the Bill going through Committee, I urge Opposition Members not to seek to create division in the name of improvement, when in fact they are making amendments that are outside the scope of the Bill. It is this Conservative Government who are prioritising fair pay and equal rights for our workers on land and at sea. We are applying the minimum wage to ensure that we do not see a race to the bottom of foreign crews and cheap labour, helping to secure the future of the workforce on the short straits.

In Dover, the maritime industry is part of our DNA. I just visited Viking’s Maritime Skills Academy in Dover, which trains seafarers in fire and sea rescue safety. Like a number of local businesses, it has worked really hard to support those in P&O who have lost their jobs, and I pay tribute to all those across my constituency who have come together to help. It is a reminder that, from training to deployment, Dover has a central role in the maritime community. With that central role, I would like to see this Bill accompanied by further international steps to improve the pay and conditions of international seafarers.

The conditions for some international seafarers are nothing short of slavery. That point was very well made by my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price). We have a moral responsibility to address that. We have taken action to address the use of sweat shops on land in other countries. We must show international leadership in tackling the sweat shops at sea—the shocking conditions for international seafarers, particularly those from poorer countries. We must also go further in completing bilateral agreements with port-to-port European and other counterparts, so as to ensure that standards, safety and training meet the demands of the sea. As I raised with the Secretary of State earlier, it is those bilateral agreements on which we should be focusing the specific needs of the channel routes.

Today’s Bill is one that I strongly welcome. It will help to ensure that the financial incentives that led to the decision-making of P&O Ferries will be neutralised. It will help to avoid the race to the bottom and shore up jobs here in the UK ports. It is an important and focused Bill to plug a gap in employment law to ensure that British workers operating at sea between Dover and Calais will be treated just the same as workers operating in Dover itself.

I would like to finish by saying how grateful I am for the work of a number of right hon. and hon. Friends, in particular my right hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps) and my hon. Friends the Members for Witney (Robert Courts), for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) and for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), who all worked so hard alongside me on this P&O situation, understood it for the disgrace it was and showed determination to push forward on the nine-point plan for action. I know my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the Minister will be following through on that to ensure that such a situation cannot happen in the same way again.

This Bill shows it is the Conservative party that is on the side of seafarers. It is the Conservative party that is the party of the workers. It is the Government who support jobs, training and pay to protect British workers, including all those excellent workers at Dover and those who work on the short straits.

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

Most of the points of detail have been raised by other Members, so I will not focus on those. I will vote for the Bill, but—I am not being party political here, because when it comes to the treatment of seafarers, I have been critical of every party that has been in national Government—the Bill is a mouse, and I do not think that it is a mouse that is going to roar. That is my worry about it.

I was pleased at the cross-party anger about P&O’s behaviour. I had expected that to result in a real opportunity to tackle the way in which seafarers are treated, and not just by P&O but historically. I have checked Hansard, and the first time I raised in the House the application of the minimum wage to seafarers was in the 2002-03 Session, which was 20 years ago. I blame the Chamber of Shipping, which has been mentioned, and its influence on successive Labour, Conservative and coalition Governments. Time and again, we have pointed out what is technically, in employment terms, a feudal relationship with many seafarers and the way they are treated. It is also a neo-colonialist relationship, given the recruitment practices across the globe. It is a level of exploitation that we would not tolerate in any other sector. People are working long hours in unsafe conditions, on low pay and with limited training. When they complain, they are replaced by labour that is brought to this country from across the globe. They are severely exploited.

Every time we have debated the issue and the Chamber of Shipping has realised that the game is up and that change is necessary—largely through public opprobrium, as happened with P&O, though perhaps not on the same scale in the past—successive attempts at reform by this House have resulted in a standard strategy to be pursued, which is that the Chamber of Shipping, working with the Government, obfuscates, seeks to limit change and the effectiveness of that change, and drafts trench warfare in legislation.

I will give a few examples. In 2002 I said that we should ensure that the minimum wage applied to seafarers in this country on the basis of the Race Relations Act 1976. When lobbying on the Race Relations Act, the shipping industry secured an exemption—the only sector that gained such an exemption. As a result, it was able to exploit workers. We ran a campaign and the Government put their hands up and said, “We accept that there is a wrong here, so we will ensure reform.” That reform was that people could be discriminated against based not on their race but on their nationality. What is the difference? That was the change in legislation.

From 2007 to 2009 we ran a campaign and I raised the issues in this House. When we sought to give some form of legal protection to people, we were told that they could have that legal protection only if they had employment links to this country—and that was ill defined. It just went on like that. I have example after example of us campaigning for reform and being met with obfuscation and the drafting of trench warfare, and the reform was largely frustrated. It just went on like that.

I raised the issue of accommodation charges in 2014. Again, the argument was that the charges would be relatively limited and that there would be no major impact on the seafarers. The companies then started increasing the charges and they got to ludicrous levels. What could the seafarers do? They had no choice over where they were going to sleep at night. They could not hire a separate boat to sleep on. The companies were ripping them off.

I can remember about 40 of us turning up to a Statutory Instrument Committee thinking that we had achieved a major victory—it was wonderful—whereby the minimum wage was going to apply to British waters. We all thought that meant territorial waters, but then there was a change of definition and we found that it applied only to internal waters—which just about applies to the Norfolk broads, to be honest.

That is what has happened year after year. I have had 20 years of this, so Members will understand my sense of frustration that leads to anger. That is why I think this Bill is a mouse. We will work together to improve it—that is what we will do. We will try to eradicate the loopholes that have been set out by virtually every Member who has spoken so far, including on the number of times a port is used, the way in which measures are enforced and the way in which the surcharge is defined. The Government cannot leave the definition of the surcharge to the harbour authorities. There will be another race to the bottom because they will want to attract companies to use their harbour on the basis that their surcharge is so low. Let us work together as a House to resolve those issues with this mouse of a Bill.

The Bill does not solve the problem of fire and rehire. I was with the hon. Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke) in Dover. I think she has misunderstood what was going on in the RMT office. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) was receiving a briefing from the RMT that was offered to the Prime Minister and the leaders of other parties as well. I was in the room at the time, and there was no plotting or anything like that. It was about trying to ensure that points were raised in this House so that the Government could act more effectively.

[Mrs Elphicke]

I have notified the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras that I will be raising this issue. I was in that meeting along with a member of my team. It was very clear that what I was observing was not a conversation with the Labour leader but a conversation led by the Labour leader about what might happen the following week, including some very disparaging references about the Transport Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), whom he sought to embarrass. I appreciate the perspective of the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and I recall him being there.

[John McDonnell]

We were both in the same room, but I suppose that it is like people witnessing an accident, in that there will be different interpretations. By no means was I calling the leader of the Labour party’s conversation an accident—that would be grounds for expulsion.

The Bill does not outlaw fire and rehire. That was used by P&O, whose example was followed very quickly by Heathrow airport in my constituency. If this Bill is the first stage of a reform package, we need to see the rest of it pretty promptly. That means not just introducing minimum wage legislation but looking at the wider exploitation of seafarers, including accommodation charges and safe crew levels. I am really worried. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) mentioned the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster. Time and again, evidence is emerging that the exploitation of seafarers is not just about wages, but about how few seafarers there are on any particular ship and how the training they receive does not guarantee safety. Therefore, we need legislation to be introduced rapidly to ensure that seafarers are not only properly paid but properly trained, and that any ship that sails around our ports has an adequate number of crew on board.

At some stage—this applies to the overall debate as well as to this Bill—we will have to have another discussion about the regulation of the sector. This Bill relates to how it abides by payment of the minimum wage. I do not believe that the concept of harbours levelling the surcharge and then it being implemented or, I suppose, inspected by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency is going to prove effective. That is a division of responsibility and I do not think it will work.

As other hon. Members raised earlier, the idea that a ship or company can simply be excluded from operating out of a particular harbour will not prove effective either. We must demonstrate seriousness of purpose, which is why the unions are arguing for detention of the ship when there is a refusal to abide by the measures that are going through in this Bill.

I hope that we will rapidly hear a report on the progress of the seafarers’ charter, which I thought would be included in the first legislation that we saw to attack the issues around seafarers and P&O in particular. I would also like to have had some strong evidence of the agreements that are coming forward in the cross-country negotiations taking place on these issues; can we have that in the new year? I also throw in that it is not just about the wages earned week by week, month by month, but about pensions, which are another form of wages. Seafarers’ pensions have been eroded over the years and, as a result, it is difficult to attract people to the job because of low pay, lack of pensions, insecurity and, to be frank, unsafe working conditions.

My final point comes back to the Chamber of Shipping. I am angry that, throughout the whole period that these activities have been taking place, when low pay has been inflicted on seafarers and their pensions have been under attack, shipping companies have taken £2 billion in tax relief from tonnage tax—in fact, they have laughed all the way to the bank. The tonnage tax has failed, and it has not produced the jobs that we were promised or encouraged the companies to behave as dutiful employers. I urge the Government to bring forward the whole programme of legislation that was promised as part of the development of the nine-point plan, as well as the seafarers’ charter, early in the new year. Unless we have that, there will be no secure employment and the long-term future of the sector will be at considerable risk.