Seafarers’ Wages Bill [Lords]

Robert Courts Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure and honour to speak in this debate, and in particular to follow the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner). I hope he will not mind if I say that he was always extremely challengingly constructive, and I very much enjoyed and valued the interaction we had when I held that brief. I did think twice about whether I ought to speak in this debate, because as the maritime Minister at the time of this scandal and of the early stages of the legislation being drafted, to a certain extent I am marking my own homework, even if it is the poor old Minister who has to defend things at the end of the debate.

I came to care deeply about this issue during the course of my time as maritime Minister, partly because of some of the seafarers I met in Dover just after this happened, and partly because of the interaction I had with many hon. and right hon. Members across the House. I rise to record just a few thoughts about the Bill and where we go from here. Before I do, I hope I may be permitted a moment of indulgence just to thank the maritime directorate at the Department for Transport, with whom I worked so closely over some tumultuous times. With their good humour, boundless expertise and incredible passion for everything they do, they are a true credit to the finest traditions of their service. It was a great pleasure and honour to work with them, and I thank them for everything they did to see me through the difficult, challenging two years that we had.

The civil service often likes to say it works at pace, and that is often true, but it was never as true as it was during the formation of this Bill. As the hon. Member just said, this scandal broke and we had to take action. The Government of whom I and the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps) and the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) formed a part felt extremely strongly about it, so we worked at great speed. All the civil servants who worked on it were incredible in those weeks and months, and I thank them for that. Finally on this note—I apologise to the Members who are not lawyers; I am a lawyer, or a recovering lawyer as I like to say—I am grateful to the civil servants for having allowed me to crawl all over the legislation and pick away at bits of it, and I hope it is slightly better as a result.

Taking a moment to dwell on why this Bill is necessary, the decision by P&O Ferries that we have heard about was despicable—I make it clear at the outset that I am talking about P&O Ferries as distinct from P&O Cruises, which bears no responsibility for it. Those 786 seafarers were made redundant without prior notice or consultation, to be replaced by agency workers who would be paid less than the national minimum. It was an extraordinary moment of shameful behaviour from a company. We will all remember that incredible Zoom call when they were dismissed by video conference. It is emblematic of all the issues we are dealing with today.

When I went back to my constituency that weekend—my landlocked, rural, Oxfordshire constituency—the people at every single door I knocked on were livid at how P&O had behaved, and every single one commended the Government’s strong action. I think the disgust of those in west Oxfordshire and more widely was down to two reasons. First, it was because P&O is an iconic British brand. It is one of those brands that sits along with the Red Arrows, or Cadbury or Rolls-Royce, as a quality marque that shows the country stands for the highest standards not just in products, but in people.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, P&O Ferries violated some unwritten rules of decency, fair play and valuing the people who work for them—all those things that mark the UK out as a special place to live. P&O Ferries took those things, valued them at nought and broke them, and that was a wicked thing to have done. No excuses will do. This is not about P&O’s balance sheet or what it chose to do to try to make recompense to those seafarers afterwards; it is about something very simple: the way that people should be treated. These people have given their lives to learn a trade that is difficult, vital and frequently dangerous, and to be treated in that way is not how Britain does business.

What P&O Ferries did that day was to suggest that those seafarers did not matter. It suggested that people who had devoted their lives and labour in that way did not matter and could be replaced like a machine with something cheaper. That is what the people of west Oxfordshire were angry about that weekend, and that anger is as nothing compared with the anger of the people of Dover and Hull, and rightly so. P&O Ferries violated the British sense of fairness. It is more than just a brand; it is a sense of doing the right thing—of decency, hard work and commitment paying off.

Some months later, Peter Hebblethwaite—he of that truly infamous Select Committee appearance—had the cheek to suggest that the dispute that there was and remains over how he treated his workers was of historic interest, as if the Government should just accept it and move on, as if it did not matter or had not happened. Well, this is a historic matter, but not in the way that Mr Hebblethwaite thought; this is a historic matter, because what this House of Commons said then, and is going to say now in all our different ways, is that maritime really matters, seafarers really matter, ships really matter and how we treat people really matters.

We are going to make sure, through this legislation and everything else, that how P&O treated its seafarers on that day will never happen again; and, more than that, we are going to take a historic look at how maritime and seafarers are treated in this country and ensure that this great industry is treated how it should be, right at the heart of this great country. That is what the nine-point plan that we have heard about already intended to do, and I know that the Government will continue to do more.

I am mindful of time, and others want to speak, so I will not go through the Bill in detail, as many others will wish to do that, as well. I will echo some of the points made by Members from both sides of the House about how it is essential to see this Bill as a starting point. The Bill is important, but it does not of itself solve the issue. Another reason I am pleased to speak today is that this is one of the first times in recent memory when the House has considered maritime legislation as a whole. There has been a lot of specific legislation—bits on safety and so forth—but for the last substantial bit of maritime legislation, we have to go all the way back to the Merchant Shipping Act 1995, and even that just pulled together bits of legislation from earlier years.

In the past, Parliament has tended to look at maritime as a functional thing—a way of getting from A to B—and not looked holistically at what it brings to the life of the nation. Of course, what maritime brings to the life of the nation is vast. We are talking about trade, highly skilled jobs, and British influence way beyond these shores. I want to ensure—I know I will have the agreement of many other Members of this House—that the value of what maritime business brings is truly understood by the Government. I am not suggesting wholesale Government intervention, as this is a privately run, privately operated industry, and for the most part is much the better for that, but some measures could be taken, particularly in the areas of regulation and fiscal policy, that could help the maritime sector to grow.

The Department’s excellent “Maritime 2050” programme must be supported and continued, but I would like the Government also to focus on a number of other things that I will briefly talk through. The first is seafarers’ training. We need to expand the training commitment under the tonnage tax and support the work of the Maritime Skills Commission and the Merchant Navy Training Board, because children growing up in the constituency of the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East, or in Dover, Tilbury or so many other areas, must be able to look out of their window, to see those vessels and think, “That is a fascinating career,” and should know how to go about achieving it and have the jobs available at the end of the day, such that they can go and do it. Training is key to that. We have to have British seafarers trained—both officers and ratings—if we want to have a thriving merchant fleet.

The second point I wish to raise is about the importance of the UK flag. Ships registered on the UK ship register are not just a matter of national pride, although it is always great to see the red ensign fluttering from the stern of a ship; this is so important because, in simple terms, flying the red ensign makes that ship a floating piece of Britain, which means that the standards we enjoy in this country are more easily applied to it. Increasing the number of ships on the UK ship register is one of the most important things that can be done to help seafarers’ pay, welfare and standards, to which attention has rightly been drawn already. This is about more than pay; it is about welfare and standards as well. This is very complex work, and there is too much here for me to go into at the moment, but a number of things have to be done. Some of this has to be done internationally, and I urge the Government to look at what can be done at the International Maritime Organisation, particularly on the issue of flags of convenience, which is a major part of this.

I also wish to draw attention to the issue of investment in British shipbuilding—a massive topic that, again, I cannot go into in any detail. When we look at the decline of the merchant fleet since the first world war, and even more so since the second world war, we see that the lack of attractiveness as a place to invest in British shipping is a big part of what has happened. Only by increasing British ship ownership, through targeted fiscal measures and creating the right regulatory environment in which to work, can we have the British standards, pay and welfare we would expect, as well as providing the extraordinary strategic reserve that a merchant fleet is able to give, as of course we saw during the Falklands war.

The tonnage tax reforms that were announced last year by the then Chancellor, now our Prime Minister, are hugely welcome. They are due to be reviewed again next year, and I ask the Government to look creatively at what can be done there, through tonnage tax and wider fiscal measures. I would like the Government and the Minister to respond on some of those points.

I shall make a couple of concluding points. As I said at the beginning, maritime matters. We have understood the way maritime matters and the way seafarers matter to this country as never before. As my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) has just said, during the pandemic we saw them in all weathers, day and night, whether there was covid or whether there was no covid, constantly working to make sure that we had the food, medicine and wider supplies we needed. They were not complaining, and it is vital that we support them in due course. But maritime will matter only when seafarers’ welfare and training matters as much as their wages, and when shipping ownership and the red ensign are given the attention that they deserve.

This Bill is a good start, but it is only a start. There is a wide, delicate maritime ecosystem that needs wide attention, which is what I am asking the Government to give here. There has never been a successful trading nation without its own maritime fleet and without the seafarers to man those ships. Global Britain, an independent trade policy and Britain on the world stage will not count for anything without maritime. Maritime is essential, seafarers are essential, and we must do more.