Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, If she will provide an estimate of the number of merchant seafarers working on short sea international ferry services in scope of Section 5 of the Seafarers Wages Act 2023 (as amended).

Whilst the Department cannot give exact figures, an impact assessment was published for the Act, which makes some assumptions about the number of seafarers on board different vessel types per journey in order to estimate costs to businesses, but it does not make any estimates of the total number of seafarers in scope of the Seafarers Wages Act 2023. The Impact Assessment can be found at the following link: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/62e2aa8ed3bf7f75af0923d5/seafarers-wages-impact-assessment.pdf.