I genuinely congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) on securing the debate, which she introduced eloquently. I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I am the convenor of the RMT parliamentary group.
I want to start by referring to the loss of life in the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. A few weeks ago, we lost a crew member. The Royal Fleet Auxiliary has civilian crew; they are not Royal Navy, but they work alongside it. During a debate a few weeks ago, we were passed a note saying that one of our RMT members had lost his life overboard. I can now say that his name was James Elliott. On behalf of us all, I want to repeat our condolences to his family. I also pay tribute to the RFA for the essential role it plays alongside our Royal Navy and the work it does in protecting our shores. These are civilian crew. There was some confusion on the day, because the BBC reported that it was a member of the Royal Navy. It is important that we improve communication, because that caused some distress among a number of families who were trying to find out what had happened.
I met some RFA-RMT representatives today, who asked me to raise the fact that in the defence review there is a reference to the Royal Fleet Auxiliary that is causing some confusion about the role it will play and what investment there will be. I ask the Minister to pass on to his colleagues in the Ministry of Defence the message that the RMT would welcome a meeting with the Secretary of State or a Minister as soon as possible to discuss the defence review.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock said, one of the issues is that seafarers’ welfare is directly related to the conditions of their employment, which are governed by the International Labour Organisation’s maritime labour convention. That is the primary legislation that sets out legal standards for seafarers. In this country, the UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency is the competent authority for ensuring that every UK vessel, or vessel entering our ports, complies with that legislation. There are specific legal responsibilities under the convention on welfare standards.
As my hon. Friend said, we have 160,000 seafarers—unfortunately, fewer and fewer are British, but that is the overall number. They work on UK and internationally flagged ships in UK ports. At the moment, there are 120 Maritime and Coastguard Agency staff who undertake surveys and inspections. Last year, they undertook about 2,800 inspections and 3,000 surveys on UK-flagged ships, and 1,500 port state control inspections on international ships. There are 100,000 vessels calling into UK ports every year, and there is a real concern that, with so few staff, the ratio of inspections for the ships is insubstantial. For some time now, there have been calls for an increase in resources for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency.
My hon. Friend raised our concern that, for the last 40 years at least, there has been a tendency for shipowners to flag elsewhere, rather than the UK, with the aim of reducing labour costs. They do that, as my hon. Friend said, by putting pressure on the workforce. The number of ships registered elsewhere is startling. The practice of registering under a flag of convenience has begun to dominate the industry. Ships are registered in places such as Panama, the Marshall Islands, Liberia, Cyprus, the Bahamas and Malta, and that undermines the ability to maintain standards of basic welfare for seafarers. Huge numbers of ships are registered in the Philippines, Indonesia, China, India, Ukraine and Russia. Some of those countries undertake no inspection of their vessels whatsoever. They fail to manage welfare standards, which has resulted in a reduction in those standards and even, as my hon. Friend said, in tragedies, because of the pressure the workforce are under.
Like my hon. Friend, I welcome the fact the Government are seeking to address a range of these issues. The mandatory seafarers’ charter that has been introduced in the Employment Rights Bill is a huge step forward for us, and I congratulate the Government on it. The charter arose, as my hon. Friend said, partly out of the P&O scandal, whereby P&O just sacked its entire workforce. That was a scandal recognised across the House, and it should not have happened. P&O sacked its entire workforce, introduced agency staff on lower wages with no holiday or sick pay, and paid the minimum amount that it could possibly get away with. Exactly as my hon. Friend said, that means that those agency staff are working under intense pressure, which inevitably has consequences for safety.
Safety is one of our main worries, which is why the mandatory seafarers’ charter is so important. It was introduced to protect seafarers in the short-sea ferries sector, regardless of their nationality or the flag of the vessel they work on. It will cover standards of pay, roster patterns and other employment conditions through collectively bargained standards in the industry. It will also set out maximum periods of work at sea and minimum periods of rest, which is absolutely critical. There will be robust requirements to manage seafarer fatigue, which is an issue that my hon. Friend raised so forcefully. It will reinforce training requirements for operators, such as familiarisation with the vessel, to support safety and skills, so that the seafarers have the time to understand and appreciate what is needed on a particular vessel. There will also be strong standards of sick pay, holiday pay and pension rights, which is vital.
This charter is a major breakthrough, and the unions really welcomed it. Progress is being made and at the RMT union executive meeting this morning we discussed that. The RMT welcomes the detailed consultation that will take place in the coming months and the roll-out of the charter itself.
However, I will now raise the issue of discrimination within the sector. I have been involved in this campaign for nearly 30 years, but the issue has gone on for 50 years. It remains legal to practise nationality-based pay discrimination against non-EU nationals working as seafarers on UK-flagged ships. That is a discriminatory practice. It originates in part 9 of the Race Relations Act 1976, which explicitly permits racial discrimination against seafarers recruited overseas to work on UK-flagged ships for lower pay and longer periods than UK nationals.
Way back in 2009, I was involved in the fight against this discrimination. Gordon Brown’s Labour Government initiated the Carter review to make recommendations on ending discriminatory seafarer pay differentials. Susan Carter, who led the review, recommended in 2010 that nationality-based seafarer pay differentials should be prohibited on all UK ships. The proposal was supported by the union, but unfortunately it was rejected by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Government who came into office in 2010.
The estimate emerging from surveys by the union is that tens of thousands of seafarers working today in the UK shipping industry are paid less than UK seafarers, simply because of their nationality and the flag of the ship that they work on. This situation impedes progress to improve seafarer welfare overall, both at the national level and the international level. The UK Government introduced secondary regulations in 2011 to do the bare minimum to avoid legal action by the European Commission over the continued practice of nationality-based pay discrimination among seafarers. I attended the Committee that agreed those regulations. They have been subject to two reviews that have never been concluded, which contravenes the post-implementation review regulations for a review to be carried out every five years.
Another consultation was held just before the 2024 general election, and the current Government are now seeking to reconsult. With one action—one effective piece of regulation—we as a Government could end nationality-based pay discrimination on UK-flagged ships. It would raise welfare standards in shipping and reinforce our country’s reputation as the gold standard in seafarer welfare and maritime safety provision. I urge the Government to act on this swiftly.
My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock mentioned support for charitable organisations and others in supporting seafarer welfare and the potential of a levy. Levies operate very successfully in many other countries. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency and the Merchant Navy Welfare Board have recommitted themselves to joint working on seafarer welfare and met last month to do that, which we welcome. However, without the resources, effective action will be very limited.
We have looked at what has happened elsewhere. Levy systems, including mandatory payments, are used by other maritime nations. They fund seafarer port facilities. We have heard some fantastic examples of those today. In New Zealand, the then Labour Government introduced a mandatory levy to fund shore-side facilities in 2022, which influenced the thinking in Australia as well. In Europe, France has operated a mandatory seafarer welfare levy system since 2016, and there are levy systems in Germany, Spain and Romania. It is critical that we introduce such a system.
One example of the issues that we are increasingly dealing with at the moment is the abandonment of seafarers. They are recruited in one country, reach our country and then abandoned by the ship owners. That is happening more frequently across the globe. Yes, we can legislate for protections as best we can, but we need the wherewithal—the resources going into the charities and agencies that can help those seafarers, who are lost in a foreign country and bereft of support. Overall, a real programme of reform is needed.
Raising the issue of mental health has been one of the strong concerns within the seafaring unions. There has been report after report across the movement about mental health issues and the stress placed upon people, and the increased number of suicides taking place as a result, and it does relate to the person’s employment. If we get the seafarers’ charter operating effectively, it could transform people’s lives and take that pressure off them, as well as save people from harm and save people’s lives.