Employment Bill [HL]

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Wedderburn for asking me a question I was just about to come to. One of the risks of going straight down the path of telling every UK-flagged ship is that we will have flagging out, because they operate outside the United Kingdom. I accept that that is in one way similarly alarmist and we must not submit to that. But there would be an element of it, and we must understand what that would do. For instance, on a UK ship which currently pays more than the flags of others—albeit perhaps not the minimum wage—we would be consigning some of the workers to even lower wages and more disgraceful conditions. That would happen, be the people referred to earlier Portuguese or Filipino. We must ensure that, in trying to deal with a difficult problem and enhance the promulgation of our employment values on ships, we do not end up consigning some people to an even worse employed existence. I am not saying for a moment that we should turn around and say that we should do nothing because they might flag out. I am merely saying that I would like a little work done on seeing where the risk lies and what we are talking about in terms of values, numbers and geographical operations. That would be worthy of a little work. That is probably bad news for the people behind me, but probably a good thing to do. Before concluding, I shall deal with two or three specific points on one or two of the excellent issues raised. I found this debate extremely useful because I have learnt more about it from listening to Members of the Committee. My noble friend Lord Wedderburn asked, and asked again in his intervention, what I call the United Kingdom, what ““territorial waters”” are and what this amazing phrase ““internal waters”” is, which he rightly says seemed to arrive out of the ether at some point in drafting. The legislation was drawn in an attempt to capture those working in the United Kingdom. ““Internal waters”” are covered by the national minimum wage rules. They are all the waters and waterways on the landward side of a baseline from which territorial seas are measured. ““Internal waters”” means everything on the inside of the baseline of a territorial sea. It includes waterways such as rivers, canals and, sometimes, the waters within small bays. There is, "““the right of innocent passage””," through the territorial sea under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982, or UNCLOS. All foreign vessels have no right of innocent passage within internal waters. The lack of a right to innocent passage is the key difference between internal waters and the territorial sea. UNCLOS sets the limits of the territorial sea. Article 3 says that every state has the right to establish the breadth of its territorial sea up to a limit not exceeding 12 nautical miles. Article 5 states that the normal baseline for measuring the breadth of the territorial sea is the low water-line along the coast. So the baseline is on the other side of the gap between the low water-line on the coast and perhaps 12 miles out. Internal waters as defined include, for the United Kingdom, the sea between the Scottish mainland and the Inner and Outer Hebrides, the Firth of Forth, the Humber, the Wash, the Thames Estuary, the Solent and the Bristol Channel. They do not include the waters between the mainland and the Scillies, Lundy, the Smalls, the Pentland Firth, the sea—as my noble friend mentioned—between the Shetlands and Scotland, or the sea between England and the Farne Islands. With slightly greater comprehensibility, nor do they include the sea between the mainland and the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man, because they are not part of the United Kingdom. Speaking personally, if I was employed on a ferry going between the United Kingdom mainland and the Outer Hebrides, I would find it difficult to understand why I was being treated differently from someone working on a ferry, perhaps for the same company, operating between the United Kingdom mainland and the Shetland Islands. If there is one thing about the national minimum wage, as I said on a debate on another amendment, it is that it must be respected in all respects if it is going to work. There is some work to be done there. To address the very important point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, about the Race Relations Act, I should say that I understand that the Department for Transport has consulted on proposed amendments to Section 9 of the Race Relations Act as amended, so it is considering the way forward. The Government are committed to amending Section 9 to bring it into line with European Community law on the freedom of movement of workers. The amendment to the Race Relations Act is different in that it comes within European requirements but it does not deal directly with the function of the minimum levels of pay because the National Minimum Wage Act is not a European issue. It is under consideration but we are not sure whether it affects the NMWA. That is a work in progress. I undertake to get back to the noble Lord, Lord Lester, with a more detailed answer. Perhaps we could meet to discuss it, which would be useful.