Equality Bill

I shall speak to new clause 25 and amendment 34 in my name. Both are proposed changes that seek to remove the terrible discrimination against non-UK seamen sailing on British ships between British ports. New clause 25 would apply the national minimum wage to seafarers who are either ordinarily resident in the UK and sailing on British-registered ships, or sailing on ships that trade solely between UK ports or offshore installations—a very narrow definition. It could be argued—indeed, it has been in this House and in the other place—that the minimum wage should apply to all seafarers on all UK vessels when they are trading in UK territorial waters. That seems to me, to the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, to Nautilus International, of which I am still a member, and to the TUC to be a very reasonable way of removing the inequalities in current legislation and putting an end to the shameful exploitation of non-UK seafarers on British ships. Unfortunately, Ministers in both Houses have resisted such reform for a series of reasons. Although I and supporters of the reform do not consider those reasons to be valid, we have none the less taken heed of them and narrowed our new clause substantially. New clause 25 is therefore very narrowly scripted as a means of making some progress, because under current law some ship operators are getting away with murder. We have evidence of pay rates, conditions of service and hours of duty that have been described as "modern-day slavery". There are countless examples of poverty pay on British ships trading between British ports. My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) gave two examples, but there are many more. For instance, Streamline, operating from Aberdeen to Lerwick, pays just £314 a month—one third of the national minimum wage equivalent; Varun shipping company, which sails out of Aberdeen and from Peterhead to the offshore oil industry, pays workers as little as £262 a month. Some Filipino seamen are paid just over £2 an hour; Estonian able seamen—qualified able seamen—on the regular Heysham to Belfast service are on just £433 a month; and the list goes on. It is not restricted to a couple of examples; it is wide-ranging and getting worse. Sadly, there are many other shameful examples, and that cannot be right, which is why the unions have been pressing for reform for so long. The remaining arguments against extending the national minimum wage in the circumstances described in new clause 25 are becoming fewer and entirely predictable. The Chamber of Shipping argues that some operators might flag out of the British flag, but that is the sort of blackmail that big business and employers adopted during the introduction of the minimum wage in the first place. Whenever workers' rights are improved, big business, the CBI and the official Opposition come forward with all sorts of nightmare scenarios for a particular case. We know from the national minimum wage negotiations, and from the fact that we are now 10 years on from them, that none of those dire predictions came true; in fact, most changes went in the opposite direction to those that were forecast.