My Lords, I am grateful for the careful consideration of this Bill by all noble Lords. I reiterate what I have already said to noble Lords in private sessions: the Government are listening to concerns and will endeavour to answer in full all the questions raised by your Lordships today. I suspect that some will certainly be in writing, and I may well try to develop on some on some of the things I am able to say today so that we have full information as we head towards Report.
I sense that there are slightly differing views around the Committee, where some people want this to go much further and others are very cautious. Of course, both of those views potentially risk the Bill itself. I therefore just want to make sure that everybody has as much information as I can get out, particularly around the Government’s intent with the Bill and why it is drafted as it is. Noble Lords will have heard the previous Secretary of State speak about the nine-point
plan many times, which was in response to the P&O decision that was made back in March. We recognise that this Bill is narrow in scope and potentially also in effect, as we cannot legislate outside UK territorial waters. It is none the less an important part of the nine-point plan that this sits hand in glove with the other work that we are doing to improve the welfare of seafarers to make sure that their terms and conditions are as good as they can be.
The amendments in this first group cover territorial scope and international law and I will try to address them in turn. Amendment 1 from the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, seeks to probe the application of the Bill in various circumstances. I completely accept the way that he introduced this and that he had intended some separate amendments that were deemed to be out of scope. It is worth making sure that the different groups of seafarers who he identified in his amendment are indeed covered. To look at it in more detail, on proposed new subsection (1A)(a), seafarers working or ordinarily working in the UK, including UK internal or territorial waters if the vessel is not exercising a right to innocent passage, are already entitled to the national minimum wage. That stems from Section 1(2)(b) of the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 and Article 2 of the National Minimum Wage (Offshore Employment) Order 1999. That change is therefore unnecessary, and I think the noble Lord would agree.
On proposed new subsection (1A)(b), voyages to or from the Crown dependencies would already be in scope of this Bill under the service definition in Clause 1. Of course, I recognise at this point that the UK Government can legislate only in the waters of the UK; therefore, it would be a similar circumstance as one would have, for example, with a journey to France.
On proposed new subsection (1A)(c), under Article 2 of the National Minimum Wage (Offshore Employment) Order 1999, a worker working or ordinarily working in connection with the exploration of the seabed or subsoil or the exploitation of natural resources in the UK sector of the continental shelf is treated as if they are working, or ordinarily work, in the UK. Those workers are therefore already entitled to the national minimum wage, so, again subject to the caveat about UK territorial waters, those workers are covered—ditto those who are working on services to offshore renewable energy installations. Again, I note that some of those may be far away from UK territorial waters. I hope that that reassures the noble Lord.
I note the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, that it is not only the people who are in control of the ship. When I think about this, I do not think about the people in control of the ship but of all the other people on board, who do the really important day-to-day tasks that are sometimes forgotten. I accept that this is about making sure that we cover everybody on board, and I am satisfied that we do.
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The important Amendment 5, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, is probing about how we are getting on with the minimum wage equivalent corridors. I am not entirely sure that he necessarily seeks to remove those declarations, because it is the
case that any national minimum wage equivalent corridor would have a memorandum of understanding—a bilateral agreement between two nations—but it would need to be put into each nation’s domestic legislation to ensure that it could be enforced.
To update the Committee on the national minimum wage corridors, they were, as I noted earlier, introduced by the previous Secretary of State and we are continuing that policy. We are liaising with our near European neighbours to explore these corridors; conversations are progressing. Obviously, I am not able to give a running commentary on how they are going, but we are pursuing that, and as soon as further information becomes available, we will update noble Lords. Nevertheless, in the absence of those corridors, which is currently the case, we are progressing the legislation for your Lordships today. To clarify: we are working with the Governments of Denmark, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Norway, the Netherlands and Spain.
Amendment 15 would expand the territorial application of the Bill. Again, we are bumping up against the fact that we cannot legislate outside our territorial waters. That is why we would seek to reject that change; it is not appropriate for any Government to define wage rates beyond their waters.
Amendment 16, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, probes whether a loophole might exist which would prevent the provision of information to ports. It is well spotted and a good challenge. I took it away to make sure that our view was that it would not. The information that we would request from operators under the Bill’s provision is not likely to encompass material subject to data protection laws. The material would be in aggregate; it would not be detailed enough to fall under most data protection laws, so we do not believe that that is a significant risk. It is unlikely that an operator would seek to reflag specifically for this purpose. But the UK Government would of course not require anybody to breach the laws of another jurisdiction, so if the noble Lord has any further evidence as to what sort of information might break data protection laws, I would be very happy to see it. At the moment, we believe that we are well within the bounds of what normal and usual information would be.
Amendment 23 seeks to prevent the refusal of harbour access. This is incredibly important. The Government agree that we must not give ports the right to refuse access pursuant to the UK’s international obligations. To this end, Clause 9(3) provides for circumstances in which a harbour authority may not refuse access and replicates the conditions under which the United Kingdom permits otherwise prohibited ships from entering United Kingdom ports under the United Kingdom’s port state control regulations. We are satisfied that the circumstances provided for comply with our international obligations. This being so, there is no need to add a further broad condition necessitating interpretation of our international obligations, because we believe that we already meet them.
I turn finally on this group to Amendment 38. I am grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions and note the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, who was at a maritime party last night, which sounds great fun. He clearly had some interesting conversations. If people want to share their views and thoughts on
this matter with us, we are very much open to receiving them, because this Government do not consider that the Bill proposals interfere with the rights and obligations under international law, in particular the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS. Therefore, we do not deem it necessary to state as much in the Bill.
Measures taken under the Bill will not interfere with the right of innocent passage so as to breach the obligation reflected in Article 24(1) of UNCLOS. The Bill requirements will apply and be enforced only as a condition of entry to UK ports in which the UK has jurisdiction over visiting ships and where the right of innocent passage does not apply. This harks back to why I am particularly cautious about expanding its scope and looking for ways to make it less well-defined. We have got to a spot in which we think we are meeting our international obligations, so I am cautious not to get us into a situation where that might not be the case. As vessels visiting a port are not then in innocent passage and not merely passing through the territorial sea, the associated restrictions on the exercise of jurisdiction, as set out in UNCLOS, do not apply. That is an important statement, and I would be grateful if noble Lords would reflect on it afterwards and potentially seek the advice of others on why it may not be the case.
The measures that may be taken under the Bill can be applied only to a narrow subset of operations with a close connection to the UK—services on a regular schedule, determined by clear, objective criteria, such as those for the carriage of persons or goods by ship between a place outside the UK and a place in the UK, which will have entered the harbour on at least 120 occasions in the previous year. This goes back to the link to the UK being critical in the framing of the Bill.
The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, read out something from the Explanatory Memorandum that referred to risk. Obviously, as it is in the Explanatory Memorandum, the Government continue to recognise that risk. However, we are fully on board with our international agreements; we play a leading role when it comes to maritime on the world stage. We will continue to do so and to seek better conditions for maritime workers, but we must also respect that shipping is an international industry, which is why the Bill is scoped as it is.
I am grateful for all the contributions to this short debate. As I mentioned, we will study Hansard and make sure that we return with further information, as needed.