My Lords, the amendments in this group all broadly relate to the question of the ships, or the services, that are within the Bill’s scope. I hope the Minister will acknowledge that there is a bit of confusion around. I spent some of the summer talking to various stakeholders—sadly, not at parties. Through the conversations I had, it became clear that there are concerns about confusion and practicality.
Clause 3 will empower harbour authorities to request that operators of services within the Bill’s scope provide the declaration that they are paying seafarers the national minimum wage. The Bill also says that they cannot do the reverse: they cannot make requests if the vessel is not in scope. So far, so good, but the British Ports Association, which, after all, will be doing this, is arguing that in practice it might actually be quite difficult for a statutory harbour authority to determine with certainty whether a service will call more than 120 times a year. It is not difficult to imagine ways in which operators could perfectly legitimately alter their schedules to take them outside the scope. A harbour authority that is directed to make such a request but is not actually sure, or in a position to be sure, that the vessel is in fact in scope could be placed in an extremely difficult position and could be subject to legal challenge. My Amendment 27 is designed to deal with that: to give the Government a chance to reassure harbour authorities that they can stay on the right side of the law.
The situation is further complicated by some uncertainty that has arisen as to whether the Bill applies to vessels or to services. If it is services—from the Minister’s use of the word “services” on the previous
group of amendments, I suspect it is—how does one define a service? Is it something that runs to a published timetable? How will the Bill’s provisions work where there is a regular service that occasionally makes a call to another port? How exactly is a harbour authority to establish with some certainty exactly what the position is?
The Chamber of Shipping is arguing that using “services” and not “ships” would bring into scope vessels with minimal ties to the UK beyond calling in to UK ports. I know that that is not the Government’s intention. The Chamber of Shipping’s fear is that, in a highly competitive industry, operators will simply reduce their calls to the UK, which it argues could have implications for supply chain costs and the competitiveness of UK ports. It would be very helpful if the Minister could clarify this services/vessels issue and talk about the assessment that has been made of the potential implications described by the Chamber of Shipping. Those are covered by my Amendments 2 and 6.
Finally, my Amendment 37 relates to the report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which has looked at Clause 3, particularly Clause 3(4), which would give the Secretary of State power to make regulations that set out the form of the declarations and the manner in which they are provided. The committee had no problem with that. It was not happy with the provision by negative instrument in which the Secretary of State could restrict the circumstances in which a harbour authority could exercise its power. It says in its report:
“We consider that the Government have failed to justify the inclusion of this power in the Bill and that, even if its inclusion could be justified”,
it merits “affirmative procedure scrutiny”. It has said that because, in effect, this power could almost negate the whole Bill if that is what the Secretary of State so chose, which seems a very odd power to give under negative powers. I beg to move.
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