Well, because of that we will come on to why it is so important that the Bill refers to services rather than ships; otherwise, quite frankly, you could do that, and all sorts of very interesting things. I will try to go through some of the amendments and think carefully about how we make sure that we reassure operators and trade associations about what a service is. Indeed, there is a question about what a harbour is. The good thing is that we have a definition of a harbour, in the Harbours Act 1964 and the Harbours Act (Northern Ireland) 1970. That is what a harbour is, so I will put that one to bed.
5.15 pm
I turn to Amendment 2 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market. We are satisfied that the Bill as drafted makes implicit that the scope of the Bill is limited to a particular subset of services. The Bill
“applies to a service for the carriage of persons or goods by ship, with or without vehicles, between a place outside the United Kingdom and a place in the United Kingdom.”
Clause 3(3) confirms that a declaration is not to be requested
“unless it appears to the authority that ships providing the service will … have entered the harbour on at least 120 occasions in the year.”
In order to consider whether a national minimum wage equivalent declaration is required, harbour authorities need to assess whether it appears to them that any service in scope of the Bill—one that falls within Clause 1—will meet the frequency requirement. Of course, after a period of time, one will know whether there was a very big ship in one’s harbour 120 times per years because that is beyond doubt. Therefore, the Bill applies to all services in scope of Clause 1. However, not all services in scope are required to provide a declaration, due to the operation of the frequency requirement in Clause 3(3). I think that is quite clear. The amendment from the noble Baroness simply says that the Bill does not apply to a service to which the Bill does not apply. I know it is a probing amendment, just trying to get us focused on what we think “services” actually are.
Turning to Amendment 6, the Government’s view is that adopting this position would radically change the way the Bill operates. This amendment does not clarify the scope of vessels to which the Bill applies; rather, it fundamentally changes it. The Bill is concerned with the service and not individual ships. The ship is
simply a tool for carrying goods or passengers on a particular service. A service, as noble Lords will all know, may be made up of one or more ships, particularly on the short straits, where there might be a number of ships plying the same service every single day. Really, the service has to be run by the same operator and on the same route. Obviously, by “route” one means from one particular harbour to another particular harbour: it is not a random harbour.
The seafarers in scope of the legislation are those working on the services and obviously, as noted, we have the frequency requirement of 120 times a year. Seafarers can, of course, move ships, so they could be on vessel A on one day and on vessel B on another. I slightly dispute that being able to provide a national minimum wage equivalent declaration in those circumstances would be particularly difficult. I have done quite a lot of HR processing in my time, and I think it would be perfectly feasible to make sure that one knows where one’s staff are and that they are being paid the right rate when they are in UK territorial waters. So, we are content that we stay with “services”. Of course, when we had the consultation, we considered whether “ships” was a more appropriate way forward, and it did not work. We do not want something to drop out of being covered because of some sort of refitting or maintenance, so the fact we refer to “services” is really important.
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, looks as though he wants to ask a question.