My Lords, I am very grateful for all contributions on this first group. I appreciate the support from Members on my own side; it is always good for the Minister to know that there are a range of views and that people are thinking about the Bill and taking it seriously—it is a very serious Bill.
The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, mentioned the welfare of seafarers. He is absolutely right and there are mechanisms, which the UK is deeply embedded in and has been for a very long time, which work internationally, as many noble Lords will know, to try to improve the conditions and pay of seafarers. However, that is not under discussion today. As pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, this is an important part of the nine-point plan that Ministers set out earlier in the year, but the Bill is narrow in scope and effect. That is for many reasons but a key one is that we have to be mindful of the extent to which we are legislating; we have to be mindful that we do not overreach, because that might have some very serious unintended consequences that we would later regret. That is why, throughout the drafting of the Bill, we have had at the front of our minds not only international law but our international obligations; that is critical. Although I accept that there are many things that noble Lords would very much like to do for seafarers—and that, probably, on the face of it, I would like to do too —the reality is that, as a Government, we have to be sensible and potentially a bit boring. We must stay in our lane and make sure that we do not overreach, because the consequences would be very significant.
There are two amendments in this group. The first brings back the old chestnut of “the harbour” versus “a harbour”. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for enabling that discussion once more. I cannot go much further than I went in Committee; I just state that it is absolutely important that unless we say “the harbour”, we cannot define what a service is. A service is from one point—the point—to another point. It is of great regret that the word “a” crept into the letter, but noble Lords can imagine that that was the overarching
ambition: from a point overseas to a point in the UK, but “the harbour” within a place overseas and a place in the UK. Because we have defined it that way, from “the harbour” to “the harbour”, we capture the high-frequency services that, let us recall, can be serviced by any vessel—you can put another vessel in when one is off being maintained or whatever—but it is always between two specified harbours.
The second part of that definition—the harbour to the harbour—that is very important is
“120 occasions in the year”.
That, essentially, defines a service that has close ties. The second point about this is that unless you define it as “the harbour” to “the harbour”, it would be incredibly difficult to enforce the Bill, because the Bill relies on one harbour authority being responsible for monitoring and enforcement. Individual harbours may be able to anticipate that a particular service will call in its harbour 120 times a year, perhaps because that service has been doing so for years, if not decades. That harbour authority may not be able to anticipate whether a particular operator has services to other ports, so how would the enforcement and monitoring work in those circumstances?
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, brought up an example about, I think, a former Transport Secretary and ships that could be brought in to operate services, but he reinforced the point I am trying to make: it is not about the ships or the specific seafarers on a particular service; it is the service itself that we must make sure falls within the Bill’s scope.
I am content that we have defined the scope well. I am a little disappointed that I have not given sufficient explanation such that the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, is content, but I feel that we are there and have clarified exactly what would happen. In response to concerns raised about services suddenly deciding to go to another port so that they do not have to pay seafarers a fair wage, as I said in Committee, I do not think that would be commercially viable. I do not think operators would play switcheroo with UK ports because, frankly, their customers would not put up with it. I do not think that point works.
I hope the noble Lord will withdraw the amendment to change “the harbour” to “a harbour”. It would make the entire Bill not worth the paper it is written on, and it would not function in the way that I know the noble Lord wants it to function.
I turn now to Amendment 2, which seeks to decrease the threshold frequency from 120 times a year to 52. The figure of 120 was arrived at following very thorough and extensive consultation and bilateral discussions with industry and other stakeholders. We have looked incredibly carefully at the patterns of services, noted by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and at maritime traffic data by type to reach the figure in the Bill. The scope of the Bill captures services calling 120 times a year on purpose. It is a very specific number that balances the need to maintain close ties with wanting to do the very best we can for seafarers.
The rationale is clear. It covers the vast majority of passenger ferries, including ro-pax, non-passenger ferries and ro-ro services calling at the UK. Critically, it focuses the Bill on short sea services, which justifies
the connection to the UK and therefore the UK-equivalent level protection of pay. We do not want to bring into scope some of the high-frequency deep sea container services. That would not be our intention at all and, as my noble friend Lord Forsyth mentioned, would completely change the scope of the Bill and would go against the Government’s intention.
For the UK to impose pay requirements for seafarers on foreign-flagged ships that call at its ports only once week would risk being seen as an overreach by international partners. It would weaken the justification for the UK taking legislative action. As my noble friend Lord Forsyth said, we must tread with care. I appreciate that the noble Lord’s intention is to protect as many seafarers as possible, but the Government can justifiably legislate only for those with close ties to the UK. To seek to do more could risk making the Bill inoperable and could damage the UK’s reputation internationally.