Seafarers’ Welfare

John McDonnell Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I genuinely congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) on securing the debate, which she introduced eloquently. I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I am the convenor of the RMT parliamentary group.

I want to start by referring to the loss of life in the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. A few weeks ago, we lost a crew member. The Royal Fleet Auxiliary has civilian crew; they are not Royal Navy, but they work alongside it. During a debate a few weeks ago, we were passed a note saying that one of our RMT members had lost his life overboard. I can now say that his name was James Elliott. On behalf of us all, I want to repeat our condolences to his family. I also pay tribute to the RFA for the essential role it plays alongside our Royal Navy and the work it does in protecting our shores. These are civilian crew. There was some confusion on the day, because the BBC reported that it was a member of the Royal Navy. It is important that we improve communication, because that caused some distress among a number of families who were trying to find out what had happened.

I met some RFA-RMT representatives today, who asked me to raise the fact that in the defence review there is a reference to the Royal Fleet Auxiliary that is causing some confusion about the role it will play and what investment there will be. I ask the Minister to pass on to his colleagues in the Ministry of Defence the message that the RMT would welcome a meeting with the Secretary of State or a Minister as soon as possible to discuss the defence review.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock said, one of the issues is that seafarers’ welfare is directly related to the conditions of their employment, which are governed by the International Labour Organisation’s maritime labour convention. That is the primary legislation that sets out legal standards for seafarers. In this country, the UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency is the competent authority for ensuring that every UK vessel, or vessel entering our ports, complies with that legislation. There are specific legal responsibilities under the convention on welfare standards.

As my hon. Friend said, we have 160,000 seafarers—unfortunately, fewer and fewer are British, but that is the overall number. They work on UK and internationally flagged ships in UK ports. At the moment, there are 120 Maritime and Coastguard Agency staff who undertake surveys and inspections. Last year, they undertook about 2,800 inspections and 3,000 surveys on UK-flagged ships, and 1,500 port state control inspections on international ships. There are 100,000 vessels calling into UK ports every year, and there is a real concern that, with so few staff, the ratio of inspections for the ships is insubstantial. For some time now, there have been calls for an increase in resources for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency.

My hon. Friend raised our concern that, for the last 40 years at least, there has been a tendency for shipowners to flag elsewhere, rather than the UK, with the aim of reducing labour costs. They do that, as my hon. Friend said, by putting pressure on the workforce. The number of ships registered elsewhere is startling. The practice of registering under a flag of convenience has begun to dominate the industry. Ships are registered in places such as Panama, the Marshall Islands, Liberia, Cyprus, the Bahamas and Malta, and that undermines the ability to maintain standards of basic welfare for seafarers. Huge numbers of ships are registered in the Philippines, Indonesia, China, India, Ukraine and Russia. Some of those countries undertake no inspection of their vessels whatsoever. They fail to manage welfare standards, which has resulted in a reduction in those standards and even, as my hon. Friend said, in tragedies, because of the pressure the workforce are under.

Like my hon. Friend, I welcome the fact the Government are seeking to address a range of these issues. The mandatory seafarers’ charter that has been introduced in the Employment Rights Bill is a huge step forward for us, and I congratulate the Government on it. The charter arose, as my hon. Friend said, partly out of the P&O scandal, whereby P&O just sacked its entire workforce. That was a scandal recognised across the House, and it should not have happened. P&O sacked its entire workforce, introduced agency staff on lower wages with no holiday or sick pay, and paid the minimum amount that it could possibly get away with. Exactly as my hon. Friend said, that means that those agency staff are working under intense pressure, which inevitably has consequences for safety.

Safety is one of our main worries, which is why the mandatory seafarers’ charter is so important. It was introduced to protect seafarers in the short-sea ferries sector, regardless of their nationality or the flag of the vessel they work on. It will cover standards of pay, roster patterns and other employment conditions through collectively bargained standards in the industry. It will also set out maximum periods of work at sea and minimum periods of rest, which is absolutely critical. There will be robust requirements to manage seafarer fatigue, which is an issue that my hon. Friend raised so forcefully. It will reinforce training requirements for operators, such as familiarisation with the vessel, to support safety and skills, so that the seafarers have the time to understand and appreciate what is needed on a particular vessel. There will also be strong standards of sick pay, holiday pay and pension rights, which is vital.

This charter is a major breakthrough, and the unions really welcomed it. Progress is being made and at the RMT union executive meeting this morning we discussed that. The RMT welcomes the detailed consultation that will take place in the coming months and the roll-out of the charter itself.

However, I will now raise the issue of discrimination within the sector. I have been involved in this campaign for nearly 30 years, but the issue has gone on for 50 years. It remains legal to practise nationality-based pay discrimination against non-EU nationals working as seafarers on UK-flagged ships. That is a discriminatory practice. It originates in part 9 of the Race Relations Act 1976, which explicitly permits racial discrimination against seafarers recruited overseas to work on UK-flagged ships for lower pay and longer periods than UK nationals.

Way back in 2009, I was involved in the fight against this discrimination. Gordon Brown’s Labour Government initiated the Carter review to make recommendations on ending discriminatory seafarer pay differentials. Susan Carter, who led the review, recommended in 2010 that nationality-based seafarer pay differentials should be prohibited on all UK ships. The proposal was supported by the union, but unfortunately it was rejected by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Government who came into office in 2010.

The estimate emerging from surveys by the union is that tens of thousands of seafarers working today in the UK shipping industry are paid less than UK seafarers, simply because of their nationality and the flag of the ship that they work on. This situation impedes progress to improve seafarer welfare overall, both at the national level and the international level. The UK Government introduced secondary regulations in 2011 to do the bare minimum to avoid legal action by the European Commission over the continued practice of nationality-based pay discrimination among seafarers. I attended the Committee that agreed those regulations. They have been subject to two reviews that have never been concluded, which contravenes the post-implementation review regulations for a review to be carried out every five years.

Another consultation was held just before the 2024 general election, and the current Government are now seeking to reconsult. With one action—one effective piece of regulation—we as a Government could end nationality-based pay discrimination on UK-flagged ships. It would raise welfare standards in shipping and reinforce our country’s reputation as the gold standard in seafarer welfare and maritime safety provision. I urge the Government to act on this swiftly.

My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock mentioned support for charitable organisations and others in supporting seafarer welfare and the potential of a levy. Levies operate very successfully in many other countries. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency and the Merchant Navy Welfare Board have recommitted themselves to joint working on seafarer welfare and met last month to do that, which we welcome. However, without the resources, effective action will be very limited.

We have looked at what has happened elsewhere. Levy systems, including mandatory payments, are used by other maritime nations. They fund seafarer port facilities. We have heard some fantastic examples of those today. In New Zealand, the then Labour Government introduced a mandatory levy to fund shore-side facilities in 2022, which influenced the thinking in Australia as well. In Europe, France has operated a mandatory seafarer welfare levy system since 2016, and there are levy systems in Germany, Spain and Romania. It is critical that we introduce such a system.

One example of the issues that we are increasingly dealing with at the moment is the abandonment of seafarers. They are recruited in one country, reach our country and then abandoned by the ship owners. That is happening more frequently across the globe. Yes, we can legislate for protections as best we can, but we need the wherewithal—the resources going into the charities and agencies that can help those seafarers, who are lost in a foreign country and bereft of support. Overall, a real programme of reform is needed.

Raising the issue of mental health has been one of the strong concerns within the seafaring unions. There has been report after report across the movement about mental health issues and the stress placed upon people, and the increased number of suicides taking place as a result, and it does relate to the person’s employment. If we get the seafarers’ charter operating effectively, it could transform people’s lives and take that pressure off them, as well as save people from harm and save people’s lives.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I thank the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) for securing this important debate, and for setting out why this issue matters.

Three years ago, the country watched in disbelief as P&O Ferries carried out one of the most disgraceful attacks on workers’ rights in recent memory: 800 loyal seafarers, men and women who had given years of dedicated service, were summarily dismissed over video call—no consultation, no notice and no dignity. It was a scandal that shocked the maritime sector. It shocked people across the country and it shocked people in Sussex communities, given that at Newhaven we have our much-treasured ferry service to Dieppe—thankfully not operated by P&O.

From the moment that outrage unfolded, the Liberal Democrats were clear and principled. We demanded urgent answers from the Conservatives’ then Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps; we demanded justice for the workers and families whose lives had been thrown into turmoil; and we demanded a fundamental change to ensure that nothing like that could ever be allowed to happen again. Hard-working seafarers and their families should never suffer because of corporate neglect or corporate greed.

In the months that followed, we pressed the Government to tighten the rules around how ships that are registered to operate in the UK treat their workers. We supported the Seafarers Wages Act 2023 as a necessary first step. It requires ships that make frequent calls at UK ports to pay at least the UK national minimum wage for time spent in our waters, but we also made it clear that the Act did not go far enough.

We have championed the calls of maritime unions and the UK Chamber of Shipping for stronger safeguards: measures to stop companies engaging in port-hopping to dodge basic obligations; collectively agreed standards on roster patterns, pensions, crewing levels and training; and tougher enforcement so that operators cannot simply ignore the law with impunity. After all, laws mean very little if bad employers know that they can bend or dodge them entirely, and we now know exactly how determined some operators have been to do just that.

In 2024, it was revealed that P&O’s replacement agency workers were being paid just £4.87 an hour—a shocking, exploitative wage that made a mockery of the protections that Parliament had tried to strengthen. Later, when the then Transport Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sheffield Heeley (Louise Haigh), rightly described P&O Ferries as a “rogue operator”, the Prime Minister dismissed her concerns to protect a £1 billion investment by P&O Ferries’ Dubai-based parent company. Once again, workers’ rights were treated as secondary.

Of course, public outrage did have consequences. In August 2025, Peter Hebblethwaite, the chief executive officer, who admitted to breaking consultation law, finally resigned. But accountability for one individual is not enough; we need systemic change. No worker, whether on land or at sea, should be discarded at the convenience of their employer.

That brings me to the Employment Rights Bill, and in particular the provisions on fire and rehire. The Liberal Democrats welcome the parts of the Bill that strengthen protections for workers and curb the disgraceful practice of firing staff, only to rehire them on worse terms. Under the Bill’s provisions, dismissals will be deemed automatically unfair unless an employer can provide clear evidence of financial difficulty and show that changes were truly unavoidable.

The Bill represents progress and it moves us in the right direction, but large parts of it are unfinished and critical details have been left to secondary legislation or promised consultations, including a long-awaited seafarers’ charter. That does not give workers or responsible employers the stability and certainty that they deserve. People whose livelihoods depend on those reforms should not have to cross their fingers and hope that the details are sorted out later.

Unions are rightly concerned about carve-outs that may allow companies on the verge of collapse to bypass protections. We accept that businesses face genuine existential threats, and sometimes they need flexibility, but we must ensure that exceptions are not exploited by those who simply want to trim costs at the expense of their staff. Workers must not be treated as disposable.

As the Bill gives Ministers new powers to implement international maritime conventions and a seafarers’ charter through secondary legislation, we must insist on ambitious and enforceable standards, including on maximum periods of work at sea and minimum periods of rest, as well as measures to manage fatigue, strong training requirements and protections that cover every seafarer who works in our waters. We need not just vague promises but real rules with real enforcement and consequences for those who break them.

[John McDonnell]

I welcome the hon. Lady’s engagement on this matter and the list of issues. Those issues will be subject to consultation, which will be part of the negotiation. I want to reassure her that the RMT strategy is usually not just crossing its fingers.

[Alison Bennett]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that reassurance.

An issue too often overlooked while talking about seafarers is their mental health, as the right hon. Gentleman drew to our attention in his contribution. We know that life at sea can be tough, isolating, demanding and physically and psychologically draining: long stretches away from family, stress, exhaustion and the unique pressure of maritime work all take a heavy toll. Seafarers rely on the NHS for mental health support, just like anyone else, but our NHS is in crisis after years of Conservative neglect. Mental health waiting lists have spiralled, and thousands of people are waiting months, and sometimes years, for the care they urgently need. That includes the people who keep our essential maritime supply chain moving.

Liberal Democrats believe that mental health must be treated with the same seriousness and urgency as physical health. That is why we are campaigning for regular mental health check-ups at key life points, just like blood pressure or eyesight checks. We are also calling for prescriptions for people with chronic mental health conditions to be free on the NHS, because we believe that no one should have to choose between treatment and financial strain. We will also create a statutory, independent mental health commissioner to advocate for patients and their families and carers. Those reforms matter for everyone, but are especially vital for communities such as seafarers, who often face some of the toughest working conditions.

The P&O Ferries scandal was a turning point. It exposed deep flaws in our system—in employment law, in enforcement, and in the way that successive Governments have allowed bad employers to exploit loopholes at the expense of ordinary workers. It also presented us with a choice: to accept this broken system or to build something better. The Liberal Democrats would choose to build something better. We choose fair pay, safe working conditions and dignity at work. We choose an NHS that supports people’s mental health properly, not one that is forced to ration treatment. We choose an economy where responsibility, fairness and respect guide the way businesses operate. Britain can be better than P&O Ferries’ behaviour—and Britain must be better. I look forward to hearing from the Minister on how the Government aim to chart a course towards that destination.

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. As an island nation, Britain has always been reliant on our sailors, as other Members have said. For centuries, we have depended on them to protect our nation, to transport goods around the world and to deliver the products of our national endeavours across the seas to other countries.

The continued significance of maritime trade to our economy cannot be overstated. Of all international freight traded with the United Kingdom, around 85% by weight and 55% by value is moved by sea. Our seafarers also play a vital role in connecting communities across the United Kingdom, whether that is in our Scottish islands or the Isle of Wight, where my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight East (Joe Robertson) has introduced proposals around fares on ferries, demonstrating that those services remain essential to our national fabric.

Even for those of us representing constituencies that could not be further away from the sea—Mid Buckinghamshire proudly holds the title of the second-most landlocked constituency in the country—the importance of the maritime sector to the UK’s past, present and future prosperity is abundantly clear. I therefore thank the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) for securing this debate. It is right that we recognise the work of the estimated 23,700 UK seafarers active at sea, according to data from 2024, whose skill and dedication power this indispensable industry.

Understandably, the debate has referenced the actions of P&O Ferries in 2022. For all who observed that situation, the conclusion was unmistakeable: P&O’s decision was wrong. That is why the then Secretary of State for Transport, Grant Shapps, condemned it in the strongest possible terms. Indeed, during my time on the Transport Committee in the last Parliament, we heard very detailed evidence—often difficult to listen to—about the scandalous and wholly inappropriate behaviour of P&O. As the Minister will know from his briefings, the last Government acted swiftly in response. It is worth briefly reflecting on those steps, as they represented meaningful progress in protecting seafarers’ rights and, therefore, as the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) said, their welfare.

First, the Seafarers Wages Act 2023 ensures that those working on ships that provide a regular international service from the United Kingdom are paid at least the equivalent of the national minimum wage while operating in UK waters. This reduces the incentive for operators to employ overseas labour on worse terms and conditions—although I heard the arguments put forward by the right hon. Gentleman and the discrimination that he highlighted, which is still a wrong to be righted.

[John McDonnell]

I was elated at first to attend a Statutory Instrument Committee dealing with these matters, until I discovered that the Government had redefined the nature of British waters. Restricting the measure to UK waters was even less effective.

[Greg Smith]

The point of my comments on the actions of the previous Government is not to say that they were wholly conclusive and the end of the matter. But I believe the steps that were taken by the previous Government did demonstrate a step forward, as I think the right hon. Gentleman acknowledged in the debate—perhaps not the entire length of step that he would have preferred.

[John McDonnell]

It was like pulling teeth.

[Greg Smith]

I heard the reference that the right hon. Gentleman just made.

Secondly, the last Government introduced a statutory code of practice on fire and rehire that was intended to ensure that employees are properly consulted and treated fairly. Importantly, it included powers for employment tribunals to increase compensation by 25% where an employer unreasonably fails to comply. Thirdly, the start of the seafarers’ charter was launched, with operators including Brittany Ferries, Condor Ferries, DFDS, Stena Line and, at the time, even P&O was committing to work towards meeting the requirements of that charter. The charter placed seafarers at its heart, from ensuring they are paid equivalent to the national minimum wage throughout their engagement, to establishing two weeks on, two weeks off tour of duty baselines on high-intensity routes, and providing appropriate training and development opportunities.

Crucially, the charter also committed to providing social security benefits, such as sickness benefits, family benefits and medical care, and adopting roster patterns that properly account for fatigue, mental health and safety. That demonstrated a clear commitment to ensuring that seafarers’ welfare is not an afterthought but a priority. The framework further made it clear that, where provisions differed from those mandated in the maritime labour convention 2006 or any other standard, the higher standard would apply. I acknowledge that progress. Many Members rightly believe that more remains to be done. It is therefore appropriate to turn to the measures set out in the Employment Rights Bill that returns to the House of Commons next Monday.

Some hon. Members will know that I had the good fortune to sit through the 21 Committee sittings on that Bill as a shadow Business and Trade Minister, speaking for the Opposition on its many and varied proposals. During that process, we saw the ever-expanding scope of Government intervention illustrated vividly, with the Bill growing from an initial 149 pages when first introduced to 320 pages the last time it left the House of Lords.

Some Members may ask why that matters. As I said on Report, although the Bill contains many good and well-intentioned measures, the Government have struggled to get the balance right between the rights of employees and the needs of the employers who create the jobs in the first place. When it came to provisions relating specifically to seafarers, such as changing collective redundancy notification requirements for ship crews, the Opposition did not oppose them. Indeed, I explicitly recognised their relevance in preventing the sort of unacceptable conduct we have seen in the past. However, we also flagged concerns. For example, the Bill grants the Secretary of State broad powers to detain a ship without clearly defining how long the detention could last. That is a perfect illustration of the need for balance. We must uphold the highest standards of seafarer protection while avoiding measures that may deter responsible businesses from operating in the United Kingdom.

That links to a broader point recently emphasised by my party. One of the most important ways to protect workers’ rights is to ensure that people remain in work. We can and should tackle fire-and-rehire practices, but if we overburden the economy with excessive taxation and growth-suppressing regulation, the outcome will be the worst of all worlds—fewer jobs and weaker protections.

With UK unemployment having risen by 0.9 percentage points since the election and reached an estimated 5% by September 2025, we cannot ignore the reality that the welfare of workers, including seafarers, depends on the Government restoring economic stability. We owe it to seafarers to create an economy in which their livelihoods are secure and not vulnerable to the Chancellor’s mismanagement. Ultimately, I welcome all sensible and proportionate measures that prevent scandalous behaviour and advance the welfare of seafarers, because our maritime workers deserve nothing less.