Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what progress has she made on the implementation of Make Work Pay policies for merchant seafarers regularly working from UK ports; and when he last had discussions with the Secretary of State for (a) Business, Innovation, Science and Trade and (b) Energy Security and Net Zero on these policies.

The Department for Transport concluded its consultation on regulations to strengthen seafarer protections on UK-France and UK-Channel Island services, using new powers introduced by the Employment Rights Act 2025, on 17 July 2026. We will be responding to the consultation in the coming weeks.

We have already made changes to collective redundancy rules, ensuring that employers of seafarers working on vessels calling at a UK port at least 120 times a year must notify the UK government of collective redundancies, even if the vessel is registered outside the UK.

Department for Transport officials are in regular contact with the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade about the application of employment rights, including those included in the Make Work Pay programme, to seafarers, and with the Department of Energy, Security and Net Zero on the application of employment rights to seafarers working in the offshore energy sector.