NATIONAL INSURANCE (MARINERS) (Hansard, 14 December 1960)

§ The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (Miss Patricia Hornsby-Smith)
I beg to move, That the National Insurance (Mariners) Amendment Regulations, 1960, a draft of which was laid before this House on 30th November, be approved. The House will be aware that individual arrangements exist in relation to the payment of seamen. Generally speaking, their wages are assessed and paid at the end of the voyage, whether it be two weeks or two years. These Regulations deal with two quite separate subjects—first, the payment of flat-rate contributions by shipowners and seamen for paid leave at the end of a voyage; and second, the payment of graduated contributions by shipowners and seamen.
The justification for making Regulations about the first subject is that seamen generally take their holidays at the end of their employment and not in the course of it. The Regulations will ensure that seamen have a complete record of Class 1 flat-rate contributions covering weeks of paid leave as well as weeks of employment.
The justification for making Regulations about the second subject is that, as I said, seamen are generally paid by the voyage and not by the week or by the month; and that there are other special features of their employment which require special treatment in connection with the payment of graduated contributions. It is true that a seaman's wage is generally expressed as so much a month, but he is rarely paid by the month. He is generally paid by the voyage. He may receive advances of wages during the voyage, but there is no general settlement until the end of the voyage. For this reason, the Regulations treat the voyage as the pay period for seamen who are paid in that way. Ships' masters will have tables which will show what graduated contributions the seamen should pay for any given wage for any given number of weeks from one to one hundred.
These new Regulations have been fully discussed with the shipping industry and have the full support of both sides of the industry in view of the special circumstances 558 relating to the payment of seamen. When the Regulations were before the National Insurance Advisory Committee, there was only one representation received. That was from the London County Council, which urged that the new liability to pay flat rate contributions for paid leave should not apply to its sludge vessels. The Advisory Committee recommended that it should not apply, and the Minister has accepted that. The Regulations are drafted accordingly.

§ Mr. Douglas Houghton (Sowerby)
If these draft Regulations are not explained in simpler language, the mariners will be all at sea about how they stand under the graduated pension scheme. I should be inclined to suggest that, if the Regulations go out as they are, our sailors will have something to occupy their time in the long watches of the night. But, since both sides of the industry have agreed to the Regulations, I hope that those concerned will feel that it rests upon them to a very large extent to explain to the men affected just how the arrangements will work.
I suppose that I was not on the London County Council long enough to realise that one could be a mariner under the L.C.C. but, apparently, only on a sludge vessel. I notice that the right hon. Lady said that the only representations which the National Insurance Advisory Committee had came from the London County Council, which said that its sailors were not as other sailors are: they are paid on conditions very similar to those found among people employed on land, and so the Minister has accepted the suggestion that, in defining what is a mariner, we shall exclude ships or vessels used wholly or mainly for the disposal of sludge.

§ Miss Hornsby-Smith
The hon. Gentleman may like to know that when we received the recommendations we consulted the Transport and General Workers' Union before we excluded the sludge vessels, so what we have done has the agreement of the London County Council as employers and of the appropriate trade union.

§ Mr. Houghton
That only goes to show how carefully everything is tied up before the question comes to the House, at least in matters of this kind.
559 These Regulations deal with a special type of employment, and, clearly, they have to be looked at in relation to the peculiarities of seafaring work, in just the same way as there have to be special arrangements about P.A.Y.E. deductions for people similarly employed. We must bear in mind in this connection that this close tie between the P.A.Y.E. procedure for Income Tax purposes and the deduction of graduated contributions means that there must be some harmony in administration between the two; otherwise we shall be led into difficulty.
I have no further observations to make. More clearly in this case, perhaps, than in the case of the Regulations we have just passed, having regard to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison), these Regulations implement the intention of the Act of last year and adjust the deduction arrangements to the special conditions.