HC Deb 05 August 1975 vol 897 cc370-80

Question again proposed, That the amendment be made.

Mr. Madel

We do not agree with the Government, and certainly we do not agree with what the Minister said about small employers. It is not right to make such generalisations. However, this was a smallish point of difference between us. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. John Prescott (Kingston upon Hull, East)

I beg to move Amendment No. 179, in page 73, line 41, at end insert '(10) (a) The Secretary of State shall in consultation with employers and independent trade unions representing employees publish a scheme for the payment of redundancy benefit to those seafarers including fishermen who are employed voyage by voyage or trip by trip or under any maritime or fishing articles of agreement. (b) Such a scheme shall be subject to negative procedure under the Statutory Instruments Act 1946'. The amendment, designed by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, Central (Mr. McNamara), who unfortunately cannot be here tonight, deals with a particular section of workers who are probably the most disadvantaged in this country. The clause is limited to those areas of redundancy where there are over 100 people involved or over 10 involved. It is apparent from the nature of the limitations that exclusions, perhaps not by intention but by effect, take place.

Fishermen, similarly to seamen, serve on vessels where the crewing can be up to 30, but it can be as low as four or five on small types of fishing vessels. They are, therefore, outside the scope of the clause because not all members of a vessel are normally made redundant at the same time.

We come up against another conditioning factor which limits the provision of benefits to this type of worker in that they serve under articles. That is a somewhat technical term, but it has an important conditioning effect not only as regards redundancies and benefits under the redundancy legislation but as regards many other factors including the rights guaranteed to workers.

The articles of agreement which a fisherman or seaman signs with the shipowner or captain set out conditions as terms of employment. They normally apply for the duration of a voyage, and a voyage for a fishing vessel can be anything from 14 days up to three months for a large freezer-type vessel. This means that the articles of agreement or conditions of employment apply only for the duration of the voyage. By definition they would last for 14 days up to three months. That in itself would put this category of workers outside the terms of the clause and outside the terms of the redundancy legislation, bearing in mind the requirement of two years' continuous employment.

Fishermen may well be employed in the industry for all their working lives or for varying periods, but they will not be entitled to the provisions under the clause as they have moved from ship to ship or from company to company. The rights and benefits which usually continue under present legislation, and which guarantee certain terms and conditions and employment rights, do not apply in this instance.

There are over 23,000 fishermen in this country. We have the third largest body of fishermen in the EEC. However, the fleet has declined from approximately 375 trawlers in 1973 to an estimated 290 in 1975. That decline has thrown hundreds of fishermen out of work. Many of those men have given a considerable time to the industry, and in a shore capacity they could have normally expected to receive redundancy payments as a conditioning factor to help them in these particularly difficult times.

As I have pointed out, there are difficulties. By the very definition of the terms conditioning redundancy legislation benefit is denied to fishermen and seamen to a considerable extent. It is clear that the legislation allows for exclusion. Merchant seamen, dockers and share fishermen—namely, the fishermen who own their own boats and share the money from their cargoes—are exempt. The exclusions allow for the development of other schemes. We hope that the Government will consider publishing a scheme which will guarantee benefits to fishermen.

The amendment is designed to deal with this problem. The original benefits applied to fishermen who were employed voyage by voyage, or trip by trip. That is the key to the amendment. In other words, we need a scheme that takes account of the special conditions of employment undergone by fishermen which will guarantee their rights.

The exclusions in respect of the merchant shipping industry allow contributions paid by employers to be paid back to the employers' fund—in other words, to the State—and for that money to be used to fund the medical severance scheme or some form of redundancy scheme so that some money can be made available to meet the special conditions in the industry. Last year a sum of £330,000 was returned to the shipping industry in respect of redundancy contributions and that money was used to facilitate the medical severance scheme.

At present when the fishing industry is begging for more money—the industry has had over £6 million in the last six months and has now been given £2¼ million for a further six-month period—many of my constituents who are now unemployed find it strange that the Labour Government should hand out money to the fishing industry, while at the same time not guaranteeing workers in the same industry conditions of employment and rights accorded to other workers on shore. This is a matter of concern to my constituents. The provision calls upon the Department to publish a scheme to meet special conditions to guarantee fishermen the same rights as are enjoyed by other workers when they are made redundant. In the fishing industry the figures throw up a higher-than-average rate of accidental death, nervous disease and other stresses. Therefore, they have greater need to be accorded the same rights as are enjoyed by other workers.

Why is it that the Government seek to exclude this small class of workers from the provisions? We hope that the Department will look seriously at this matter and will consider establishing a charter of rights for fishermen so as to give them the same rights, privileges and benefits as are given to shore workers. In this way we seek to establish guaranteed conditions of work for fishermen.

I believe that we should seek to end the casual nature of an industry in which the employers pay off the fishermen at the end of the voyage, throw them on the mercy of the dole, and then hope for those workers to return when the ships are ready to voyage once again. The employers are paid money to subsidise trawlers, but nothing is done to guarantee workers' minimum conditions of work in an industry where on occasions the conditions are barbaric

The Government later will need to consider legislation involving subsidies and the requirements of EEC legislation about social conditions. The Government should seek to use subsidies, as the EEC requires, to retrain workers who are affected by the conditions in their industry.

At present the Government are supplying the money without seeking to impose any requirements. This is the responsibility of the Department. I call on the Department to have an urgent inquiry into the conditions of fishermen and to take steps to give them rights already accepted as the normal for shore workers. This is vital. It has been denied them for far too long, and it is about time that it was done.

Mr. James Johnson (Kingston upon Hull, West)

As the House knows, fishermen work in a most unusual, if not a unique, situation. Hon. Members representing fishing constituencies such as Hull, Fleetwood and Lowestoft have constituents who sail to the Arctic and return with fingers missing and all sorts of other injuries as a result of which they are unable to carry on their work and who, at the end of their days, after perhaps 30 or 40 years in the Arctic, get not a stiver. At the same time, probably living next door to them, there are men working on the docks who get redundancy pay of £4,000 or £5,000. Our fishermen are in a parlous position.

Somehow, the fishing industry is subsidised by unemployment benefit. We have heard about the millions of pounds which the owners have made in past years and which they have put into land speculation. Those owners today have just received £6 million or £7 million in subsidy. But the top and bottom of it all is that few fishermen whom I know have had two years' continuous employment. If they are in receipt of social benefit once or twice in the 24 months, they do not qualify for redundancy pay. Here we have a position where the owner pays for the stamp. But it must be said that not a man jack has not had a week or two off in the past two years.

The situation must be changed and changed, of course, by this House. But we have to find out how it can be changed. I have never understood why the owners are not prepared to help. As I understand it, they will pay possibly 10 per cent. of redundancy pay. The Government out of social security money find 90 per cent. of the final payment to these men. As we all know, the weekly pay fluctuates. But let us say that there are 1,000 men who will leave the fleet in the next year or two, which is not impossible in view of the difficulties facing them. If they each get £4,000, the owners will be paying only 10 per cent. of £4 million, as I understand it. I find it difficult to know why in an industry like this which is racked and torn by bad labour relations we cannot have some scheme of this nature and get these men what they deserve.

If we do that—and I think that we must as quickly as possible—it will mean that the fishermen will be on a national register. That in turn will mean that all those engaged in deep sea fishing will find themselves in the position of having to do as they are told. They will go to sea—as a worker on shore goes to work. At sea, they work in what are floating factories, so they should at least qualify for the benefits and the conditions applying on shore.

I do not know the answer to this. Fishermen like their liberty. They can be on a voyage of perhaps 21 days or they can be on a voyage of seven weeks. They can pick and choose.

It is interesting to find that certain firms have a work force which is with them month after month and year after year. As Fleck said in 1961 and as the Commission also said in 1969 about the conditions of fishermen, there is no doubt that the good men gravitate and stay closely locked to a good owner. But this makes conditions worse for those men who are sometimes at sea and sometimes not and are working for bad owners.

10.15 p.m.

We must have a strict register, which implies some code of discipline. We must carry the workers with us. I believe in participation. These men should be organised in their union, but, more important, we should know how they feel about a register. The only answer is a ballot such as the NUM uses. That would show, I believe, that the men wanted this change.

I believe that the TGWU, which organises the deckhands, will be vindicated over decasualisation and severance pay, and in its claim that men who work on floating factories should have the same conditions as those in factories on land.

The owners and others ask us whether the men are interested in this. Of course they are. The House should show its faith in men who do the toughest job. These are men who go to the Arctic in conditions 40 degrees below when one has to chip ice off the winch with an axe. One thinks of the men in the "Gaul" who went down in such conditions and were never seen again. These men above all are worthy of legislation which benefits them.

Mr. Loyden

The Government deserve one cheer at least for having extended some part of these provisions to all seamen, whether fishermen or others. I congratulate them on that step in the right direction. For the first time, they have accepted that seamen should have the same rights as other workers. They have not only given them the protection of the Bill but have ensured, I believe, rapid movement towards the normalisation of seamen's conditions.

The argument for keeping the conditions of seamen deplorable has always been the difficulties and peculiarities of the industry. The decision taken today, although it has not achieved all that we wanted, has shown that the Government's sympathy is in the right place. I hope that, as he considers the points made, the Minister will remember that these people are the same as other workers and should have the full protection of the Bill.

Mr. John Fraser

The Redundancy Payments Act applies to a fisherman employed under a contract of service, but such contracts may be of relatively short duration, and perhaps with different employers, and that is the reason why it is difficult for the fisherman to build up the necessary 104 weeks' continuous service to qualify him for a redundancy payment.

This kind of situation has been recognised before. It was recognised in the 1965 Act. Section 11 of that Act empowers the Secretary of State to make an order exempting from Section 1 of the Act employees covered by a suitable agreement made between employers and unions. The effect of such an exemption order is that the employers continue to contribute to the redundancy fund and can claim rebate, when a redundancy payment is made under the scheme, on the basis of continuous service with the group of employers covered by their agreement.

We understand from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Department of Trade, both of which have interests in the matter of fishermen, that the Transport and General Workers' Union, which has 75 per cent. membership on deep sea trawlers, with a smaller percentage on smaller vessels, have in mind a decasualisation scheme similar to that in force under the Dock Workers (Regulation of Employment) Act 1946. That is a similar scheme to that for registered dock workers.

But the fishermen themselves are little enamoured with the implication of being directed from one berth to another. It is of the essence in any kind of scheme that there is as part of that scheme a restriction on the choice of somebody when he leaves one boat and is about to go on another. A group of Lowestoft employers and fishermen tried a scheme of full-time contracts but this did not succeed because of the restriction of choice on both sides. The scheme would involve that kind of arrangement for deemed continuous employment when the fishermen changed from one employer to another.

I am sorry that I cannot accept the amendment as it stands. I urge employers and unions to get together with a view to negotiating a workable and mutually acceptable scheme, perhaps port by port. I understand that in Hull, for instance, bobbers are employed ashore by the local trawler owners association to unload the fish from the trawlers and thereby get the benefit of continuity of service and payments. Provided that any agreement allowed for reference to industrial tribunals of disputes about redundancy payment entitlement, the Secretary of State could then consider a Section 11 exemption order. It would be possible to devise a scheme which had been incorporated in an order which could be laid under the Redundancy Payments Act 1965. I do not think this goes as far as my hon. Friends have been asking—

Mr. James Johnson

Is the Minister speaking in the context of the last dispute or the dispute that we are in the middle of, in which bobbers have been discharged from St. Andrew's Dock? Is that the context in which he is speaking?

Mr, Fraser

I am not speaking in the context of a dispute. I am giving one example of an arrangement which was sought to be reached for providing continuity of employment so that people employed at sea were given some continuity of employment by having a shore job. I am not in a position to go into the merits of any dispute.

I recognise the points put forward by my hon. Friends. It would be rash of me if I were to say that my right hon. Friend would be willing to set up an inquiry. It would not be possible, on the information and the degree of co-operation which exists at the moment, to publish a scheme to meet the wishes of my hon. Friends.

However, my hon. Friends have put forward a matter which is worth while exploring further. There are considerable difficulties. I wonder whether I may give an invitation to my hon. Friends to come and discuss this matter in greater detail. It is not a simple matter. It involves the co-operation of employers, trade unions and the men themselves, but it is a matter which is worth exploring further. If my hon. Friend would be willing to withdraw the amendment, we could perhaps arrange to discuss the matter at greater length and see whether some kind of scheme which would meet his wishes could be put forward.

Mr. Prior

I thought this amendment was an ingenious method of getting a discussion on the decasualisation of fishermen's work. A new clause was put down, but not called, and I congratulate the hon. Members for various Hull constituencies on getting their amendment into order. I join with them in paying tribute to fishermen. I have never been out as far as the Arctic, but I once spent 14 days on a Lowestoft trawler and I was sick for 10 of the 14 days.

I have never underestimated the life led by fishermen at sea. I know that fishermen are an extremely proud and independent group of people. When a full-time contract scheme between employers and fishermen was tried in Lowestoft, it broke down because it restricted the fishermen, even more than the owners, especially in not being able to move from ship to ship, skipper to skipper and owner to owner. It is not easy to devise a suitable scheme.

The industry needs a thorough investigation and the opportunity ought to be taken then to look at these problems sympathetically. The situation is far from satisfactory and this is recognised by employers as well as by employees. The difficulty has always been in building up the number of weeks' service to qualify for redundancy pay. I think something could be done under the exemptions, about which I know very little, but which have been mentioned tonight. They could be pursued further.

I would certainly support any measures which enabled fishermen to bring their standard of living and the protection they are afforded at work more into line with dockers for example. There is something rather remiss about a society that enables dockers to have enormous handshakes if they leave their industry while such people as fishermen are denied them. This produces bad blood between the fishing industry and the docks industry. If anything can be done to help, it would meet with the approval of this side of the House.

As the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) said, the fishing industry has been reduced from 375 trawlers to 290 in the past two years and is going through a very difficult time. Since the new clause was put down, I have consulted some people in the industry and they have a good deal of sympathy with the spirit behind it, but they feel that the cash is not there to do anything about it—let alone the other difficulties that have been mentioned in the debate. I hope that the Government will carry out further investigations and not confine them to their own side of the House. The all-party Fisheries Committee might have a view that could be useful and so, too, might the British Trawler Federation and the Transport and General Workers' Union. We support the Government's view but have a good deal of sympathy with the case put forward by those who have spoken in favour of the amendment.

10.30 p.m.

Mr. Prescott

I have listened carefully to what has been said. I want to disabuse the Minister of the idea that the exemption under Clause 107(11) is a possibility for this industry because the shipping industry is under this exemption and it pays out very little in redundancy payment, primarily because of the nature of the employment contract in the articles.

The more difficult part of the problem is that the employer would still be asked to find 50 per cent. of redundancy pay at a time when the industry is begging for more and more money and says that it cannot afford anything. It is hardly likely to agree to a scheme that will cost a lot of money in redundancy payments.

Mention was made of an investigation being carried out into the industry. I should like to point out that the grants given and reviewed in September would also be tied to whatever agreement is reached in the EEC, and there is a condition that they should be tied to social conditions. Therefore, the Department will have to examine social conditions. I hope it does.

The industry, particularly the fishermen, are fed up with all the tributes to their bravery and all the sympathy given when crews are lost or when ships go down, no matter how well-intentioned they may be. It still means that they do not get even the rights of other workers. I give notice to the House that we would co-operate with hon. Members who represent fishing constituencies and with trade unions who are giving thought to this problem. We wish to co-operate. However, the time is short, and so is the fuse. This body of workers has not had the rights that should be given to them.

In view of what has been said, we are prepared at this stage to withdraw the amendment, but we sincerely hope that we shall get some action in the next few months on these matters. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

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