NO DEAL? WE’RE SEABORNE FREIGHT – DON’T WORRY!

Yes, we’re all tired of Brexit – the squabbling and incompetence of self-serving politicians. Having said that, it appears others may do quite well out of it notably a ferry company called Seaborne Freight which is now in the spotlight due to the government handing it £14m to ensure the flow of essential supplies post – 29 March – the cargo to be landed in Ramsgate.

Who are Seaborne Freight? Well, the Guardian reports them as the company without ships: indeed in their 30th December editorial it also states that a previous venture involved shipping live cattle from Shoreham in the 1980’s which resulted in a large police presence with the death of one protester. (1)

TheTimes, hardly a bastion of liberalism, reports that ‘Seaborne Ferry boss left with tax debt’ (2), whilst the Financial Times adds that HMRC were (or still are) ‘owed £580,000 in relation to that company’s use of employee benefit trusts, which the tax authority considers are schemes used to lower tax and NI bills. Also reported is ‘Seaborne have no ships.’ (3)

Whilst the average Joe may not want to purchase a used car from any of these guys, government vetting of Seaborne seems absent as they are now under scrutiny for being shipless, so to speak.

“For us the harder the Brexit, the better. If Dover and the Channel Tunnel are encumbered our spaces will go quite quickly.’(Glenn Dudley, Seaborne Chief Operating Officer, speaking to Reuters in December) (4)

Such a cynical comment is probably usual in business but this point I would cut Seaborne some slack – as much as the whole deal reeks of desperation.. After all, ferries and other merchant vessels were commissioned in time for the Falklands war and as an adjunct it is rumoured that Seaborne’s ferries are being secured from southern Italy, a sailing time of days. Having stated this, silence has been deafening over Seaborne since the news broke although company information can easily be found at Companies House (UK) website: Seaborne Freight (UK) beta.companieshouse.gov.uk

The Secretary of Transport, Rt Hon Chris Grayling, was quick to respond to criticism of the contract in stating he has ‘no apologies for supporting British business’ (5)  even though, according to the Guardian, two directors are believed to reside in France, furthermore a previous company operated from the British Virgin Islands (5).

I had some eagerness to find out more about this contract and was intrigued by a Parliamentary debate a few days later. Who recommended the deal? Step forward the law firm Slaughter and May, who together with the accountancy firm Deloitte as ‘independent advisers’ were revealed in the House as consultants ( 6); it seems there’s no difference whether it be the NHS, the rail network, HS2, or in this case, a plan to alleviate the logistics of a no-deal Brexit, this sameness involves large sums of taxpayers money to consultancies who just tell the government what they want to hear. 

Possibly this is why some MP’s are keen to follow other interests outside Parliament in the light of this. Some have directorships and others are paid for advisory roles, consultancies and television appearances – a total earnings figure of £7.4m by MP’s outside interests was declared in 2011 (6) – perhaps appearing on ‘I’m a Celebrity…….get me out of here!’  doesn’t take up much parliamentary time, after all.

But this is an aside. What is relevant is that at no point did Mr Grayling mention who is going to crew the vessels. Neither did Seaborne – all we know so far is that Ramsgate harbour – the intended  destination from France – is currently being dredged by a Dutch company with a Filipino crew. A brilliant start for a country which voted to leave by a very narrow margin and something Mr Grayling might ironically reflect upon as he quoted Europe’s ‘mad EU rules’ in 2013. (7)

He might also reflect upon the £100m awarded to DFDS and Brittany Ferries to take on extra crossings after a no-deal. DFDS, by the way, is a Danish company employing some Brits whilst Brittany Ferries flies the Tricolour with exclusively French crews. 

The Daily Express at a similar time quoted that ‘Ministers plan to ‘Double the size of the Merchant Navy after Brexit’ (8) but, again, there were no references to just who was going to crew this new fantasy fleet – certainly no mention of British crews. Sometimes I wonder who edits this stuff. Shouldn’t they be exposing the real truth, i.e., ‘is this what taking back control is about?

Realistically, the red duster now has gone from a high of approximately 3000 ships in the ’50’s to the number it is today of less than 480. Previous governments have been indifferent to training and investment – the low most likely being the period after the Falklands war when the Merchant Navy was losing two ships per week. Subsequent ministers failed to get a grip with Secretaries of Transport Nicholas Ridley ( who devised the poll tax) and Cecil Parkinson seeing the greatest loss under their watch – maybe we shouldn’t be so harsh though as Ridley was a civil engineer whilst Parkinson was only a chartered accountant. 

One bright interlude was the Tonnage Tax law (2000) which did see ships return to the fold and also training opportunities for sea staff were financed by the new initiative. Although in recent years training success for officers and ratings alike has stalled.

Broadly speaking the fleet is now centred upon ferries, military support (RFA), oil and gas and specialist vessels such as wind-farm support, plus research ships.Of ferries, P&O sign-on mainly British crews on the Channel as also does some of DFDS.DFDS, nonetheless, isn’t such a bad company: it has an in-house training scheme for young entrants and it also negotiates with unions.However, and after working for DFDS I’ve noticed that whenever a Brit resigns or retires, he or she is usually replaced with an east European to the extent that the company now has eastern European skippers and chief engineers. I have seen correspondence from their head office using the term global sourcing which refers to foreign crewing. I thought they either need a geography lesson, i.e. global sourcing would involve Filipinos and Chinese, not Europeans, but there again this could be wishful thinking by DFDS.

Stena Line employ Brits and Irish on some crossings but not all – of concern though is recent news that this company is considering flagging-out from UK following a no-deal Brexit. (9). It is doubtful that RFA will flag out given the nature of their work; meanwhile support ships in the oil and gas industry have been involved in the greatest employment free-for-all ever: flags of convenience vessels crewed by many nationalities with ‘social dumping’ a commonly-used phrase.

In fact, Britain protects its sailors least from unfair, undercutting competition issuing certificates of competency to even more foreign mariners.So at this point is fair to ask: how does the EU benefit the Merchant Navy? Or what has the EU ever done for us? Probably not much, but our own national governments haven’t either especially for those in the fishing industry.On the downside, Cornish and Scottish fishermen have been hit by the EU with a double-whammy for crews who moved to oil and gas sector which, as we know now, suffers low oil prices.
But positively what Brussels has done is to increase shipboard labour standards for those who are left: 

• Women especially have attained labour rights previously unheard of especially in terms of equal pay and maternity leave. Empowerment of women in previously gender-specific jobs aboard ship are rights which can be referred to by the European Court of Justice. Unsurprisingly, Scandinavian women have always seen more working opportunities at sea, but now countries such as Spain figure highly too.  UK equality laws, although predating the EU, have arguably ignored the value of women on ship by way of neglecting their training and recruitment. Female skippers are now no longer a rarity. 

• Both men and women seafarers can rely upon the Working Time Regulations (1998 Health & Safety) from Europe in which an ‘hours of rest’ program has to be adhered to – anyone previously working round the clock on tanker operations or long pilotages, for example, will know the fatigue problem there.

• Health and Safety – yes, something to moan about! After all no-one likes wearing a safety harness on ship when they’re only ascending eight feet. No-one ever falls anyway, do they? However, much of the H&S law on ship is underpinned by Brussels and figures suggest that 41 out of 65 laws originated in Europe. If we link this to a halving of worker fatalities in Britain since 1992 (368 in 1992 to 142 in 2017) this is significant.

• Notable too is that seafarers can also rely upon Directive 1999/63/EC (Agreement on the Organisation of Working Time for Seafarers) to have 2.5 paid leave for each month of employment. Now transposed into UK law by MSN 1842 (M) notice, this has been something enjoyed by ferry contract employees for years, but is now extended to agency seafarers too. Were agency crew happy to know their contract colleagues were getting more leave monthly than they were?  Of course not.
  

• Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment ) Regulations 2006 (TUPE) was finally extended to seafarers in 2007. Basically TUPE preserves employees’ terms and conditions when a business or undertaking, or part of one, is transferred to a new employer. The employees of the outgoing employer automatically become employees of the incoming employer to enjoy the same t &c’s as before. Initiated in Brussels, but now enshrined in UK law, this is a great step for crews working as we do in a footloose industry full of ‘brass-plaque offices’ and website agencies.

• Pensions have long been accepted as part of the ‘norm’ in latter years Merchant Navy, but the financial problems inflicted on  the ratings pension fund (MNRPF) was eventually resolved in the High Court ( Merchant Navy Ratings Pension Fund Trustees Ltd v Stena Line Ltd and others {2015} EWHC 448 (Ch) and influenced by other case law within the EU. The Merchant Navy Officers Pension benefits from cross-nation portability within the EU.
  

The flip-side of European legislation is the intense lobbying in Brussels by British ship-owners and finance houses. They lobby for what they can get and that isn’t for higher wages and welfare standards. The reality of lobbying being that it is all about power relations is better explained by ‘I’m knocking on the EU’s door to get what I want.’Indeed, the UK is amongst the biggest players in the murky world of the so-called ‘Brussels bubble’, a total of 13% of all active groups out of 27 member states; the EU itself has a voluntary lobby transparency register – no prizes for spotting the irony because all this means is that those who use not to sign up remain out of scrutiny.

The UK is second only to Germany in lobbying Brussels – Germany has 20m more population as well – and the UK has been proven to fight tooth and claw for what it does and doesn’t want. Of course there are non-governmental organisations lobbying Brussels – those with the interests of seafarers such as the International Transport Federation (ITF), plus Britain’s TUC – but they are far outweighed by shipowners, industrialists, bankers and even the oil giants all who have overlapping interests as they invest in each other. For example, P&I clubs lament low profits; finance houses invest in shipping and call for greater dividends; shipowners warn of high crew costs and bunker prices – and so on.It would be wrong to suggest that shipowners are driving crew wages and job opportunities down through pressure in the European Parliament, but because of this voluntary transparency there is little the suggest the opposite.

So it could be that Seaborne is lobbying in Europe – we just don’t know. What we do know is that tabloids like the aforementioned Daily Express and its report about a doubling of the UK merchant fleet is as ridiculous of another headline of theirs: ‘British public buildings must fly the EU flag on 9 May.’ (10) All this does is demonstrate the disinformation campaign in the run-up to March 29 – indeed, the Express and such other websites regularly score more hits than Joe di Maggio. And nothing can be done because Richard Desmond, the owner of Express Newspapers, has withdrawn from the system of self-regulation.

Seaborne need to be put under more scrutiny. If you really care about which crew they’re going to sign on, contact them and request a reply. They already have advertised vacancies for staff in Ramsgate and Ostend – administrative and stevedore positions – but nothing about ships’ crew. Their website is seabornefreight.com/recruitment.
Furthermore, contact the UK freedom of information website and write:

Dear Department of Transport,
I read about the report of a £13.8m of taxpayers’ money awarded to the shipping company Seaborne Freight. Could you tell me the following:

1) The full contract

2) The total value of the contract

3) The make/type/name of the ships they are planning to supply

4) the nationality and domicile of the crews they wish to sign on.

The website is as follows: https://forms.dft.gov.uk/foi-dft-and-dft-agencies/

Finally, many of us sailed to the Falklands war and our fathers sailed in WW2 convoys – for freedom. Do you think we deserve an answer?

1) www.theguardian.com (Grayling defends giving Brexit) 02.01.19
2) http://www.thetimes.co.uk (Seaborne Ferry boss left tax debt) 04.01.19
3) http://ft.com.content (Seaborne Freight director’s company has unpaid tax bill) 04.01.19
4) www.theguardian.com (Grayling defends giving Brexit) 02.01.19
5) Ibid6) https://hansard.parliament.uk/debates (Seaborne Freight) 08.01.19
7) http://telegraph.co.uk (Grayling and ‘mad EU rules) 10.06.13
8) http://dailyexpress (Ministers plan to DOUBLE SIZE of merchant navy after Brexit) 11.09.07
9) http://www.maritime-executive.com(Stena Line may reflag vessels after Brexit) 29.06.16
10) theguardian.com/media/may05/dailyexpress-eu (as reported in the Guardian 05.05.11