Chamber of Shipping meets Prime Minister

12 January 2010

Director-General Mark Brownrigg was part of a joint shipowner/union delegation which met the Prime Minister on 6 January to discuss the joint industry training proposals.

The meeting had been facilitated by MPs Gwyn Prosser and John McDonnell and also included Bob Crow and Mark Dickinson, the General Secretaries of RMT and Nautilus respectively.

This was the Chamber’s first formal meeting with a serving prime minister in 25 years.  It followed an exchange in the House in December between Gwyn Prosser and Mr Brown who had responded to a parliamentary question:  “The proposals put forward by unions and the industry together are ones that we are now looking at in order to create more training and employment opportunities in the industry, and I am very happy to discuss them with my Hon. Friends”. 

The Prime Minister’s office had been sent a two-page briefing beforehand on the joint proposal for the upgrading of seafarer training support (written by the Chamber).

Mark Brownrigg presented the case on behalf of the delegation, highlighting the two primary objectives in the joint proposals:

• encouraging newly qualified officers to continue through the second tranche of their training from first certificate to Master/Chief Engineer certificates (which is when they are of true value to the shipping industry and beyond) and
• offering, for the first time, an opportunity for companies to meet their tonnage tax training requirements through the training of ratings, which would encourage new recruitment and employment of ratings (which has recently been close to zero) in specific shipping sectors.

The Chamber pointed out that the cost was relatively modest (in practical terms between £4 million and £5 million), but that the Government’s acceptance of the proposals would reaffirm its commitment to shipping and the wider cluster in a very recognisable way. 

This introduction was followed by inputs from Bob Crow, who emphasised the apprenticeship nature of seafarer training and the value that the proposal would mean for ratings; and also from Mark Dickinson, who stressed the strategic need for British seafarers and the danger of inaction.

The Prime Minister was welcoming and affable throughout.  He said that, understandably, he could not have the detail of the financial or wider implications at his fingertips, but that he would speak to the ministers involved.  He acknowledged that this was clearly a matter involving the Government’s apprenticeship policy, to which he was deeply attached, but also involving the Department for Transport.  He promised to come back to the group (no doubt, through Gwyn Prosser) within a month.