Consultation outcome

The Seafarers’ Wages Act 2023 draft regulations and guidance part 2: consultation document

Updated 10 October 2024

This is the second of 2 public consultations on the secondary legislation required to implement the Seafarers’ Wages Act 2023 (the act). The act makes provision in relation to the remuneration of seafarers who do not qualify for the UK National Minimum Wage (NMW).

In the first public consultation, which ran for 4 weeks from 13 November 2023, we sought views on the regulations covering the following procedural matters:

• declarations (timings, form, manner)
• administration of surcharges (notification, timings, publication)
• communication of refusal of access
• specification of the responsible harbour authority

This consultation seeks views on the draft regulations and associated draft guidance in respect of:

• the rate of the surcharge that harbour authorities will be required to impose on the operator of a service (surcharge tariff) if the operator does not provide a declaration
• detail on the National Minimum Wage equivalent rate (NMW equivalent) and how it is calculated

This consultation opens on 15 February 2024 and closes on 14 March 2024.

Background to the legislation

The act is designed to boost the pay of seafarers who work tirelessly on international routes to maintain supply chains and transport passengers safely across our waters, but do not qualify for UK NMW despite having close ties to the UK by virtue of working on services that regularly call at UK ports.

The act is a key strand in the government’s 9 point plan to boost and reform seafarer protections and welfare, announced on 30 March 2022. The act delivers on point 1 of the plan and is designed to protect those working on ships operating a regular international service to/from the UK from being paid less than the NMW equivalent while in the UK or its territorial waters.

The act applies to services which carry goods or people by ship between a place outside the UK and a place in the UK. The legislation requires harbour authorities to ask the operator of a service which enters a UK harbour 120 times or more in a year for a declaration.

The declaration is that seafarers on the service who do not qualify for the UK NMW are being paid at least the NMW equivalent while working in the UK or its territorial waters. Harbour authorities will be required to impose a surcharge on the operator of a service if they do not provide a declaration. If the surcharge is not paid, the harbour authority is required to refuse access to the service.

The act received Royal Assent on 23 March 2023. However, it is necessary to make regulations (using powers in the act) setting out certain technical, procedural and administrative detail before the act can be made fully operational.

This is the second consultation relating to draft regulations to implement the act.  The draft regulations published as part of this consultation include the regulations consulted on in part 1, however, the questions in this consultation will focus on the areas in part 2, namely NMW equivalent and the tariff of surcharges.

Development of the proposals

The government published a consultation that ran from 10 May 2022 to 7 June 2022 and sought views on the proposed legislation which eventually became the act. The consultation sought views on the scope of services to which the new legislation should apply and the compliance processes. The government’s response to the consultation was published in July 2022.

Consultation feedback provided useful information and perspectives that helped refine our policy and, as a result, the government introduced legislation to Parliament in July 2022. The Seafarers’ Wages Bill was introduced first in the House of Lords, moving to the House of Commons in November 2022. During the parliamentary process, a number of amendments were made to improve the bill including to make previously discretionary powers of harbour authorities to request declarations, impose surcharges and refuse access to harbours mandatory duties. The bill received Royal Assent on 23 March 2023.

In early 2023, we began to develop the draft regulations, which are the subject of this consultation. Throughout the development of the bill and the draft regulations, we have worked closely with industry stakeholders including the British Ports Association, UK Major Ports Group, UK Chamber of Shipping, Nautilus and the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, as well as ship operators. We are extremely grateful for the advice and assistance provided by these stakeholder groups.

How to respond

This consultation will start on 15 February 2024 and will run until 14 March 2024. Please ensure that your response reaches us before the closing date. Where possible, respond by completing the survey. You can find a link to the survey in the Ways to respond section of the GOV.UK home page for this consultation.

Where this is not possible, you may alternatively respond by email to remunerationconsultation@gov.uk.

Alongside this document, please read the:

• draft regulations
• draft guidance

For each of the following questions, you are asked to state whether you agree, disagree, neither agree nor disagree or don’t know. Please also provide an explanation for your answer. Where you disagree, please explain what changes you think should be made.

Comments can also be provided on whether:

• the draft regulations deliver the policy intent
• the draft guidance has any gaps
• the drafting causes any inconsistencies, gaps or overlaps with provisions elsewhere in the act or draft regulations
• the procedures outlined will be unworkable in practice or cause any significant issues

Where the draft guidance is considered unclear or lacks the necessary information, please provide feedback on how it could be clearer or what further information should be provided.

Subjects for consultation and associated questions

Surcharge tariff

What is the surcharge?

The surcharge is an important element of the compliance process to incentivise operators of in-scope services to pay seafarers the NMW equivalent in respect of their UK work. The act sets out the procedural requirements for when a harbour authority must impose a surcharge.

The harbour authority must impose a surcharge where:

• an equivalence declaration has been requested but is not provided by an operator in the prescribed form and manner before the end of the prescribed period
• an equivalence declaration is requested by a harbour authority and the declaration only confirms that, in what remains of the relevant year, non-qualifying seafarers working on ships providing the service will be paid the NMW equivalent, and does not confirm that the operator has been paying the NMW equivalent in the period of the relevant year before the equivalence declaration was provided – in such circumstances the harbour authority must impose surcharges on the operator in respect of all the occasions that the service entered the harbour before the period covered by the equivalence declaration
• an operator provides an equivalence declaration, and they notify the harbour authority that at a specified time after the equivalence declaration was provided, the service was, or started to be, operated inconsistently with the equivalence declaration
• the harbour authority has reasonable grounds to believe that after the declaration was provided, the service was, or started to be operated inconsistently with the declaration, or that the declaration is false or misleading in so far as it concerns the operation of the service before the declaration was provided

The procedural detail relating to the imposition of surcharges was the subject of part 1 of the consultation.

Proposed tariff

The objective of the surcharge tariff is to act as an incentive to operators to pay NMW equivalent. It should not be less expensive to pay the surcharge than to pay seafarers a fair wage. As such, the intention is that the proposed tariff will be set at a rate that is higher than the cost for an operator to uplift seafarers’ remuneration to the NMW equivalent while working in the UK and its territorial waters.

It is for harbour authorities to apply the surcharge tariff, and so it must be based on metrics to which harbour authorities have access. Crew sizes are not a universally available metric to harbour authorities or the Maritime and Coastguard Agency at the present time.

In light of this, the proposed surcharge tariff is based on gross tonnage (GT). Gross tonnage is a publicly available metric that can be easily ascertained by harbour authorities who need to apply the tariff.

We asked operators of services within the scope of the act to provide us with data regarding crew sizes on ships travelling on in-scope services. We received information from 4 operators of 27 ships, including ro-pax and container ships. We also obtained safe manning documents for a sample of ships comparable to those in scope of the act in terms of ship type (including ro-pax and ro-ro vessels).  This data showed there is a correlation between gross tonnage and crew sizes. We cannot disclose this data as it was provided in confidence.

The tariff differentiates between ships with a passenger carrying capacity of more than 12 and those with a capacity of 12 or less. In all the examples we have analysed, ships carrying more passengers had bigger crews.

For ships over 50,000 gross tons, there is a lower rate applied per GT above this threshold to avoid disproportionate charges for very large ships. This cap has been arrived at as at this size ship, our assumption is that, particularly for very large container ships, the correlation between crew size and gross tonnage will weaken as fewer crew are needed to operate the vessel beyond that point. We do not expect many ships of this size to be in scope of the legislation due to the 120 times a year frequency requirement.

For ships that are certified to carry 12 or fewer passengers, the tariff is:

• 10p per GT up to a maximum of 50,000 tonnes
• 1p per GT in excess of 50,000 tonnes

For ships that are certified to carry more than 12 passengers, the tariff is:

• 20p per GT up to a maximum of 50,000 tonnes
• 2p per GT in excess of 50,000 tonnes

The rate per GT aims to meet the objective outlined above and has been arrived at by reference to:

• numbers of crew based on ship size (with reference to the data provided by operators)
• percentage of seafarers likely to be paid above or below NMW equivalent (see assumptions in impact assessment)
• possible levels of pay for those being paid below NMW equivalent based on anecdotal evidence (In Peter Hebbelthwaite’s evidence to the Transport and Business Select Committee, he said staff would be paid between £5.15 and £6 an hour)
• estimated time spent in UK waters based on length of route.

Example 1:

The surcharge is imposed on the operator of service A as they failed to provide a declaration within the period prescribed in the regulations. Service A is provided by ship X and ship Y. These are both passenger ferries certified to carry more than 12 passengers. Each has a crew of 75 seafarers. They spend 2 hours in UK waters per visit.

Ship X has a gross tonnage of 47,500. Every time this ship enters the harbour, a surcharge of £9,500 would apply (47,500 x 20p).

Ship Y has a gross tonnage of 50,100. Every time this ship enters the harbour, a surcharge of £10,002 would apply. (50,000 x 20p + 100 x 2p).

If every crew member were ordinarily paid £5 an hour, the ordinary wage bill, per ferry, in UK waters would be £750 per visit. Paying the crew the NMW equivalent (of £11.44) for the time in UK waters would cost the operator an extra £966 per visit per ship.

This calculation shows that it will not be advantageous for an operator to choose to pay the surcharge rather than pay more than NMW equivalent.

Questions

Question 1: Do you agree or disagree with using gross tonnage as a metric for calculating the surcharge? Why?

Question 2: Do you agree or disagree with the surcharge tariff amounts? Why?

Question 3: Do you agree or disagree that there is a correlation between gross tonnage and crew sizes? Why?

Question 4: Do you agree or disagree that the correlation between gross tonnage and crew sizes begins to weaken above 50,000GT? Why?

Question 5: Do you agree or disagree that ships certified to carry more than 12 passengers tend to have bigger crews? Why?

NMW equivalent

The NMW equivalent is an hourly rate specified in the regulations. Part 3 of the draft regulations seeks to secure that the method of calculating a seafarer’s remuneration for their work in the UK and its territorial waters in relation to a service will result in remuneration that is in all the circumstances broadly equivalent to that in the National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015. The NMW equivalent hourly rates mirror the NMW hourly rates.

Draft regulation 13 specifies the NMW equivalent hourly rates. These are:

• £11.44 for a seafarer aged 21 years or over
• £8.60 for a seafarer aged 18 years to 20 years (but not yet 21 years)
• £6.40 for a seafarer aged under 18 years
• £6.40 for a seafarer to whom the apprenticeship rate applies

Draft regulations 14 to 16 specify:

• that the applicable NMW equivalent rate, as respects work in a pay reference period, is the rate which applies on the first day of the pay reference period
• the circumstances in which the apprenticeship rate applies – to note, that this differs slightly from the National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015 by not including Trailbrazer apprenticeships (this is because this category of apprenticeships no longer exists)
• the meaning of a pay reference period – a month, or in the case of a worker who is paid wages by reference to a period shorter than a month, that period

Interpretation

Question 6: Does the draft guidance assist in understanding what is meant by the following terms:

• ‘pay reference period’
• ‘UK work’
• ‘basic rate’
• ‘UK additional rate’
• ‘basic remuneration’
• ‘UK additional remuneration’

Question 7: In your view, does the draft guidance make the relationship between the National Minimum Wage legislation and the regulations sufficiently clear?

National Minimum Wage equivalence rates

Questions

Question 8: Do the circumstances in which the apprenticeship rate applies cover all circumstances where a seafarer might be completing a UK apprenticeship?

Question 9: Do you agree or disagree that we have provided sufficient draft guidance on NMW equivalent hourly rates and the pay reference period? Why?

Calculation of the hourly rate

The primary distinction between the NMW legislation and the regulations concerns the calculation of the hourly rate that seafarers are being paid.

Under the NMW legislation, there is a single calculation to determine whether the NMW has been paid: remuneration/hours of work. That results in a single hourly rate at which a worker is treated as remunerated.

Under the regulations there are 3 hourly rates:

The basic rate

This is essentially the hourly rate received by a seafarer for all of their work before there has been any uplift in pay to meet the NMWe. It is calculated by dividing a seafarer’s basic remuneration by their total hours of work.

The UK additional rate

This is the hourly rate received by a seafarer which is specific to their hours of UK work. It is calculated by dividing UK additional remuneration (if any) by hours of UK work. UK additional remuneration is any remuneration paid to the seafarer in addition to their basic remuneration to meet the requirements of the regulations – that is, it only includes remuneration which is attributable to hours of UK work and which would not be paid to the seafarer if the hours of work were not hours of UK work.

The overall UK hourly rate

This is the overall hourly rate received by the seafarer for their hours of UK work. It is calculated by adding together their basic rate and their UK additional rate.

For a declaration to be valid, a seafarer must be remunerated at a rate that is equal to or exceeds the NMW equivalent for their UK work in relation to the service in the pay reference period.

A seafarer is to be treated as remunerated by their employer for their hours of UK work on a service at the hourly rate determined by the calculation: basic rate + UK additional rate.

The basic rate is the basic remuneration in the pay reference period divided by the total hours worked in the pay reference period.

The UK additional rate is the UK additional remuneration in the pay reference period, divided by the hours of UK work in the pay reference period.

Both the draft regulations (see regulations 17 to 19) and the draft guidance documents give further detail on the calculations.

The purpose of including 2 different hourly rates (basic and additional) is to provide for a seafarer’s basic remuneration to be uplifted to the NMW equivalent rate when doing UK work.

Questions

Question 10: Do you agree or disagree with the calculation in draft regulation 17 to determine the rate at which a seafarer is to be treated as remunerated for their UK work is fair and workable?

Question 11: Do you agree or disagree with the calculations to determine the basic hourly rate and UK additional hourly rate as specified in draft regulations 18 and 19 are fair and workable?

Question 12: In your view, does the draft guidance sufficiently assist with understanding how to apply the calculations in regulation 17?

Question 13: In your view, does the draft guidance sufficiently assist with understanding how to apply the calculations in regulation 18?

Question 14: In your view, does the draft guidance sufficiently assist with understanding how to apply the calculation in regulation 19?

Remuneration for the purposes of the NMW equivalent

Draft regulation 20 provides that basic and UK additional remuneration are calculated by deducting any reductions from payments made to the seafarer as respects the pay reference period.

Section 1 of part 3 of the regulations sets out the payments that do and do not count towards a seafarer’s remuneration. Regulation 21 lists the payments and amounts, which are to be treated as payments by the employer to the seafarer as respects the pay reference period, and how these payments and amounts are apportioned between basic and UK additional remuneration. The payments and benefits in kind which do not form part of either the seafarers’ basic or UK additional remuneration are listed in regulation 22.

Section 2 of part 3 of the regulations sets out which deductions made by an employer or payments made by a seafarer are treated as reducing a seafarer’s remuneration. These deductions are apportioned between basic and UK additional remuneration in proportion to the total hours of work and hours of UK work (see regulation 23).   

Regulations 24 and 25 set out how the following are treated for the purposes of calculating basic and UK additional remuneration:

• deductions or payments for the employer’s or operator’s own use and benefit
• deductions or payments as respects a seafarer’s expenditure
• deductions or payments as respects a seafarer’s living accommodation

Such deductions or payments are to be treated as reductions of the seafarer’s remuneration, subject to the exceptions in regulations 24(2) and 25(3).

Under the National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015 employers may charge workers a notional daily amount for the provision of living accommodation. This does not reduce a worker’s remuneration for minimum wage purposes unless the employer charges more than the amount of the accommodation offset.

In contrast, under the draft regulations deductions or payments as respects a seafarer’s living accommodation are treated as reductions, and there is no offset amount that can be counted towards NMW equivalent pay. The reason for this difference in approach is to account for the fact that this is the only available accommodation and that seafarers are required to be present on the ship even while they are asleep in case of an emergency.

Questions

Question 15: Do you agree or disagree with which payments form part of the seafarer’s remuneration? If disagree, please specify which you disagree with.

Question 16: Do you agree or disagree with the deductions or payments that are, and are not to be treated as reductions? Why?

Question 17: Do you agree or disagree that deductions or payments as respects a seafarer’s living accommodation should be treated as reductions? Why?

Question 18: Do you agree or disagree with how payments and reductions are apportioned to basic and UK additional remuneration? Why?

Question 19: In your view, does the draft guidance sufficiently explain how to calculate basic and UK additional remuneration? Why?

Hours worked for the purposes of the NMW equivalent

The draft regulations distinguish between different types of work for the purposes of calculating hours worked. These types of work are also in the National Minimum Wage regulations. Draft regulations 31 and 32 introduce the different types of work and signpost to the relevant chapters which set out how to determine the hours worked or treated as worked.

The different types of work are:

• for determining the basic rate:
  • salaried hours work
  • time work
  • unmeasured work
• for determining the UK additional rate:
  • hours of UK work

The National Minimum Wage regulations also include a fourth type of work, which is output work. This is where a worker is paid per task they perform or piece of work they do. We do not think that any seafarers in scope of the Seafarers’ Wages Act are remunerated in this way and so we have not included output work in the draft regulations.

Regulations 33 and 34 make provision for what counts towards hours spent training and travelling.

Questions

Question 20: Do you agree or disagree that the regulations adequately cover circumstances in which seafarers will be training/travelling? Why?

Question 21: Do you agree or disagree that seafarers in scope of the legislation do not undertake output work? Why?

Salaried hours work

Salaried hours work requires all the following to apply to a seafarer:

• they are entitled under their contract to be paid for a set basic number of hours in a year
• they are entitled under their contract to an annual salary for those basic hours
• they are not entitled under their contract to any other payment for their basic hours other than the salary, or a performance bonus or salary premium (see below)
• they are paid not more often than weekly and not less often than monthly in equal instalments – for example, monthly, 4-weekly, fortnightly or weekly payments. Alternatively, they can be paid in monthly instalments that vary but add up to the same amount in each quarter

So long as the instalments remain the same, the fact that a seafarer actually works more hours in some weeks or months and less in others does not prevent them performing salaried hours work.

Some variations in the weekly or monthly instalments are ignored for this purpose, where paying in equal instalments may not be practicable. For example, if the variation results from:

• payment of a performance bonus (for the meaning of which see regulation 30(8))
• payment of a salary premium, such as for working on a bank holiday (see regulation 30(9))
• a pay increase
• pay for working hours in addition to the basic hours, such as separate overtime payments
• the seafarer starting or leaving part-way through the week or month

Calculation of salaried hours work

If a seafarer only works up to their basic hours in a calculation year (see below), the number of hours they have worked in a particular pay reference period is calculated by dividing the seafarer’s basic hours by the number of payments in the year. For the meaning of ‘basic hours’ see regulations 30(3) and 34.

Once a seafarer performing salaried hours work has worked for more than their basic annual hours in the calculation year, then it is necessary to check that all the excess hours are taken into account when calculating their total hours of work for the purposes of determining their basic rate. Regulations 35 to 37 set out how to calculate the total hours of salaried hours work if the seafarer works more than their basic hours in the calculation year.

The ‘calculation year’

Regulation 33 sets out the meaning of the calculation year. This will depend on the date on which a seafarer begins work and the frequency at which they are paid (for example, monthly or weekly). For workers entitled to the NMW, the National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015 allow for employers to vary the calculation year for salaried hours workers. This provision has not been included in the draft regulations to simplify enforcement. As such, the calculation year will be fixed for each seafarer. 

Questions

Question 22: Do agree or disagree that seafarers are currently performing salaried work (noting the detailed criteria set out above)? Why?

Question 23: Do you agree or disagree with the calculation for determining hours worked for salaried hours work? Why?

Question 24: Do you think that the regulations should include salaried hours work as a type of work? If disagree, why?

Question 25: Do you agree or disagree with having a fixed calculation year for salaried work? Why?

Question 26: In your view, does the draft guidance sufficiently assist in understanding the circumstances in which salaried hours work applies and how to calculate the hours of salaried hours work?

Time work

Chapter 6 of part 6 sets out that if a seafarer is entitled under their contract to be paid according to the number of hours they are at work, that work is time work. A seafarer’s total hours of time work in a pay reference period can be identified by recording every hour worked, or treated as worked under the regulations.

The hours of work that count as time work include:

• hours when a seafarer is working
• hours when a seafarer is available, and required to be available, at or near their place of work for the purposes of working (but not at home) – this only includes hours when the seafarer is awake for the purposes of working, even if a seafarer by arrangement sleeps onboard the ship and the employer provides suitable facilities for sleeping
• hours spent training, when the seafarer would otherwise be doing time work
• hours when a seafarer is travelling, when they would otherwise be working unless the travel is between a seafarer’s home/temporary residence and a place of work or a place where an assignment is carried out

For time work, the time that does not count as working time includes any time spent:

• away from work – even if they are paid for that time – including rest breaks, holidays, sick leave, maternity/paternity/adoption leave, industrial action
• travelling between home and work (unless the seafarer works while travelling) – regardless of whether the seafarer has a fixed place of work

Questions

Question 27: Do you agree or disagree that seafarers are currently performing time work, with reference to the criteria above? Why?

Question 28: Do you agree or disagree with the way hours worked for time work are calculated?

Question 29: In your view, does the draft guidance sufficiently assist in understanding the circumstances in which time work applies and how to calculate the hours of time work?

Unmeasured work

Chapter 7 of part 6 sets out that work is unmeasured work if it is not salaried hours work or time work. Unmeasured work could meet some of the conditions of time work, but not all the conditions (for example, they might not be entitled under their contract to be paid according to the number of hours they are at work). As it would also not be salaried hours work (the seafarer is not paid an annual salary), it must be unmeasured work.

A seafarer’s total hours of unmeasured work in a pay reference period can be identified by recording every hour worked, or treated as worked under the regulations.

The hours of work that count as unmeasured work include:

• hours when a seafarer is working
• hours when a seafarer is available, and required to be available, at or near their place of work for the purposes of working (but not at home). This only includes hours when the seafarer is awake for the purposes of working, even if a seafarer by arrangement sleeps onboard the ship and the employer provides suitable facilities for sleeping.
• hours spent training, when the seafarer would otherwise be doing unmeasured work
• hours when a seafarer is travelling for the purposes of unmeasured work

For unmeasured work, time when a seafarer takes part in industrial action does not count towards their total hours of work.

Unlike calculating hours of unmeasured work under the National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015, these draft regulations do not have an option to come to a ‘daily average’ agreement of hours to be worked. It is understood that such agreements are not regularly used in practice, and in any event, operators have clear record-keeping obligations for hours of rest under the Maritime Labour Convention, meaning that they can easily identify the actual hours worked.

Questions

Question 30: In your view, should unmeasured work be included in the regulations? Why?

Question 31: Do you agree or disagree with the suggested calculation for hours worked for unmeasured work? Why?

Question 32: Do you agree or disagree with the omission of daily average agreements from the regulations? Why?

Question 33: In your view, does the draft guidance sufficiently assist in understanding the circumstances in which unmeasured work applies and how to calculate the hours of unmeasured work? Why?

Hours of UK work

The hours of UK work in a pay reference period are the hours of work in the UK or in UK territorial waters that a seafarer has worked, or is treated as having worked, under the regulations.

Seafarer’s hours of UK work can be identified by recording every hour worked, or treated as worked, under the regulations, in the UK or its territorial waters.

Regulations 50 to 54 set out what is treated as hours of UK work and hours not treated as UK work.

Chapter 8 of part 6 sets out what is and is not treated as hours of UK work.

Questions

Question 34: Do you agree or disagree with what the regulations say about what work does or does not count as UK work? Why?

Question 35: In your view, does the draft guidance sufficiently assist with your understanding of what constitutes UK work?

Currency conversion

A seafarer may be paid in a currency other than GBP. The draft regulations are silent on how currency conversion is to be calculated. This is consistent with the National Minimum Wage legislation, which also does not reference currency conversion.

The draft guidance instead just sets out that an employer looking to pay the NMW equivalent must make sure that the seafarer’s pay would meet the NMW equivalent hourly rate when converted into GBP. Employers should assure themselves that they have used a reasonable exchange rate and may want to refer to exchange rates from HMRC in CSV and XML format.

Questions

Question 36: Do you agree or disagree with the approach taken to currency version in the draft text?

General comments

Question 37: Do you have any further comments or questions on the draft guidance?

Question 38: Do we have any further comments or questions on the draft regulations?

Question 39: Overall, do you believe that the draft regulations adequately reflect and translate the policy intent? Please provide your reflections in as much detail as possible.

Question 40: Do the draft regulations and draft guidance cause any inconsistencies, gaps or overlaps with the provisions elsewhere in the act or draft regulations? Please provide your reflections in as much detail as possible.

Question 41: Do you believe that any of the procedures outlined will be unworkable in practice or cause any significant issues? Please provide your reflections in as much detail as possible.

Equalities assessment

We are also seeking views on the potential impacts our proposals may have on groups of people with protected characteristics. Protected characteristics include age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.

Question 42: What do you consider to be the equalities impact on individuals with protected characteristics of any of the policy proposals to be included in the draft Regulations? Please give reasons and any evidence that you consider relevant.

Next steps

Following this consultation on the tariff of surcharges and NMW equivalent, we will consider the responses. A government response to the consultation in whole (encompassing both part 1 and part 2) including the next steps will be published shortly after the closing date of this consultation.

The final version of the secondary legislation will be laid in Parliament. We will be publishing an enactment impact assessment to update the version published when the bill was introduced. We expect that the regime will come into force in 2024.

If you have questions about this consultation, contact the Seafarers’ Wages Regulations team at remunerationconsultation@dft.gov.uk.

Freedom of information

Information provided in response to this consultation, including personal information, may be subject to publication or disclosure in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) or the Environmental Information Regulations 2004.

If you want information that you provide to be treated as confidential, please be aware that, under the FOIA, there is a statutory code of practice with which public authorities must comply and which deals, among other things, with obligations of confidence.

In view of this, it would be helpful if you could explain to us why you regard the information you have provided as confidential. If we receive a request for disclosure of the information, we will take full account of your explanation, but we cannot give an assurance that confidentiality can be maintained in all circumstances. An automatic confidentiality disclaimer generated by your IT system will not, of itself, be regarded as binding on the department.

The Department for Transport (DfT) will process your personal data in accordance with the Data Protection Act and in the majority of circumstances this will mean that your personal data will not be disclosed to third parties.

Data protection

DfT is carrying out this public consultation to gather views on the draft regulations and associated guidance required to bring the provisions of the Seafarers’ Wages Act fully into force, ahead of the regulations being laid in Parliament.

This consultation and the processing of personal data that it entails is necessary for the exercise of our functions as a government department. If your answers contain any information that allows you to be identified, DfT will, under data protection law, be the controller for this information.

As part of this consultation, we’re asking for your name and email address. This is in case we need to ask you follow-up questions about any of your responses. You do not have to give us this personal information. If you do provide it, we will use it only for the purpose of asking follow-up questions.

DfT’s privacy policy has more information about your rights in relation to your personal data, how to complain and how to contact the Data Protection Officer.

To receive this information by telephone or post, contact us on 0300 330 3000 or write to:

Data Protection Officer

Department for Transport

3rd Floor

One Priory Square

Hasting

East Sussex, TN34 1EA

Your information will be kept securely on secure IT systems within DfT and will be destroyed within 24 months after the consultation has been completed.

Consultation principles

This consultation is being conducted in line with the government’s consultation principles.

If you have any comments about the consultation process, contact:

Consultation Co-ordinator

Department for Transport

Zone 1/29 Great Minster House

London, SW1P 4DR