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Coastguard Volunteers: Remuneration and HMRC Guidance

I beg to move,

That this House has considered HMRC guidance and remuneration of coastguard volunteers.

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Shelbrooke. I welcome the Minister to his place.

This debate is timely, because I am angry and offended by what the Maritime and Coastguard Agency is doing to our coastguard rescue officers. I believe that the changes being introduced, following the recent Court of Appeal judgment, risk hollowing out a crucial emergency service that is relied on by people in my constituency and other coastal and island communities around the country. I believe that the changes should be paused so that a proper and meaningful consultation can be held, and then brought back in a shape that respects the contribution and service given by coastguard rescue officers and secures the future of that service.

I want the Minister to understand just why this matters as much as it does, so let me take the House back to 8 December 1963, some 20 months before I was born. At 3 am on that date, the trawler Margaret Wicks, of Fleetwood, ran aground off the coast of the Mull of Oa, on the island of Islay. The report of that grounding from the time recorded:

“The Margaret Wicks went ashore on the Mull of Oa, a wild isolated part of Islay where there are few roads”—

one, in fact—

“at 3 a.m. on 8th December. Within…hours, the Mull of Oa company, who live in a small isolated community about three miles away, were on the scene. Shortly afterwards the Port Ellen company arrived, having carried their life-saving gear for two miles across very rough, boggy terrain from the road where they had left their lorry.

The trawler was hard ashore, close in under a steeply sloping cliff 250 feet high; and the Volunteer-in-Charge, Mr. John Lockhead, took his men down the cliff to a point about 20 feet above the bows of the stranded vessel, from which they carried out the rescue. A whip and breeches buoy was used, and within half an hour the first survivor was landed. The other 14 were brought ashore uninjured within the next hour. The Islay life-boat and H.M.S. Hampshire were both lying off shore, unable to help because of the rocks which surrounded the wreck.”

One of the men who was part of the Mull of Oa company was my father. He and his friends and neighbours were awarded the Minister of Transport’s shield for best wreck service of the year for 1963-64, jointly with the Lerwick station in Shetland—for obvious reasons, I am relieved that it was called a draw. The rescue of the Margaret Wicks is part of my family’s story.

My father will celebrate his 95th birthday next month. I spoke to him about the rescue last night; he recalled it with total clarity and in great detail. He told the story not boastfully, but with a pride rooted in an understanding that this is part of what it means to be an islander or to live in a coastal community. Our communities produce fishermen and other seafarers, so coastguards and lifeboat volunteers go to those who are in difficulty and distress on our shores because, if it were necessary, we would want the same to be done for those about whom we care.

Of course, the modern coastguard service is very different from the one that my father was part of in 1963. Now, the crew of the Margaret Wicks would most probably be lifted by helicopter rather than by a breeches buoy, but the same sense of pride and duty motivates coastguard volunteers today as it did my father and his neighbours six decades ago.

I heard that same sense of pride and duty when I met CROs in my office in Orkney on Saturday—incidentally, we were in my office because I was not allowed to meet them in the coastguard station. I heard about the four days that they spent searching the coastline for a young monk who had gone missing from the monastery on Papa Stronsay. I heard from CROs in Shetland about the role that they played a few years ago when a winter storm brough catastrophic failure to the local electricity network, leaving parts of our community with no power for over a week.