Joe Robertson is Conservative MP for Isle of Wight East and shadow DCMS minister
Coastguard Rescue Officers represent public service at its finest. Hardworking men and women are on call 24/7, usually alongside another job: teachers, nurses, builders, mechanics, small business owners, and even veterans looking to give back.
But too often they have been taken for granted, disrespected even, by the people responsible for their organisation: the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA).
For years, brave Coastguard Rescue Officers (CROs) have tried standing up to arrogant MCA management only to be shut down, hauled into disciplinary meetings, and threatened against engaging with local MPs.
My constituent, former CRO Martin Groom, stood strong and took it further than most dared. He took his bosses all the way to the Court of Appeal and won. The MCA had dismissed Martin from the service, claiming as a mere volunteer he had no right to be heard. That his legitimate concerns about how the service was being run should not get an airing, even within internal management processes. This came after 35 years of loyal service, dropping everything at a moment’s notice, even missing a family wedding.
The MCA’s volunteer claim flew in the face of hard facts. CROs receive hourly pay, tax deductions and a P60. It is hard to understand what legal la la land the MCA were living in to litigate this through three tiers of the court system, wasting hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ money claiming Martin and his 3,000 colleagues were not workers in law.
Having suffered an embarrassing defeat, far from showing humility and properly reviewing the coastguard rescue service model, the boss of the MCA, Virginia McVea, continued to refer to “volunteers” in flagrant disregard of the court ruling. She even had the audacity to claim that the judges had changed the status of CROs – a staggering misunderstanding considering her career as a human rights lawyer. She must know a court has no such power. The appeal judges stated the existing position as they found it, not the fantasy one concocted within the ivory tower of a government quango.
Instead of respecting rescue officers as workers and meeting basic obligations for statutory sick pay and holiday, MCA bosses wrote to CROs telling them they would be stripped of their hourly pay altogether under a “new volunteer model”. That meant for the hundreds of hours of mandatory training, the long hours on emergency call-outs, the time spent cleaning up from mud rescues and gear checks, these front line workers who have been paid for over 100 years would get nothing. A brutal “fire and rehire” as volunteers.
When I and other MPs began raising concerns to the responsible minister in the Department for Transport, Keir Mather, the MCA doubled down. When McVea met with us, she said this volunteer model is what CROs “are telling us they want,” according to an undisclosed internal survey.
The MCA said they would disclose these remarkable survey findings, but they didn’t. So a whistleblower sent the true survey data to The Times and it revealed a different story. Four times as many CROs who responded said the volunteer model would have an adverse impact compared to the response to a worker model. Overall, 44 per cent said as an unpaid volunteer that they would have to reduce hours or give up altogether. In the busiest area (South and South East) that figure was more than half.
Most people will never meet a CRO. But if disaster struck them along Britain’s 19,000 miles of coastline, they would be grateful to see one. Last August, when a helicopter crashed in my constituency on the Isle of Wight, the first emergency service on the scene was not the ambulance, police or fire service. It was the coastguard – Britain’s fourth emergency service. To anyone with any sense, this is not a job for an unpaid amateur.
The contrast with Labour’s approach to other sectors couldn’t be starker. The Government found millions to settle disputes with the Rail Unions and agree generous pay settlements for resident doctors on salaries way above most. The welfare bill keeps on rising to the extent that even Labour’s Work and Pensions Secretary remarked on the culture of taxing more to pay benefits to others. Yet when it comes to the brave men and women who answer the call in the middle of the night to rescue complete strangers, the Government cannot find the small change in Treasury terms, to meet its basic legal obligations to front line workforce.
The MCA’s conduct has been appalling. But ministers cannot outsource their accountability to an agency, particularly one the Government now knows has misrepresented the views of the very people it is responsible for. Good government means taking responsibility, not hiding behind arm’s-length bodies when things go wrong. I asked Mather whether he had confidence in the MCA boss in the Commons last week. He declined to comment. Ministers should pause these plans, listen to CROs and reverse this decision. It then needs to go further and completely overhaul the out of touch quango who got us into this mess in the first place.
Since publication the coastguard campaign led by Joe Robertson has successfully blocked the decision to strip coastguard’s pay
Joe Robertson is Conservative MP for Isle of Wight East and shadow DCMS minister
Coastguard Rescue Officers represent public service at its finest. Hardworking men and women are on call 24/7, usually alongside another job: teachers, nurses, builders, mechanics, small business owners, and even veterans looking to give back.
But too often they have been taken for granted, disrespected even, by the people responsible for their organisation: the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA).
For years, brave Coastguard Rescue Officers (CROs) have tried standing up to arrogant MCA management only to be shut down, hauled into disciplinary meetings, and threatened against engaging with local MPs.
My constituent, former CRO Martin Groom, stood strong and took it further than most dared. He took his bosses all the way to the Court of Appeal and won. The MCA had dismissed Martin from the service, claiming as a mere volunteer he had no right to be heard. That his legitimate concerns about how the service was being run should not get an airing, even within internal management processes. This came after 35 years of loyal service, dropping everything at a moment’s notice, even missing a family wedding.
The MCA’s volunteer claim flew in the face of hard facts. CROs receive hourly pay, tax deductions and a P60. It is hard to understand what legal la la land the MCA were living in to litigate this through three tiers of the court system, wasting hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ money claiming Martin and his 3,000 colleagues were not workers in law.
Having suffered an embarrassing defeat, far from showing humility and properly reviewing the coastguard rescue service model, the boss of the MCA, Virginia McVea, continued to refer to “volunteers” in flagrant disregard of the court ruling. She even had the audacity to claim that the judges had changed the status of CROs – a staggering misunderstanding considering her career as a human rights lawyer. She must know a court has no such power. The appeal judges stated the existing position as they found it, not the fantasy one concocted within the ivory tower of a government quango.
Instead of respecting rescue officers as workers and meeting basic obligations for statutory sick pay and holiday, MCA bosses wrote to CROs telling them they would be stripped of their hourly pay altogether under a “new volunteer model”. That meant for the hundreds of hours of mandatory training, the long hours on emergency call-outs, the time spent cleaning up from mud rescues and gear checks, these front line workers who have been paid for over 100 years would get nothing. A brutal “fire and rehire” as volunteers.
When I and other MPs began raising concerns to the responsible minister in the Department for Transport, Keir Mather, the MCA doubled down. When McVea met with us, she said this volunteer model is what CROs “are telling us they want,” according to an undisclosed internal survey.
The MCA said they would disclose these remarkable survey findings, but they didn’t. So a whistleblower sent the true survey data to The Times and it revealed a different story. Four times as many CROs who responded said the volunteer model would have an adverse impact compared to the response to a worker model. Overall, 44 per cent said as an unpaid volunteer that they would have to reduce hours or give up altogether. In the busiest area (South and South East) that figure was more than half.
Most people will never meet a CRO. But if disaster struck them along Britain’s 19,000 miles of coastline, they would be grateful to see one. Last August, when a helicopter crashed in my constituency on the Isle of Wight, the first emergency service on the scene was not the ambulance, police or fire service. It was the coastguard – Britain’s fourth emergency service. To anyone with any sense, this is not a job for an unpaid amateur.
The contrast with Labour’s approach to other sectors couldn’t be starker. The Government found millions to settle disputes with the Rail Unions and agree generous pay settlements for resident doctors on salaries way above most. The welfare bill keeps on rising to the extent that even Labour’s Work and Pensions Secretary remarked on the culture of taxing more to pay benefits to others. Yet when it comes to the brave men and women who answer the call in the middle of the night to rescue complete strangers, the Government cannot find the small change in Treasury terms, to meet its basic legal obligations to front line workforce.
The MCA’s conduct has been appalling. But ministers cannot outsource their accountability to an agency, particularly one the Government now knows has misrepresented the views of the very people it is responsible for. Good government means taking responsibility, not hiding behind arm’s-length bodies when things go wrong. I asked Mather whether he had confidence in the MCA boss in the Commons last week. He declined to comment. Ministers should pause these plans, listen to CROs and reverse this decision. It then needs to go further and completely overhaul the out of touch quango who got us into this mess in the first place.
Since publication the coastguard campaign led by Joe Robertson has successfully blocked the decision to strip coastguard’s pay