Speech: London International Shipping Week Parliamentary Cruise

Welcome to London International Shipping Week and to the Millennium Diamond for the Maritime UK Parliamentary Cruise.

It’s wonderful to see so many industry colleagues and parliamentarians with us today.

Allow me to pay special thanks to our hosts, City Cruises for lending us this fantastic vessel, and to our reception sponsor, EcoSpeed Marine, for helping make the event possible.  

London International Shipping Week is the world’s pre-eminent maritime event. Bringing together the entire UK maritime cluster with an incredibly diverse international network. That colleagues from so many different parts of the world are taking part is no accident. It is because London and the UK are, in so many ways, the world’s maritime centre. 

This is a week full of the best of UK maritime.

Shipping Week will showcase the latest developments here at home as well as providing a space for the global industry to come together and plan their future.

Just up the river at the Excel, we have DSEI – where our maritime defence, engineering and technology companies are showcasing their wares, with some of the most cutting-edge technology, like autonomy, on display.

And down in Southampton, it’s the Southampton International Boat Show, where the best of British design and manufacturing are being showcased alongside fantastic opportunities for people to get on the water and experience the recreational and health benefits of doing so.

So, this week really shows the breadth of our sector’s activity, and what our sector offers our country.

On that, maritime - comprising the shipping, ports, engineering, science, leisure, and professional services industries - is big business for the UK.

Supporting over 1 million jobs and adding £46.1bn to our economy, maritime makes a greater contribution to the UK economy than both rail and air combined.

The sector enables 95% of UK trade. Food, energy, medicine, and just about everything else.

Maritime is a source of well-paid highly skilled roles, which pay an average of £38,000 per year - £9,000 more than the national average. The UK maritime workforce is 42% more productive than the UK average.

Growing maritime also makes good economic sense. For every £1 generated by the sector, a total £2.71 is generated across the UK economy. 

I want to take a moment to recognise the sector’s key workers – the people behind those statistics – who have worked tirelessly, here in the UK, and around the world, to keep food, energy and medicines, flowing into the country. Thank you.

Colleagues, maritime is starting to be recognised by decision-makers and since we last gathered on the Terrace this time last year, there have been some significant developments. Allow me to list a few:

• The Prime Minister’s Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution included maritime and provided an initial £20 million for a competition to develop clean maritime technology.
• The Chancellor announced the first eight freeports, offering the prospect of accelerated economic development in coastal areas by growing maritime and related development.
• The Government is refreshing its National Shipbuilding Strategy to look at commercial and leisure as well as defence vessel builds
• International shipping emissions have been included as part of the UK’s national emissions targets for the first time and the Transport Decarbonisation Plan has been published, which makes “UK-SHORE” – or the Shipping Office for Reducing Emissions, government policy
• The Prime Minister announced his intention for the UK to become a ‘shipbuilding superpower’, including for green shipping.
• The Government has announced plans for the building of a new National Flagship.

Thanks to the Department for Transport, and the Minister in particular, for championing our cause. At the heart of this is Maritime 2050. The sector’s joint strategy with government to ensure our maritime competitiveness.

Thank you too to those Parliamentarians here today that have worked closely with Maritime UK and our members to maximise the benefit of these initiatives and to keep the pressure on to match our ambitions for this most important of national sectors. Working closely together we can realise the potential of our sector.

When the chancellor issued his call for departments to submit Autumn Spending Review bids, he set out three key priorities:

• Levelling up across the UK to increase and spread opportunity;
• Leading the transition to Net Zero across the country and more globally;
• Advancing Global Britain and seizing the opportunities of EU Exit;

On all of these, the maritime sector is uniquely placed to help.

Just this summer, Chris Whitty’s annual report focused on health in coastal communities and concluded that people’s health and life chances are being affected by a lack of well-paid jobs and opportunity. He specifically cited a lack of private sector industry in many communities.  Already maritime is a big presence in coastal economies - ports alone invest £600m of private funds in their communities each year. But there is huge potential to scale that up and grow all parts of the sector as we respond to the challenge of decarbonisation. On Thursday, the sector will set out its Coastal Powerhouse Manifesto. We must think of the coast, and its economic potential, in the same way that we think of the Northern Powerhouse or Midlands Engine. That means thinking about the coast in a distinct way.  Our SR bid does this and would create over 73,000 new jobs, primarily in coastal areas.

Second, what is Global Britain if it’s not global trade and global leadership. I’ve already spoken about how it is this sector that enables trade – so growing trade ambitions means growing maritime. We also export our own maritime products and services – from superyachts, to navigational equipment and sensors to the world’s most regarded professional services like shipbroking, law, arbitration, insurance and finance. And on leadership, maritime is a sector in which the UK can genuinely play a leadership role. From the UN’s International Maritime Organisation being here in London, to the UK’s position as a global thought-leader and to this week itself. All areas where the UK can and does convene global players to make progress.

And third, on net zero, it will not be possible to decarbonise the country without decarbonising maritime. Maritime is the greenest mode for moving goods – just look at the Thames, where cargo is being moved by barge, relieving pressure on the congested road network in a cleaner, greener way - but with 95% of all trade moving by sea, ours is a sector that makes a globally significant contribution to GHG emissions. As well as greening our own maritime sector, if we move early and fast, we can play a leading global role too. Tomorrow aboard HMS Albion we will announce the winners of the £20m Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition. This competition has demonstrated the capability and expertise of UK companies, and crucially, their appetite to coinvest.

Given that alignment with the Chancellor’s priorities, and because we’re starting to fall behind competitor maritime nations, the sector has submitted a Spending Review bid designed to urgently, accelerate the sector’s move to net zero – and create those 75,000 new jobs in coastal towns and cities.  It calls for an urgent partnership of £1 billion to accelerate our moves toward net zero by co-investing in green infrastructure at ports and on inland waterways and in the propulsion technologies that the UK and world needs.

Details of this bid can be found in the Maritime UK tote bags. If Parliamentarians wish to arrange a briefing, please do get in touch. We ask Parliamentarians to support the bid and join in Thursday’s Westminster Hall debate on the maritime sector. 

Thank you very much, everyone. And it now gives me great pleasure to hand over to Jim McMahon, the Shadow Transport Secretary. Jim, thanks for your support.