Carmichael demands meeting with Coastguard boss after cuts to volunteer remuneration

Orkney and Shetland MP, Alistair Carmichael, has today written to the Chief Executive of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, Virginia McVea, to demand a meeting over cuts to Coastguard volunteer remuneration.

Currently Coastguard Rescue Officers (CROs), which make up the bulk of the Coastguard Rescue Service, are given hourly remuneration for attending incidents and training exercises – approximately £11 per hour. The MCA plans to change these rules following a Court of Appeal judgement earlier this year, which classed responders as “workers” while they were carrying out their duties.

Mr Carmichael said:

The Coastguard is an integral part of our emergency services in the isles, no less than ambulance and police services are anywhere else in the country. Anyone employed in the fishing and energy sectors – or indeed anyone else who works or travels by sea – knows the enormous importance of the Coastguard and its workers.

No one volunteers with the Coastguard for the sake of the remuneration involved but those payments matter, both as recognition of the dangerous and important work that volunteers do, and as a way to make such volunteering financially viable. Cutting such remuneration is likely to undermine morale amongst local crews, harm future recruitment of volunteers, and could even risk causing active resignations from the service.

Any move that could damage the quality and reliability of our coastguard services is a matter that should concern us all. I look forward to meeting with the Chief Executive to discuss this decision in due course.