Westminster Hall
1 July 2026
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Westminster Hall House of Commons
00:27 - 00:30
Speaker 1
Order, order. Alistair Carmichael to move the motion.
00:30 - 02:59
Speaker 2
Thank you very much, Mr. Shelbrooke. I beg to move that this House has considered the matter of HMRC guidance and remuneration of coastguard volunteers. It's a pleasure to serve with you in the chair, Mr. Shelbrooke. I welcome the Minister to his position. Um, this is a timely debate, um, because, Mr. Shelbrooke, I am angry and I am offended by what the Maritime Coastguard Agency is doing to our coastguard rescue officers.
I believe that the changes that are being introduced following on from the recent Court of Appeal judgment risk hollowing out a crucial emergency service relied on by people in my constituency and in coastal and island communities around the country. I believe that these changes should be paused, taken away, a proper and meaningful consultation held, and then brought back in a shape that respects the contribution and service given by coastguard rescue officers, which will secure the future of that service. But I want the Minister to understand today just why this matters as much as it does. And to do that, I want to take the House back to the 8th of December 1963, some 20 months before I was born. On 3:00 AM on that date, the Fleetwood trawler Margaret Wicks 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 3:00 AM on the 8th of 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 and under a steeply sloping cliff 250 feet high, and the volunteer in charge, Mr. John Lochead, 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.
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