Shetland MP Alistair Carmichael criticises Maritime Coastguard Agency over plans to cut meagre remuneration for rescue crews
By Contributor
Published: 10:00, 20 June 2026
Coastguard search and rescue crew in Scalloway. Photo: Mark Burgess
How much money would you have to be offered to throw yourself into a dangerous situation at sea? £1,000? £10,000? More?
I suspect that most of us would not start that conversation at £11 per hour – and yet that is the going rate of remuneration for coastguard volunteers in the isles and up and down our coastline, who work in some of the most dangerous conditions imaginable to protect lives at sea.
The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA), however, intends to change these rules following a Court of Appeal judgement earlier this year which changed the status of volunteers for the service – ending even that meagre remuneration to coastguard volunteers in our communities. This position can and must be challenged.
The coastguard is an integral part of our emergency services in the Northern Isles, no less than ambulance and police services are anywhere else in the country. Even on the very day that the news of the cut to remuneration was confirmed, the Lerwick coastguard station reported that they had saved another life in danger here in Shetland.
Communities like our own know all too well the essential role of the coastguard and its workers. No one volunteers with the coastguard for the sake of the remuneration involved, but those payments matter. They matter as a recognition of the dangerous and important work that volunteers do. They also matter on a practical level, as a way to make such volunteering – which takes up time and energy which could be spent on other, paid work – financially viable for those who do it. It is pennies to pounds for the value of the service that they give.
Cutting such remuneration is certain to undermine morale amongst local crews. It will harm the future recruitment of volunteers, and could even risk causing active resignations from the service in the weeks and months to come.
That is why I am seeking a meeting with the chief executive of the MCA to discuss their decision as a matter of urgency. Disappointingly – and it perhaps says something of the attitude that has brought us to this decision – I am still awaiting a substantive response from the agency.
No one who volunteers for coastguard service does so for the remuneration involved - but for sake of that £11 per hour, the MCA risks undermining one of our keystone public services, for generations to come. That cannot be allowed to happen.
