MINISTERS must intervene to save Britain’s shipping sector from “terminal decline,” seafarers will warn today, as a new report slams wage exploitation in the industry.

Research by Cardiff University professor Helen Sampson blasts the government’s “free seas” policy for failing to protect the British workforce.

Transport union RMT, which represents around 5,000 seafarers, has compiled a list of “ships of shame” operating off the British coast.

These ferries get away with paying foreign workers well below the minimum wage by flying the flags of other countries.

But employing exclusively foreign workers in the trade has caused a skills shortage and threatens national security, Ms Sampson argues.

She advocates reserving a proportion of each ship’s crew for the national workforce, and cites numerous examples of better practice abroad.

And minimum wage laws should be applied directly to employers rather than waiting for workers to challenge them at tribunals, she says.

RMT will launch the report in Parliament today and unveil a “maritime manifesto” also calling for the Royal Fleet auxiliary to be protected from privatisation and a review of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency.

RMT shipping secretary Steve Todd said: “Our seafarers are ageing and the next generation of seafarers, ratings and officers is not being trained.

“This report provides government and the industry with the tools to provide some balance and stability to seafarer recruitment, something which has been missing from the industry for decades but is absolutely essential to our national economic health.”

Conrad Landin is the Morning Star’s industrial reporter.