Marking the 20th anniversary of the Morecambe Bay cockling disaster, the Unite general union called for urgent reform of the GLAA. On the evening of 5 February 2004, more than 30 young workers, mostly Chinese nationals and many with little experience or knowledge of the sea were trapped by rising tides and 23 died. Unite said the GLAA had been “successively weakened” by the previous government and that “the widescale and often dangerous exploitation of vulnerable workers is still rife”.