P&O Ferries

Debate between Barry Gardiner and Robert Courts

Monday 28th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Courts]

Unfortunately, the hon. Lady is just wrong on a number of points. For example, in regulations from 2020 the national minimum wage was extended to the vast majority of seafarers working on the UK continental shelf, so she is just wrong about that. There is an issue here that we are seeking to address, and we are addressing it.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

After Peter Hebblethwaite admitted to the Select Committee that he had broken the law and would do so again, the nation has concluded that he is not a fit and proper person to be a director of P&O, or indeed of any company. When will the Government also reach that conclusion and disqualify him? When will they seek to ensure that workers onshore are not treated with the same contempt as those seafaring workers have been, and make sure that people cannot be fired in such a way, whether they are working for Weetabix, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, British Airways, British Gas or any of the other companies that have done the same thing over the past two years?

P&O Ferries

Debate between Barry Gardiner and Robert Courts

Thursday 17th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Courts]

The important thing to understand is that maritime contracts can often be quite complicated. Different contracts can apply for different seafarers at different times. I do not want to be in a position where anybody is looking to me for legal advice from the Dispatch Box. That is not my role as a Minister. I urge everybody to obtain their own independent legal advice so that they can take any steps that are necessary. It is for lawyers to provide that assistance, not Ministers.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

For how long are the Government prepared to allow companies such as P&O to treat loyal workers with contempt while they leach off the UK taxpayer? The Minister will know that there is a £146 million deficit in the pension fund for P&O retirees, yet P&O’s owners, DP World, just spent £147 million on sponsoring the European golf tour. After taking £10 million from taxpayers for furlough and demanding a further £150 million from the public purse to keep its operations going, the company paid out £270 million to shareholders in dividends and is now trying to fire 800 loyal workers. Does the Minister accept that P&O is taking him and the Treasury for fools? Does he regret the Government’s failure to back the measures in my private Member’s Bill that would have prevented these 800 seafarers from being treated so disgracefully?

[Robert Courts]

As I have said, we need to take stock of the situation as we understand it. The hon. Gentleman referred to fire and rehire; this may not be a fire and rehire situation—

[Barry Gardiner]

I said the measures in my Bill.

[Robert Courts]

I am happy to look at what the measures in his Bill were, but we need to understand exactly what has taken place. I agree with his wider points about the actions that P&O has taken at the same time as treating its workers this way. Treating long-serving, loyal, hard-working, skilled people in this way cannot be defended.

Trade Bill

Debate between Barry Gardiner and Robert Courts

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 20th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

It is a great honour to speak in this debate, having spoken briefly on Second Reading and sat on the Bill Committee and being a member of the International Trade Committee. We had a wide-ranging, well-informed and constructive debate in Committee, and it is good to see so many of its members speaking in the debate.

I would like to address a number of points, including the clauses relating to the NHS and to scrutiny, but because of the time limit, I will confine myself to just one, which is standards, and in particular new clause 11. Simply put, new clause 11 would allow the import of agricultural goods into the UK

“only if the standards to which those goods were produced were as high as”

the standards that apply under UK law. On the face of it, that sounds reasonable because it just seeks to ensure what we already have. Nobody has any difficulty with that—everybody here wants to maintain the high production standards, animal welfare standards and environmental standards that we have. That is why the Government have been absolutely clear that they will do precisely that. That is why the Minister stood on a manifesto commitment to do exactly that. That is why I stood on a manifesto commitment to do exactly that, as did all my hon. Friends.

There are a number of misunderstandings, which I will briefly address. We have already heard a number of times from Opposition Members about chlorine-washed chicken and hormone-treated beef, and I am sure we will hear about it again before the end of the debate. Those are already illegal in UK law. They are illegal because they are in European Union law, and European Union law is put into UK law by the terms of the withdrawal agreement. When Opposition Members plaintively say, “Why won’t the Government just put this in primary legislation?” the answer is because it is already there. If it were to be removed, the Government would have to bring something to the House and get us to vote on it—they would have to change the law, and we have all expressed our view about that. That prohibition is already there, so new clause 11 is simply unnecessary.

New clause 11 seeks to go further than maintaining our high import standards. It is crucial that we distinguish between import standards, which is the safety of food brought into this country, and safety standards, which is the way that they are produced domestically. The new clause seeks to have us say to all our trade partners, “We want to go further than ensuring that we import safe food. We want to reach into your domestic legislation and tell you exactly how you produce that food.” No self-respecting independent country will want to do that.

[Barry Gardiner]

That is patently false. All the new clause does is to say, “If you want to produce food to export into our market, it must be produced to these standards.” It does not in any way seek to impose legislation in the United States or anywhere else that would govern the way in which they can produce food.