P&O Ferries

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

Yes, that is certainly something we are considering. I thank my hon. Friend for his work, and that of his Select Committee and the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, which brought the P&O boss here. I think it astonished the House but also the whole country to hear that testimony, which has directly led to the package that we have today, item No. 6 of which goes some way towards addressing my hon. Friend’s specific point.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

I, too, thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. I genuinely welcome the action that he has outlined today, although the strength of his words must be followed by the strength and urgency of his actions. There are areas where I hope he can be persuaded to go further. However, I am pleased that those who perpetrated these shameful actions against P&O workers are being held to account and shown the consequences of their law-breaking.

As I have said to a few people in this House, I feared that there would be a delay to the national minimum wage measures due to international maritime labour laws. I commend the Secretary of State for trying to find a work-around, but perhaps he can give us more detail on that. In the meantime, will he indemnify ports for any action they may take against ferry operators?

The movement on fire and rehire is welcome, particularly given the work that I and many Members across the House have done in recent years. However—this is where I depart from the praise for the Secretary of State—as I have said to the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Witney (Robert Courts), many British Airways workers have contacted me in the past few days asking this progressive, nay socialist, Transport Secretary whether British Airways workers were being threatened with fire and rehire. The Secretary of State’s statement says that the Government “will take action to prevent employers who have not made reasonable efforts to reach agreement through consultation from using fire and rehire tactics.” No threat of fire and rehire, whether followed by consultation or not, is reasonable. It must end, and now.

Where I am disappointed is with the tools available to tribunals and courts to enforce the new code. A 25% uplift in compensation is, as P&O has demonstrated, merely a cost to be factored in for unscrupulous employers with deep pockets, and it does not hit employers that simply do not pay their tribunal-mandated compensation. Can we instead see some real teeth to allow tribunals to deploy the full range of outcomes towards employers, including recommending reinstatement where possible? That would be a major deterrent to others considering fire and rehire.

The Chair of the Transport Committee, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), and the Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) wrote jointly to the Secretary of State earlier this week. Among other things, they called for the prosecution of P&O, the removal of its licence to operate in the UK and a review of DP World’s involvement in the freeports project. We have heard, sadly, that the DP World review is complete, but what consideration is he giving to the remaining conclusions of the two Chairs?

I welcome the beefed-up role for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency in enforcing some of these new measures. However, the last financial year saw the MCA receive a real-terms cut in central Government funding. Will the Secretary of State make extra funds available to the MCA so that what he has announced today will actually happen on the ground, rather than it being great in principle but undeliverable in practice?

[Grant Shapps]

Briefly, I thank the hon. Gentleman. I mentioned that I will be working with the International Labour Organisation, but I will also be working with the International Maritime Organisation, which is headquartered globally in London, on making this a global move. Some of what he said will not apply, because once we have changed the Harbours Act 1964, it will outlaw the need to end up going to a tribunal on the 25% uplift and the rest of it. I will leave it there for brevity.