P&O Ferries and Employment Rights

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

P&O’s mass sackings are clearly a matter of putting profits before people, and the fact that they were done by Zoom just confirms the employer’s callous stance. It is scandalous that this should be happening at a time of a cost of living crisis. It is an attack on the viability of the UK maritime sector as a whole. In Wales, thousands of people are directly employed in the sector, on ferries in Holyhead, Fishguard, Pembroke Dock and Swansea. The additional indirect employment and benefits reach far out into our economy. The estimate is that for every £1 of domestic output initially generated by the maritime sector in Wales, the Welsh and UK economies get a gross value added gain of £2.70. That is the scale of loss we are facing. This attack on the rights and jobs of seafarers will do great harm to the maritime sector as a whole and to the wider economy.

As we have heard, P&O does not operate ferries from Holyhead, although it has a long history with the port; Stena Line is the major employer and it is a significant employer for north Wales. It, however, has been under pressure with the post-Brexit trading arrangements. A significant proportion of the former UK land-bridge freight now moves directly from the Republic of Ireland to France and north-west Europe, with traffic through Welsh ports permanently down by 30% since 2019. That is the situation we are facing. Any actions the Government do or do not take now will set a precedent for others, and I fear we might be facing a race to the bottom across the industry.

The Government must therefore pursue all legal options available, including criminal proceedings, in response to P&O’s failure to follow its statutory obligations. They should also review all P&O Ferries’ licences to operate vessels in British waters, review any contracts they currently have with P&O Ferries and leverage future Government support to restore the jobs lost—we need to see these seafarers get their jobs back. I include in that contracts with the parent company, DP World. Importantly, as has been mentioned, that includes plans for DP World to run freeports in the UK, which the Chancellor had previously said he was “delighted” about. If the Government do not end their contracts with DP World, they are actively signalling a green light to those low standards for the maritime industry in the UK and the bad effects that we have heard about and I have outlined.

Finally, and importantly, the Government must outlaw fire and rehire. My party’s view is that in the long term the best way to safeguard workers’ rights in Wales is to devolve employment law, so that we can create a strong and fair settlement for workers that protects their livelihoods from opportunistic bad employers by providing decent working practices, pay, terms and conditions.