P&O Ferries and Employment Rights

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

This debate comes at a time when 800 workers have lost their jobs in the most disgusting and disgraceful of circumstances. I join others in paying huge tribute to the RMT and Nautilus, not just for immediately defending their members, but for providing brilliant information and support to help us ensure that this debate is fully informed.

As Members have said, one coach turned up at the portside to replace the crew with low-paid staff. They are not the enemy; they are migrant workers who are being grossly exploited. The enemy is P&O, which sent them there in the first place. Then, as the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) said, another coach turned up full of people trained in the use of tasers and handcuffs to remove current staff, some of whom had worked for the company for 30 years or more. Just think about that. This is modern Britain, and people turned up wearing balaclavas, with tasers and handcuffs, to get workers off a ship because they might not want to leave. The workers were then told that if they did not accept the money and sign an order that would forever seal their lips on the subject, they would get no money at all. This is modern Britain at its absolute worst.

The situation also calls into question a lot of legislation. Over the years, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and I went many times to the Department for Transport demanding that the national minimum wage apply to international seafarers operating in and out of British ports as well as, obviously, to those working routes within the UK’s territorial waters. That never happened, I guess because of pressure from ship-owning companies on successive Governments. It is absolutely disgraceful. Other legislation is weak on trade union protection and weak on employment protection—weaker than most countries in Europe and many other countries in the world—and that must change.

The Minister comes here with his crocodile tears of concern, yet he refused even to support the principles behind the excellent Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) on fire and rehire. If we are serious about protecting employment rights, we need legislation that protects those rights and does not allow companies to behave like this and get away with it. I suspect the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) may be right that the company gamed the process through on a legal basis to see whether it could get away with it. Well, if it does, the Government have options.

The options put forward in the RMT document are as follows. First, the Government could tell the company to reverse the decision. Secondly, they could remove all Government contracts of any sort from P&O with immediate effect. Thirdly, we can all boycott P&O. Nobody needs to go on P&O. Fourthly, we could pass the necessary legislation.

If at the end of that process the 800 have still lost their jobs and P&O thinks it can still get away with this kind of behaviour, the Government have not just an opportunity, but a duty. Shipping is a major strategic industry. We are an island. We need shipping. Those ships have to sail, so it is the Government’s responsibility to ensure that they do. If all else fails, the option of taking the industry, or that section of it, into public ownership should be used as a direct threat to that company given its behaviour and its financial and investment strategy. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) pointed out, the company has money for golf and Formula 1, but the pension fund has a huge hole and £200 million was paid out in dividends last year.