Oral Answers to Questions

Justin Madders Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I am sure that my hon. Friend is glad to have your endorsement for her question, Mr Speaker. The Government believe that local authorities are best placed to promote and take forward those schemes and, as I said, the local transport fund in the north will mean that £2.5 billion will be available for them. I encourage her to work with stakeholders such as Lancashire County Council. I had the pleasure of discussing a number of those local schemes when I recently met its leadership on a visit to Preston.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

When I have been contacted by constituents excited by the news of the local transport fund, I have asked my local council officers when we can begin some of these projects, but they have been told by Department for Transport civil servants that the bulk of the money will not come until the end of the decade. When will we have some timelines for the delivery of that money? I do not want my constituents to have their expectations raised unreasonably.

--- Later in debate ---

[Guy Opperman]

As my hon. Friend knows, I grew up in Wexcombe and I know that particular area of Collingbourne very well. I pass on my condolences to the individual family. He knows that there are powers under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984. I will write to him in detail with the powers that local authorities have to address that particular point. On the specifics of the review, that will be contained in road investment strategy 3, which will be published very shortly.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

I listened to the Minister’s response earlier, on why Avanti should continue to provide rail services. It sounded like he was reading from one of its press releases. The litany of excuses was very long, blaming everyone but itself. When will he listen to the leaders of the north? When will he listen to the people of the north and get rid of Avanti?

[Huw Merriman]

The point I was making is that if the operator changes, the contracts between operator and the unions will remain unless the unions are willing to release. There cannot be a unilateral change. The courts would not allow it. As I say, that was put in place in 1997. It was supposed to end in 2002, but continued. It is now, effectively, a part of a term and condition. A change of operator will not make any difference to that. I do listen to those in the north and I am delighted that I will be listening to the leader of ASLEF, because he has agreed to sit down with me so we can discuss those terms. I hope I can work with all Members of the House to make that happen.

Zero-emission Vehicles, Drivers and HS2

Justin Madders Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

The Ely junction scheme, which I know my right hon. Friend and others welcome, is a well worked through scheme that was on Network Rail’s list of important priorities, but we simply did not have the money to fund it. We now do, as a result of this project. People cannot want to continue building the second phase of HS2 and simultaneously want to do all these other things. A choice had to be made, and we made that choice, and I think it is the right choice for the country. I know how important my right hon. Friend thinks her road scheme is. I obviously cannot deal with it now but, as ever, I would be happy to meet her to discuss how important it is for her constituents.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

I saw the Secretary of State’s Network North map on Twitter, featuring those legendary northern towns of Tavistock, Dawlish and Plymouth. That might have been mildly amusing had my constituency not been cut in half, with the whole of the Wirral disappearing into the Irish sea. Have we been taken off the map because we have no funding for any capital transport projects? Will Cheshire West and Chester Council now get a refund for the hundreds of thousands of pounds that it has already spent on preparatory work for HS2 coming to Cheshire? That money now appears to have been wasted because of the bungled handling of this contract.

[Mr Harper]

Just to be clear, of the money that we are saving as a result of cancelling the second phase of HS2, just under £20 billion is being spent in the north and just under £10 billion is being spent in the midlands. The money being spent in the rest of the country is the money saved from the way we are now going to deliver Euston station—with a much more ambitious development, building thousands more houses and having a much more positive impact on the local economy. It is sensible to call it Network North, because that is where two thirds of the money is going, but the £6.5 billion that is being spent in the rest of the country, outside the north and the midlands, will be very welcome. As I have said, every penny is being reinvested in those parts of the country that HS2 was going to benefit. In the north of England, for example, we are looking at investing £12 billion in the line between Liverpool and Manchester, and at having productive talks with the Mayors in that part of the world to deliver transport projects that are their priorities for the people they represent.

West Coast Main Line Franchise

Justin Madders Excerpts

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

This decision is as embarrassing as it is baffling. The Minister talks about improvements, but my constituents have not seen those improvements. He talks about reducing the number of cancellations: with Avanti having cancelled half of the services from Chester directly to London, that will obviously reduce the number of cancellations. Yesterday, for example, Avanti started a train from Crewe rather than from Chester. That presumably does not count as a cancellation, but that is absolutely no consolation to someone in Chester. It seems to me that the Government know that the companies are playing with the figures and are prepared to accept a second-class service for the people of the north.

[Jesse Norman]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concern. It is fair to say that, from day to day, there are different issues that interrupt a good service. As I have already said, those relate not just to the availability of drivers and other key staff, but to underperformance from time to time and disruption to Network Rail infrastructure. All of those things can play their role in a highly integrated network.

Rail Ticket Offices

Justin Madders Excerpts

Thursday 6th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Huw Merriman]

Yes. I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I hope that these changes will lead to more face-to-face interaction, because those who work on the railway and provide such brilliant help, information and reassurance for passengers will be more likely to be in the places where those passengers are located. Southeastern is doing its consultation in stages—the current part is for the metro side of Southeastern, after which it will be rolled out further—but I can give my hon. Friend that assurance.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

My constituents and I are getting a bit fed up of everything being pushed online, because as we have heard today, it does not work for everyone. However, I want to ask the Minister what he is going to do to help operators deal with this change. Merseyrail, for example, does not accept tickets on phones, and there have been plenty of examples of people who bought through tickets online being fined because they have not been able to produce a physical ticket. Is the Minister going to do an assessment of operators’ capacity to deal with this issue and give them some financial support to make that change?

Oral Answers to Questions

Justin Madders Excerpts

Thursday 8th June 2023 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

1. Whether he has had recent discussions with the Leader of the House on legislation to establish Great British Railways.

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Mark Harper)]

With your indulgence, Mr Speaker, I will begin by sending my heartfelt condolences to the people of India, who, in the eastern state of Odisha on Friday, suffered the country’s deadliest rail crash in over two decades. The death toll stands at 288, with over 1,000 people injured. It was caused by the collision of two passenger trains and a stationary goods train. I have written to the Indian Rail Minister expressing our deepest sympathies, and I believe I speak for the whole House when I say that our thoughts are with the victims and their families, as well as with the emergency services as they continue to respond to the tragedy.

Turning to the question, the Government’s ambition is for a customer-focused, commercially-led industry, with the creation of Great British Railways as a new guiding mind for the sector. We are working closely with the GBR Transition Team, the wider rail sector and other Departments to move forward with reform, and I was pleased to recently announce Derby as the location of GBR’s headquarters.

[Justin Madders]

On behalf of Opposition Members, may I associate myself with the Secretary of State’s comments in respect of the people of India?

In the north-west, we were hoping that the formation of GBR might have been on track by now to help us deal with the chronically underperforming Avanti West Coast, but we see no sign of the legislation. Parliament certainly has the time to deal with it—we finished after a couple of hours on Tuesday—and it is certainly not a question of money, as we know £50 million has already been spent on the project. What exactly is the problem with bringing the matter before the House? Is it a lack of political will, or is it a lack of competence?

Electric Vehicles: Infrastructure

Justin Madders Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Westminster Hall

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Bone. As we have heard, it is no secret that we are approaching one of the biggest changes to the structure of the car industry in its history. The UK’s commitment to ending sales of new carbon-emitting cars could make us a world leader in this space. It is a crucial step for not just this country, but the entire world. As we have heard, the transition is crucial on both the manufacturing and consumer side, and it must not be forgotten when we are discussing electric vehicles that manufacturing is critical in all this.

A report published back in 2013 outlined an industrial strategy for the automotive sector and emphasised the need to prepare for the transition. In some ways, that has been a success; I need look no further than my own constituency and the Vauxhall plant in Ellesmere Port, where we are in the middle of converting the production lines to produce electric vehicles. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) will have the same experience in her constituency in the not too distant future, and Nissan in Sunderland has also taken such steps.

Those are encouraging signs, but I am afraid there are far too many other examples where we are missing out. Only a few days ago, Ford announced plans to axe 20% of its UK workforce. Not so long ago, Britishvolt announced that its plans to set up a gigafactory were on hold; I know there have been some developments with that, but it is still in the balance. BMW have announced that the electric Mini will not be produced in Oxford, and Jaguar and Honda have closed their vehicle production plants in Castle Bromwich and Swindon. From a position of great strength a decade ago, we are now in a position of great struggle.

What is the reason for this malaise? There are a number of factors in play, which I will not be able to rehearse in the time we have, but one of the fundamental problems is a lack of Government commitment to the strategy we have discussed. It seems to me that the central impediment is a mistaken belief that things should be left to the markets. The two positive examples that I have given of investment in new production were not left to the market; there was Government intervention, and that needs to be continued on both the manufacturing and consumer side.

In the minds of consumers, there is a hesitancy about making a huge financial commitment when the initial cost and convenience of running an electric vehicle are still up for debate. Brand new electric vehicles are far more expensive than traditional vehicles and, although they are becoming a greater proportion of sales, there is a natural ceiling to how much ordinary families will be able to afford.

[Tahir Ali (Birmingham, Hall Green) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Justin Madders]

I am afraid that I do not have any time for interventions. As technology has progressed and electric vehicles have become more numerous on the roads, focus has turned to the availability and practicality of owning one and the concerns arising about access to on-street parking and charging. About a third of UK homes do not have off-street parking, and that means that we need a more holistic approach to charging for the significant numbers of people who, at the moment, do not have off-street access. We have to deal with the iniquity that they will pay up to four times more in VAT than those who can access electricity directly.

The Government’s commitment to building 300,000 new charging points is welcome, but the vast majority of those are in London. Indeed, in boroughs such as Westminster, London has exceeded the 2025 target by 358%, whereas in places such as western Cheshire, which I represent, local authorities reach only 28% of the 2025 target. That is not a good record for a Government that stood on a platform of levelling up the country.

It appears that there is a lack of strategy to deal with those disparities. The Government’s infrastructure report claims that:

“Installing and operating chargepoints requires several parties across the energy sector, local government and the transport sector to work together effectively.”

That is correct, but what are the Government going to do about those challenges? Where does the responsibility ultimately lie?

I believe that in order to achieve the transition to electric vehicles, local authorities need to be given the capacity, the resources and the authority to plan and deliver what is needed. The necessary powers must be backed by proper funding. From my rough calculations, what the Government have set aside so far will fund about a third of the requirement for electric charging points. However, it is about more than just cash, because there needs to be leadership and a proper national strategy. This will ultimately be a major change in the country’s infrastructure, and it cannot simply be left to the market as it is at the moment.

Avanti West Coast Contract Renewal

Justin Madders Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

As I have touched on already, we do not believe that simply popping this into the OLR and changing the paintwork on the trains, as if that is a magic solution, will be an effective way forward. We believe that tackling the underlying issues, such as ensuring that there are an adequate number of train drivers to operate the service without using rest day working for drivers, is at the core of a successful operation, either under the current franchise or potentially under the OLR in future. We are clear that we will expect to see significant improvements following implementation of the plan put forward by Avanti in taking a long-term contract decision.

I am always pleased to hear of the investment being secured for Birmingham, particularly by Mayor Andy Street. Of course, one of the biggest drivers of investment in Birmingham now—this is one thing that there probably will be some agreement on—is Birmingham Curzon Street. That is being built and will be the main terminus for HS2, which has enjoyed cross-party support, and it is starting to drive investment in Birmingham, and we very much welcome it.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

I am pleased to be able to speak to the Minister about this. We were due to meet yesterday, but unfortunately he cancelled at short notice, leaving me with a feeling not dissimilar to that of Avanti West Coast passengers. I have no criticism of him for that, because he had important business in the House. I hope we are able to meet soon, because I have been trying to meet him and his many, many predecessors for the last six months to discuss this issue. The state of direct services between Chester and London is appalling. We were promised improvements by Avanti, but the services have actually gone backwards. Having seen how Avanti has failed to deliver on its promises so far, I have no confidence that it will be able to pull this off in time for the renewal of the franchise. Does the Minister have confidence in Avanti?

[Kevin Foster]

It is worth pointing out what I was doing yesterday afternoon: I was in the Chamber answering an urgent question. Urgent questions seem to be a bit like buses; you wait a while for one, and then two come along fairly close together.

We have scrutinised carefully what Avanti is doing with its improvement plan for December. As I have said a number of times, we are not just going to accept assurances that it will work. DFT officials are engaging daily—weekly at more senior levels—to ensure that the company is hitting the milestones it needs to for this improvement plan. We all want to see the line operate and move forward successfully. However, we have been clear that if it does not, and if by April the improvements have not happened and been sustained, we will follow the due process, but that may well have a strong impact on the long-term decision.

Future of Rail

Justin Madders Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2022 Westminster Hall

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Charles. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) for introducing the debate. I am also pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) here, because I want to talk about the journeys that we used to take together when we were first elected in 2015. Those hourly direct services from Chester to London have all gone during the pandemic and are yet to return. I understand that we are due to get some back next month, but not all of them will be restored. I have to ask the Minister, why are we waiting longer than everyone else to get a lesser service restored? Who is accountable for that decision? Will we ever get back to what we had before? What evidence are those decisions based on?

Those questions are important because the Department is also planning to award a new 10-year franchise to run the line later in the year. How can decisions be properly made on future service provision when the service is not yet back to pre-pandemic levels? What evidence base will the Department be working on for that decision? There needs to be a crystal-clear commitment that the new franchise will restore hourly direct services from Chester to London. I would like the Minister, when she responds, to say that is exactly what will happen. If she cannot do that, will she at least meet me and my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester to discuss what we would like to see in the new 10-year deal?

We cannot continue to have decisions made about our rail services without reference to Members in this place and our communities. I have suggested to Avanti already that if it does not want to run the service at the previous level, it should not only not bid on the current franchise but give the current one up. I am due to meet Avanti on Friday, and I will be interested to hear what it has to say. In the meantime, I hope that we have the Department’s support in restoring services to pre-pandemic levels.

Perhaps when I meet Avanti I will be told that it has been unable to restore services because of a lack of demand. Of course, if it does not put the services on, we do not know what the demand is. It may be the case that a huge increase in home working as a result of the pandemic has affected travel patterns, but I would not be surprised if there were other issues at play. If there is a feeling that businesses are using rail less, perhaps the answer may lie in the eye-watering costs attached to such travel.

Let us look at journeys of a similar distance between cities in England, Germany and France: Chester to London is 165 miles; Hamburg to Berlin is 159 miles; and Calais to Paris is 147 miles. The cost of a single rail ticket for the morning to arrive by 9 am for each of those journeys tells its own story: Hamburg to Berlin is £26; Calais to Paris is £39; and Chester to London is £155. Travelling from Chester to London costs nearly six times more than a similar journey in Germany and nearly four times more than a similar journey in France. In fact, I can get to Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt or to Tel Aviv in Israel for less money than it costs me to get to London by train before 9 am, so I can actually get to another continent for less money. Therefore, if we are going to do something about rail travel in future, let us make it affordable for everyone.

P&O Ferries and Employment Rights

Justin Madders Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

We have heard some excellent speeches today from my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and my hon. Friends the Members for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner), for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey), for Easington (Grahame Morris), for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) and for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh).

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden and her campaigning on this issue over the past six years. She was absolutely right to talk about the work she has done there and the long list of employers that have tried this before, many successfully, highlighting exactly why a change is needed. Time prevents me from mentioning every speech in detail, but I will refer to the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East—a powerful and deeply personal speech about why this situation matters so much to him. As we heard, he has been campaigning on these issues for years, and surely now we must all regret that the Government have failed to heed his warnings.

My hon. Friend called this action industrial vandalism, and that sums up the situation perfectly. What has happened to P&O workers is nothing short of a scandalous betrayal. Workers with families to support, bills to pay and lives to live had their plans upended in three minutes by an unscrupulous employer acting in the most cynical and calculating way. Every Member of this House should be united in condemning the brutality we have seen: thugs for hire, some wearing balaclavas and carrying handcuffs, turning up to boot people off the ship straight after they were sacked on a three-minute video call. If that is not bad enough, the pariahs responsible for this had already lined up cut-price workers at the dockside to replace them: workers who, let us be clear, are going to be paid at a rate that drives a coach and horses through the minimum wage laws. Those who have been sacked have also been threatened with losing what little compensation they have been offered if they talk to anyone about it, further compounding the sense of injustice they feel and further exposing the bully-boy tactics of their employer.

We need to be clear that this decision cannot stand. Unscrupulous employers cannot be given free rein to sack their workforce, destroying secure jobs and replacing them with cheap, insecure agency work. Such actions must have consequences. Every tool at the disposal of the state must be used to its maximum effect, because if one company can divest itself of responsibility for its workforce in such a callous, cynical and frankly offensive manner without a serious response from Government, then others will see that as a green light to do exactly the same. This must be a line in the sand.

Condemnation, while necessary, is insufficient, and condemnation after the event from a Government who knew it was about to happen is simply not good enough. As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), a memo was circulated beforehand that makes it clear that the intention of P&O was to replace staff on lower terms and conditions, and with agency workers.

[Jerome Mayhew]

rose—

[Justin Madders]

I am sorry but I do not have time to give way.

That means that the Secretary of State should have known that this was not an ordinary redundancy situation. The memo also says that disruption was expected to last for 10 days. Why would there be disruption if normal consultation procedures had been followed? The Secretary of State himself said that previous redundancies had been made in the past few years and consultation procedures had been followed, but there was no disruption then, so it was absolutely clear that there was going to be something different this time. Despite those warnings, the Government could not find the time to make one single phone call before P&O went ahead with the sackings, neither to the company nor indeed to the trade unions. All the anguish, distress and heartbreak for these 800 families could have been avoided if Ministers had made the effort to contact P&O before it went ahead with its plan. Having said that, given that their first attempt at letter-writing to P&O after the horse had bolted was addressed to somebody who left the company last year, I do wonder how effective such interventions would have been. As we have heard, the Secretary of State’s big demand of P&O is that it change the name of the ship: absolutely pathetic.

The internal Government memo makes it clear that there is a level of acceptance that these measures are necessary to ensure that P&O can stay competitive, but paying workers well below the minimum wage is not being competitive; it is cheating the system. Sacking permanent staff and replacing them with agency workers is not being competitive; it is yet another example of a big company chipping away at job security and safety just to make a few extra quid.

[Karl Turner]

When I was on King George dock in Hull on Thursday, I met some of the new crew. They did not have a clue what they were doing there. They were told they were joining a brand-spanking-new vessel. They did not know they were there to take jobs. Does my hon. Friend want to say something about safety? Does he think that those new crew have been trained sufficiently—for example, in lifeboat practice and safety at sea? Those courses are absolutely crucial, not least given that a few days from now it is 36 years since the Herald of Free Enterprise went down.

[Justin Madders]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has made another excellent point. There really are serious safety concerns. We have to be absolutely crystal clear that the Government are enforcing all safety checks, because people simply cannot get on to a ship without any experience or knowledge of it beforehand, and that certainly cannot be done with an entire crew while expecting things to run okay.

[Jerome Mayhew]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Justin Madders]

No, I do not have time—I am sorry.

The memo that the Government issued makes it clear that they are content for companies to ride roughshod over good employment practice. The net result is that bad employers have been emboldened by how little this Government do to protect the rights of workers. They think they can abuse workers and get away with it because for 12 years this Government have allowed exploitative work models to grow unchecked. They have let fire and rehire practices proliferate entirely untouched by legislation. Yes, guidance has been issued by ACAS, but that has not changed the legal position one bit. It has merely restated the existing law, but that law has been shown to be hopelessly unbalanced against the worker, open to abuse, and totally unacceptable in 2022.

The Government have the power to institute criminal proceedings against directors for this—I can assure the House that those P&O staff being sacked last Thursday felt like criminals when they were confronted with security guards carrying handcuffs—but it is those responsible for the decisions who are the true lawbreakers. Exactly how many people in the past have been prosecuted and hit with those unlimited fines? If anyone has been successfully prosecuted and fined for breaching these rules, the Government have kept remarkably quiet about it. Let us hope that this time the threats made to P&O are not empty and the Government follow this right through to the end and actually make some noise about it. If that does not happen, they must understand that they continue to send the message to these bad employers that they can carry on with impunity and that this Government are more interested in protecting their own Back Benchers’ second jobs than everyone else’s first.

On the review of DP World contracts, when will the Minister be able to update the House on the outcome of that? Why are the Government still just considering removing P&O from Government advisory boards? Why have they not done it already? What more evidence do they need that P&O is totally unfit to be part of these bodies? Labour stands firmly with the P&O workers and the work being done by the RMT and north-west unions to stand up for them. Today we are asking all Members to join us in standing up with them and for the rights of all workers, who deserve security and respect in return for an honest day’s work.

This is an opportunity for us to really say what kind of country we want. Insecurity is baked into so many workplaces that it is little wonder that so many people feel a sense of helplessness and inevitability about what has happened in this case. But it does not have to be this way. Job security does not have to be out of reach to millions; it should be the basic cornerstone of any civilised society, and one building block of that has to be an end to fire and rehire.

The destructive combination of weak employment laws, opportunistic employers and an indifferent Government is leading to a race to a bottom, and it is time that race was stopped. It is in all our interests that we have strong workforce protections. A secure workforce is a productive workforce. It is good for employers and good for the economy. It creates a level playing field. Do we really think it is a healthy sign for our economy that the only way businesses think they can get ahead is for their staff to be paid £1.80 an hour and to live in a tent? Is that what we really want as a future for our country? Are we not here to try to improve the lives of the people we represent? Do we not think that security, fair pay and decency in the workplace are central to that?

For too long the pendulum has swung too far away from protection at work and too far into the hands of those who wish to exploit British workers. Changing that is a fundamental part of why Labour Members are here. We should not be bystanders but defenders of working people and workplace rights. If we let this go now, who will be next? Without job security, people have no security. We cannot—we must not—continue to allow the worst excesses of capitalism to stick two fingers up at the workers in this country. It is time that these disgusting practices met their end.

It is time that this place sent out a message—a message that was backed up by the full force of the law. We are not going to be the soft touch of Europe, we are not going to be the easiest of easy pickings for the billionaires who want to boost their profits still further, and we are not going to be a country where loyalty is rewarded with the sack and the race to the bottom is all that matters; we are going to be a country where employment protections have strength and meaning, where security, prosperity and respect run through every workplace like a golden thread, and where those who seek to undermine those values and rules are sent packing. I commend this motion to the House.

P&O Ferries

Justin Madders Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Courts]

The hon. Member will have noticed that this announcement was made only this morning, so, clearly, this is something that has come as a shock to the entire House. I hope that that clears up that matter for him.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

I think that we can all agree that being sacked over Zoom with no notice and no consultation is barbaric. It also shows how broken our employment laws are in this country, because these people are being told that they are being made redundant when there is a group of workers waiting to replace them standing by the dockside. It is the fact that these workers are already in place that shows how pre-prepared and cynical this was. P&O had clearly been working on this for some time, so can the Minister tell us when it first informed the Government of its intentions?

[Robert Courts]

The hon. Member is probably right that P&O had been considering this for some time. The Government was first informed of this yesterday evening.