P&O Ferries and Employment Rights

Debate between Karl Turner and Justin Madders

Monday 21st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[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.