Lord Lennie
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P&O Ferries
Lord Lennie Excerpts(2 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
The noble Lord is right and, as Ministers stated in the other place, we are reviewing existing arrangements and working with all government departments to consider what relationships we have with DP World. This includes my honourable friend in another place, Minister Scully, saying that the company should be on notice that it had fundamentally changed the relationship with government, including a £25 million subsidy the company received to help develop London Gateway as a freeport. It needs to realise that the relationship between the companies and the Government has changed as a result of its absolutely callous conduct.
Lord Lennie (Lab)
My Lords, if P&O Ferries’ disgraceful action of sacking its workforce and bringing in agency workers to replace them on £2 an hour, with its ships being re-flagged outside the UK is not illegal, it certainly should be. What happened to taking back control? The Government could have prevented this, had they supported a Labour Private Member’s Bill that would have outlawed such fire and rehire practices. How will the Government stop this ever happening again? Will they now, as the noble Lord, Lord Fox, said, review DP World’s suitability for the £50 million freeport contracts it has recently been awarded?
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
My Lords, I answered the last question with the words of my right honourable friend in the other place. The noble Lord is quite right that there is some truth in Barry Gardiner’s Private Member’s Bill, but I am not sure that it would have helped in this case, given that the fire and rehire may not apply to the replacement of British workers with lower-paid workers from overseas in a maritime context, as their contracts were with Jersey and therefore may not have been subject to UK law. However, we are looking at all these things and working out how we can take this matter forward and stop companies taking advantage of a loophole in the minimum wage legislation as it stands.