P&O Ferries and Employment Rights

Paul Scully Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)]

I thank the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) for bringing this debate to the House; it is absolutely right and important that she has done so. We have heard many powerful and passionate speeches and I am grateful to all hon. Members who have contributed. The strength of feeling in this place is absolutely clear: P&O Ferries has conducted itself appallingly.

We are working to establish the facts of the case, but there can be no excuse for the way that workers have been treated. We have seen that P&O Ferries felt close enough to the UK to receive furlough payments, but not close enough to respect UK employment law. In Britain, we expect companies to treat their employees fairly. That is not just the right thing to do; that is the law.

P&O Ferries has dismissed 800 loyal and hard-working staff without any consultation or notice. Those workers have given many years of loyal service to the company, including playing a critical role during the covid pandemic and dedicating their time, skills and experience to P&O. They should feel proud of their contribution to society, but instead of being rewarded for their efforts, they have received a massive slap in the face from their employer at a particularly difficult time. My thoughts are with those people who have lost their jobs—people who have bills to pay and families to support. It will be a very worrying time for them and their loved ones.

Businesses have experienced a challenging time during the pandemic and many may continue to face financial pressures. To stay afloat, businesses sometimes need to make staffing changes and unfortunately redundancies are sometimes necessary, but UK workers benefit from robust protections in such circumstances. I will briefly explain how those protections should work.

Collective redundancy occurs when 20 or more employees may be made redundant at one establishment within a 90-day period. Employers have a statutory duty to consult employees’ representatives about proposed redundancies. The consultation should be of good time and good length depending on the number of redundancies proposed, must be completed before any dismissal notices can take effect, and must be entered into in good faith, which means that it should be undertaken with a view to reaching agreement with those representatives. The consultation should include a consideration of ways to avoid dismissals, reduce the number to be made redundant and mitigate the effect of the dismissals.

Those rules are not a suggestion; they are the law and must be followed. If the work has a sufficient connection to the UK, the workers will have the benefit of UK employment rights, irrespective of the terms of the contract. P&O Ferries has clearly been well aware of those requirements and its responsibility under the law, which is what makes the situation particularly scandalous.

We are taking the matter incredibly seriously. As we have heard, on Thursday, the Maritime Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts), spoke with P&O and made the Government’s anger and disappointment absolutely clear. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport wrote to the chief exec of P&O last week to make it clear that the Government will review all current contracts with P&O and its owner DP World and will instruct the Maritime and Coastguard Agency to inspect all vessels before they return to service to ensure their safety.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Paul Scully]

I will not give way, but that reflects the contribution of the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner), who talked about the agency workers not knowing the vessels. I have no doubt that that will be picked up by the MCA on its inspection.

[Andy McDonald]

Will the Minister give way?

[Paul Scully]

I have not got time, because I want to ensure that I answer the questions before the Opposition Whips inevitably cut me off early.

With my right hon. Friend the Business Secretary, I wrote to the CEO of P&O Ferries on Friday to demand answers and explanations of its decisions and actions. Once we have established the exact facts of the case, we can determine whether employment laws have been broken here in the UK and take necessary further action if needed. P&O Ferries has until 5 pm tomorrow to respond to our questions and I absolutely expect it to meet that deadline. We have also asked the Insolvency Service to look at whether P&O Ferries breached the requirement to notify the Secretary of State in advance of making those redundancies. If we believe that it is in breach, we will not hesitate to take further action.

On fire and rehire, briefly, the P&O Ferries situation, unlike other examples that have been cited in this place over the last year or so, does not appear to be simply fire and rehire. It is worse; it seems to be just “fire”, without the required consultation, the required notice or any definite prospect of further employment—that is, no “rehire”. It appears that hard-working British workers were given no choice and no notice and were instead immediately dismissed. There are reports that they may be replaced by cheaper labour from overseas. As I have said, I have written to P&O to demand that it explains itself. We will determine what further action may be required based on a detailed assessment of the facts of the case.

P&O already has statutory obligations under the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 and the Employment Rights Act 1996—both of which were creations of a Conservative Government. It is highly likely that it has breached both under UK jurisdiction. Under sections 193 and 194 of the 1992 Act, any employer proposing to make 100 or more employees redundant has a duty to notify the Secretary of State no less than 40 days before any dismissal will take effect. It has not done that and we demand to know why. The point is that whatever P&O has done appears to be in breach of existing laws within US-UK jurisdiction—it is not because we have not passed new ones.

[Karl Turner]

I thank the Minister for giving way; I will be as quick as I can. It is no good quoting domestic legislation. The reality is this: P&O Ferries has done what it has done because it knows that the sanction is worth it. He needs to address the issue and tell it to reinstate the workers immediately.

[Paul Scully]

The sanction for P&O Ferries under that legislation is a criminal sanction and an unlimited fine, so I would be wary of it believing that the sanction is worth it.

[Andy McDonald]

rose—

[Paul Scully]

I am not going to give way.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. A lot of questions have been asked during the debate. Do Members not want to hear the answers from the Minister?

[Paul Scully]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will try to answer many of the questions that have been asked.

On fire and rehire, we heard an excellent speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris), who asked what action we will take. She knows that we have had many conversations. I look forward to coming back to update the House after recess with further measures that we may be able to take, reflecting our conversations, on tackling and strengthening our guidance and our rules about fire and rehire. That will indeed have an effect on tribunal findings against anybody who is doing the wrong thing in that regard.

We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke) about her standing up for her local workers and her local constituents. It is a shame that that was misrepresented in contributions from the Opposition. When she was talking about militant activism, she was clearly not talking about the people from the union who invited her or the workers who have lost their jobs. She was talking about the people who have been bussed in and have come in from outside to agitate. That is absolutely not appropriate and it is not appropriate for hon. Members to accept bullying when it suits them politically.

I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), who spoke about her port. I was at the Thames estuary with several representatives to look at Tilbury and the benefits that can come from the Thames freeport. She is absolutely right to make sure that she dissociates DP World from the rest of the great work that is going on in that area.

I want to accentuate what we heard from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport when he emphasised that P&O Ferries is not the same as P&O Cruises. I think P&O Cruises should be able to continue to do the great work it is doing without being tarred with the same brush as P&O Ferries, which has acted disgracefully.

From the contributions today, P&O should be in no doubt about the collective condemnation of its behaviour. It has lost the trust of the public and given business a bad name. It is not too late for it to undo some of this damage, and I implore it to get round the table with workers and unions to discuss this issue and find a way through. ACAS stands ready to help, and I know it has reached out both to the company and to the unions involved.

On the national minimum wage, which has been raised, individuals can contact ACAS if they feel they have not been paid the national minimum wage, but HMRC has an intelligence-led approach to enforcement, so please will everybody contact HMRC to make sure that it can look at any egregious abuses of the national minimum wage on the wider scale that has been outlined? In the meantime, the Government will act on any findings we discover from our conversations with the company.

This House should be left in no doubt but that this Government will always continue to stand behind workers, because it was a Conservative-led Government who banned exclusivity clauses in zero-hours contracts, a Conservative Government who introduced the national living wage, a Conservative Government who scrapped the Swedish derogation and a Conservative Government who extended the right to a day one statement of rights to all workers. I want to reassure P&O workers that this Government stand shoulder to shoulder with them, and we will hold P&O accountable for its actions.

Question put.