Pensioners forced to sleep in hotel’s foyer
THOMAS Cook bosses could be stripped of the multi-million pound bonuses paid out in the run up to the firm’s collapse, a Cabinet minister said yesterday.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps told MPs that ministers will look into whether the payments – worth more than £21million – can be recovered during the insolvency process at the failed travel giant.
He revealed it will cost the Government around £100million to bring stranded holidaymakers home – including contributions from the Atol protection scheme.
Mr Shapps also compared the situation to that faced by Monarch Airlines, which went into administration in 2017, but said the repatriation efforts for Thomas Cook were going to be “twice the size and more complicated”.
He told MPs that Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom had written to the Insolvency Service about Thomas Cook bosses’ bonuses and insisted that they “do have powers” to get the money returned.
Mr Shapps also told how bailing out the troubled travel firm would have been “throwing good money after bad” and he said the Government will look at how airlines can be wound down in a more orderly way.
Failed
“They need to be able to look after their customers and we need to be able to ensure their planes keep flying in order that we don’t have to set up a shadow airline,” he said.
“This is where we will focus our efforts. We also need to understand whether any individuals have failed in their duty of stewardship within the company.”
Labour’s shadow transport secretary Andy McDonald said the Government had “sat back and let the company fold”.
And Rachel Reeves, Labour chairwoman of the business, energy and industrial strategy committee (BEIS), said Thomas Cook’s directors had “serious questions to answer”.
She said: “In the last five years, £20million of bonuses have been paid to those directors and the company has now gone under with more than £3billion pounds worth of debt.”
Ms Reeves also called on the Transport Secretary to confirm the company’s former directors would not be able to work anywhere else until the Insolvency Service had finished investigating, but Mr Shapps said it was “for the official receiver to do that part of the work”. PENSIONERS were forced to sleep in the foyer after a Greek hotel refused to let them checkin amid fears of a domino effect after Thomas Cook’s collapse.
Many smaller hotels fear they will not be paid if they do not demand money in full from smaller holiday companies who worked with the famous holiday firm which went bust on Monday.
Peter Davis, 70, and wife June, 71, yesterday told how their ordeal in Crete left them wanting to catch the first flight home but none were available.
Mr Davis, 70, from Dunstable, Bedfordshire, and wife June, 71, flew from Luton on Monday and arrived at 1am – only to be barred from checking in.
They slept on the sofas in the foyer and were not offered pillows, sheets or food despite having paid £850 for the holiday.
Mr Davis said: “The least they could have done is put us up that night. It was horrendous. We had 30 minutes’ sleep.”
And a couple say they were locked out of their room after Peter Davis, 70, with hotel letter Thomas Cook went bust – unless they paid £1,100. Callie Millington and fiance Liam Shaw, both 23, had paid £750 each to stay at the four-star HM Martinique Hotel in Magaluf, Majorca.
But the pair say that they returned to their rooms four days into their break to find them locked, with all their belongings inside. Callie, from Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, said: “We don’t have that kind of money. It took us two-and-a-half years to pay for this holiday.”
After talks with the Civil Aviation Authority, the hotel allowed guests back into rooms.
And one Thomas Cook couple must pay almost £5,000 more on their Cyprus wedding.
Jane Hesford and Jamie Pearce are due to get married next month. Jane, from Poole, Dorset, said: “I’ve had to pay another £4,700 – but all I want is to get there and to get married to Jamie.”