Failing Grayling under fire over new £14m ferry contract blunder
Chris Grayling was last night under mounting pressure to resign following the collapse of a controversial £13.8million No Deal ferry contract awarded to a firm with no ships.
The Transport secretary was accused of having ‘no grip’ on his job by a fellow Tory MP.
Mr Grayling has faced widespread criticism since the decision to award seaborne Freight a contract to run ferry services between ramsgate in Kent and Ostend in Belgium was announced in December.
he had vigorously defended the decision, but over the weekend it emerged that the Department for Transport had decided to terminate the contract after irish company Arklow shipping, which had backed seaborne Freight, stepped away from the deal.
Mr Grayling, who recently faced calls to resign over the botched introduction
‘Should consider his position’
of new rail timetables last summer, is now facing calls to step aside from MPs from all three major parties.
The remain-supporting Conservative former business minister Anna soubry said Mr Grayling ‘ should be quietly considering his position’.
‘Chris Grayling holds a critical position in government, trying to mitigate what would be a very serious crisis for the country if we leave the European Union without a deal,’ she told The Observer
‘he has no grip on the very serious nature of his job. The Prime Minister should also be considering whether there is not someone else who could do the job better.’
Labour said Mr Grayling ‘has to go’, with Jeremy Corbyn describing the situation as ‘completely ludicrous’. The Labour leader said: ‘Chris Grayling claimed the Government had “looked very carefully” at seaborne Freight before giving the company the contract, but apparently not carefully enough to notice that it didn’t have any ships.’
seaborne Freight was one of three firms awarded contracts totalling £ 108million in late December to lay on additional crossings to ease the pressure on Dover if Britain leaves the EU without a deal, despite having never run a Channel service.
The DfT said it had been Arklow shipping’s backing that gave it confidence in the viability of the deal, and that it stands by the robust due diligence carried out on seaborne Freight. it added that no taxpayers’ money had been transferred to the company.
A spokesman said: ‘Following the decision of seaborne Freight’s backer, Arklow shipping, to step back from the deal, it became clear seaborne would not reach its contractual requirements with the Government.
‘We have therefore decided to terminate our agreement. The Government is already in advanced talks with a number of companies to secure additional freight capacity, including through ramsgate, in the event of a No Deal Brexit.’
But the DfT was last night facing further questions over why the deal collapsed after a senior source at Arklow shipping insisted it had signed no contract to provide ferry services.
speaking to Channel 4 News the source said: ‘We had nothing [in seaborne Freight]. We hadn’t finalised anything. The problem was politicians were pushing it all ahead of any normal pace... absolutely nothing had been signed with seaborne. The only thing was that we wrote a letter giving some comfort to say we were looking at it.’