‘No ferries’ Grayling to earn £100k in ports role

A FORMER cabinet minister, who once gave a multi-million-pound contract to a ferry firm with no ships, has landed a new job with a major ports company.

Chris Grayling will earn £100,000 a year as an adviser to Hutchison Ports Europe.

The ex-transport secretary (pictured) will receive the sum for just seven hours a week, an entry in the register of MPs’ financial interests states.

He will work for the company, which runs Felixstowe and Harwich ports, until August next year.

His appointment was approved by a Whitehall watchdog despite a ‘perceived risk’ that hiring him would give the firm an ‘unfair advantage’.

The advisory committee on business appointments said Mr Grayling reassured them he would not advise the firm on commercial maritime matters or Brexit opportunities.

The Tory MP, who was sacked when Boris Johnson became prime minister last summer, was dubbed ‘failing Grayling’ by the media after overseeing a series of blunders while in office. He sparked outrage when he awarded the £13.8million contract to Seaborne Freight to mitigate the potential consequences of a no-deal Brexit. Contracts worth a total of £100million were handed to three companies, Brittany Ferries, DFDS and Seaborne, before being scrapped at a cost of £56.6million after Brexit was delayed. Mr Grayling was also criticised for weeks of chaos following changes to train timetables in 2018, with an Office of Rail and Road probe into the fiasco finding ‘nobody took charge’.

As justice secretary, the MP for Epsom and Ewell part-privatised the probation service, a move which ended up costing the taxpayer millions of pounds.