Firm with no ferries loses £14m Brexit ferry contract
Pressure grows on Grayling to quit over farce
Acontroversial £13.8 million government contract to run ferries between England and Belgium if there is a no-deal Brexit was torn up yesterday. The UK’S Department for Transport said the deal with Seaborne Freight was off after Irish company Arklow Shipping, which had backed Seaborne Freight, backed out.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling faced calls to quit yesterday over the decision to award Seaborne the contract to run ferries between Ramsgate and Ostend, when they had no ships. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn raised the “ludicrous situation” in a speech in Coventry, saying: “Chris Grayling the Transport Secretary 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.”
Mr Grayling last month defended the Seaborne Freight contract, insisting it was “not a risk”. Shadow transport secretary, Labour MP Andy Mcdonald, said: “This contract was never going to work but this Secretary of State, true to form, blunders from one disaster to another.
“Whilst Theresa May needs the few friends she has right now, we cannot have this incompetent Transport Secretary carry on heaping humiliation after humiliation on our country. He has to go.” Seaborne was one of three firms awarded contracts worth £108m in December to provide extra crossings to ease pressure on Dover when Britain leaves the EU, despite having never run a Channel service. The Department for Transport 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 no taxpayer money had been transferred to the company.
Mick Cash, general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union, said: “The whole exercise is a complete and utter shambles with the Government ignoring union calls on what needs to happen. Instead they are blundering on from crisis to crisis.”