P&O boss ‘must quit right now’ over sackings

TRANSPORT Secretary Grant Shapps was warned about a “new low-cost competitor” which could present “challenges” to P&O Ferries, in a meeting with the boss of the firm’s parent company last year.

Newly-released minutes of a meeting between Mr Shapps and the chief executive and chairman of DP World, Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, showed Mr Shapps was told Irish Ferries would pose “challenges in respect of P&O’s operations”.

The Department for Transport said that Mr Shapps was not told about any plans to lay off workers, and it is understood the comments by Mr Bin Sulayem were considered open-ended and to not give any clear indication of planned redundancies, or the way in which the company ended up carrying these out.

According to the minutes, from a meeting during a visit to the United Arab Emirates on November 22 last year, Mr Shapps told Mr Bin Sulayem: “I’m aware of the issues relating to P&O. I recognise you will need to make commercial decisions, but please do keep us informed.”

It comes as Prime Minister Boris

Johnson backed Mr Shapps’ call for P&O Ferries’ chief executive Peter Hebblethwaite to quit, over the sacking of 800 workers without notice.

Mr Shapps said he did not know of P&O’s actions until he was standing at the despatch box in the Commons, and said the company was trying to “distract attention” from its failure to provide notice of job cuts by claiming it informed him of its plans last year.

Mr Hebblethwaite said on Thursday that Mr Shapps knew about the intention to slash jobs in November.

Asked if Mr Hebblethwaite was lying about this, the Transport Secretary told Sky News: “I think we can all see that what they’re trying to do is distract attention. The fact of the matter is that they needed to give 45 days’ notice to ministers, in fact to the Secretary of State for Business, if you’re making these kind of redundancies. They did not do that, they did not provide the notice.”

Asked when he first became aware of the crisis at P&O, he said: “I was actually stood at the despatch box on Thursday when news started to come out about it. For completeness, I should say that the night before I was informed by my office that there’d be another round of redundancies at P&O. But P&O have made redundancies in the normal way in the past, including particularly during coronavirus, and so that in itself, whilst obviously really unfortunate... if they’d gone through the normal consultation process, we wouldn’t be sitting here where we are today.”

Speaking on Good Morning Britain, Mr Shapps promised to “make sure the laws are changed to stop them using loopholes like flagging their ships in Cyprus to avoid and evade British law and not give notice of what they were doing, and not talk to the workers and the unions”.

And the Transport Secretary told Sky News: “I thought what the boss of P&O said yesterday about knowingly breaking the law was brazen and breathtaking, and showed incredible arrogance. I cannot believe that he can stay in that role having admitted to deliberately go out and use a loophole – well, break the law, but also use a loophole.”

Pressed on whether that means he is calling for Mr Hebblethwaite to resign “right now”, he said: “Yes.”