P&O Ferries and Employment Rights

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 7:19 pm on 21 March 2022.

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Photo of Paul Scully Paul Scully Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy), Minister of State (London) 7:19, 21 March 2022

I have not got time, because I want to ensure that I answer the questions before the Opposition Whips inevitably cut me off early.

With my right hon. Friend the Business Secretary, I wrote to the CEO of P&O Ferries on Friday to demand answers and explanations of its decisions and actions. Once we have established the exact facts of the case, we can determine whether employment laws have been broken here in the UK and take necessary further action if needed. P&O Ferries has until 5 pm tomorrow to respond to our questions and I absolutely expect it to meet that deadline. We have also asked the Insolvency Service to look at whether P&O Ferries breached the requirement to notify the Secretary of State in advance of making those redundancies. If we believe that it is in breach, we will not hesitate to take further action.

On fire and rehire, briefly, the P&O Ferries situation, unlike other examples that have been cited in this place over the last year or so, does not appear to be simply fire and rehire. It is worse; it seems to be just “fire”, without the required consultation, the required notice or any definite prospect of further employment—that is, no “rehire”. It appears that hard-working British workers were given no choice and no notice and were instead immediately dismissed. There are reports that they may be replaced by cheaper labour from overseas. As I have said, I have written to P&O to demand that it explains itself. We will determine what further action may be required based on a detailed assessment of the facts of the case.

P&O already has statutory obligations under the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 and the Employment Rights Act 1996—both of which were creations of a Conservative Government. It is highly likely that it has breached both under UK jurisdiction. Under sections 193 and 194 of the 1992 Act, any employer proposing to make 100 or more employees redundant has a duty to notify the Secretary of State no less than 40 days before any dismissal will take effect. It has not done that and we demand to know why. The point is that whatever P&O has done appears to be in breach of existing laws within US-UK jurisdiction—it is not because we have not passed new ones.