Downing Street is “looking very closely” at the legality of P&O Ferries’s decision to fire 800 crew without warning.
The prime minister’s official spokesman said ministers would be examining whether the company had broken employment law.
He said: “We are looking very closely at the actions that this company has taken to see whether they acted within the rules. Once we have concluded that, we will decide what the ramifications are. Obviously there are a lot of valid questions in relation to existing contracts.”
He warned that businesses should only take “extreme decisions to secure the future of their business if all other avenues have failed”, adding: “We don’t believe this was the case for P&O staff but we are looking into this very carefully.”
Demonstrations are being held at ports this afternoon, with unions urging passengers to boycott the ailing ferry line. The Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union said there should be a widespread public and commercial boycott of the line until the jobs are reinstated.
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James Heappey, the armed forces minister, said that he believed that the ferry firm had behaved “disgracefully” but that the government could not have stopped the mass sacking.
“I think that is the reality,” he told BBC Breakfast. “The government’s anger will mean very little to those who have been sacked. I do feel very sorry for those people.
“I do think P&O have behaved disgracefully and I wish that P&O had given the government and the unions more opportunity to engage with them to try to save those jobs. Ultimately, it is not something the government can stop P&O from doing. Now the focus will be on supporting those who have lost their jobs.”
Protests are planned at Dover and Hull today, although no ferry services will operate for at least a week. Widespread disruption is expected, with passengers urged not to travel to ports unless absolutely essential.
Mark Dickinson, the general secretary of maritime trade union Nautilus International, told Today on BBC Radio 4: “It is a dark day in the shipping industry.
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“I’ve been in this game for over 40 years and I’ve seen some curve balls and some shocking developments over that time, but this is a new low for a shipping company. To treat the due legal process in such an underhand and callous way has shocked me, taken my breath away.”
Former British special forces staff boarded P&O ferries yesterday to remove crew members after the company fired 800 people without notice. Long-serving employees were summonsed to a Microsoft Teams video call and told that yesterday would be their “final day of employment”. Security staff equipped with handcuffs and wearing balaclavas came to remove them from ships. Passengers and businesses were warned to expect sailings to be suspended for at least a week or up to ten days, prompting fears of chaos at the UK’s ports.
Boris Johnson’s spokesman condemned the “completely unacceptable” way that P&O workers had been treated and said that Robert Courts, the maritime minister, had raised the issue with the company’s chief executive.
As anger mounted, dismissed workers clashed with motorists at Dover, the UK’s busiest link with mainland Europe, as they sought to block access to the port. The Times understands that workers were given 30 minutes’ notice of the decision after the company suspended all sailings before a “major company announcement”.
The seafarers were addressed over a video link by Andy Goode of P&O. He said: “The company has made the decision that its vessels going forward will be primarily crewed by a third-party crew provider. Therefore, I am sorry to inform you that this means your employment is terminated with immediate effect on the grounds of redundancy.”
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Courts admitted that the government had known about the planned mass firing on Wednesday evening but said that he was “extremely concerned and frankly angry” at the way P&O had treated its workers.
One defiant P&O ferry captain sealed himself and his 141-strong crew inside a ship yesterday. Eugene Favier, the Dutch captain of The Pride of Hull, refused to let police or new crew members on board. The standoff at Hull’s King George Dock appeared to end last night after the crew were given assurances of enhanced redundancy terms.
P&O staff blocking a road near Dover clashed with angry lorry drivers caught in the resulting traffic jam. Dozens of employees who lost their jobs stood on the road with banners and flags saying: “Stop the P&O jobs carve up.”
Motorists on both sides of the Channel have reported significant backlogs of vehicles waiting for ferries, with disruption expected to last for more than a week.
The operation to remove the ferry crews was headed by Interforce, a security company used by the Home Office to handle migrants who have crossed the Channel in small boats. Interforce, whose staff include former members of British special forces, told staff in a memo seen by The Times that they needed to be “handcuffed trained” and to wear their uniforms, including “cuffs and utility belts”, during the operation.
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The company said that staff, who were offered £14.50 an hour plus £25 for refreshments, could not be told the nature of the work in advance of the one-week operation, “due to a non-disclosure agreement”.
Dame Diana Johnson, a Labour MP for Kingston upon Hull North, where P&O has a big base, told the House of Commons that there were reports of “people in balaclavas taking British crew off these ships”. She said: “Agency staff, mainly from overseas, are in buses on the quayside with a security firm, hired by DP World [the parent company of P&O], wearing balaclavas and taking British crew off these ships. This is shameful and it goes against all norms of fair and reasonable behaviour.”
Members of the RMT union refused to leave some ships, although it is understood that tensions eased after negotiations on redundancy deals. At the port of Hull two coach-loads of agency workers, mainly from Latvia, arrived at the quayside yesterday morning, while other workers were seen near the Port of Dover.
Karl Turner, the Labour MP for Hull East, accused P&O of treating its workers with contempt in an attempt to “save a few bucks”, having received £10 million in furlough payments and other grants from the government.
He told The Times: “This is a predatory capitalist business which makes multi-millions of pounds off the backs of British workers yet is registered and owned in Dubai. The chief executives and senior management receive savagely high bonuses and treat their British seafarers with utter, utter contempt.”
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Last night union bosses pledged to stage protests at P&O ports and said that they were seeking “urgent legal action”.
Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, said that the treatment of workers had made his “blood boil”, adding: “This is a company that [used] furlough during the Covid crisis. It is absolutely disgusting what they are trying to do. They mustn’t be allowed to get away with it.”
A leading employment law firm said that “those dismissed will certainly have claims for unfair dismissal”, although significant complexities are understood to exist because of international maritime law. P&O Ferries reflagged its UK fleet from Dover to Cyprus in 2019, citing “operational and accounting reasons” in the wake of the UK’s decision to leave the European Union.
In a statement the ferry operator said that its “survival is dependent on making swift and significant changes now”, adding: “Without these changes there is no future for P&O Ferries. We have made a £100 million loss year-on-year, which has been covered by our parent, DP World. This is not sustainable.”
DP World was criticised for paying a £270 million dividend to shareholders at the end of April 2020 while P&O Ferries cut about 1,100 jobs as demand for travel collapsed because of the pandemic.
Mark Dickinson, the general secretary of the Nautilus International union representing seafarers, said: “The news that P&O Ferries is sacking the crew across its entire UK fleet is a betrayal of British workers. It is nothing short of scandalous given that this Dubai-owned company received millions of pounds of British taxpayers’ money during the pandemic.”
The RMT have said they are seeking legal advice to challenge the sackings and called for demonstrations in Dover, Hull and Liverpool today.
Some lawyers have already questioned the move. Beth Hale, a partner at the law firm CM Murray, said the P&O may have been in breach of employment law because the company should have consulted unions and staff about any dismissals and notified the government those jobs were at risk. “It’s potentially an enormous breach, but they purport to be paying their way out of it,” she told the BBC.
As well as the legality of the sackings, some have raised “serious safety concerns” regarding the decision to replace so many workers so quickly.
Dickinson said that the Maritime Coastguard must be “absolutely clear and confident that those new crew, unfamiliar with the vessels, unfamiliar with the routes, with the berths” are able to operate safely.
The government minister James Heappey said he felt P&O Ferries had behaved “disgracefully” and said the company should have engaged more with the government and unions ahead of the decision.
Quango boss told to resign from board
A British government quango boss who oversees a publicly-owned company responsible for “excellence in corporate governance” is facing scrutiny for his role on the board of the Dubai business controlling the fate of P&O ferry workers (Louisa Clarence-Smith and Dominic O’Connell write).
Mark Russell, 61, has been urged to resign from his £145,000-a-year job as a non-executive director on the board of DP World over the brutal sacking of 800 British sea workers.
Russell is vice-chairman of UK Government Investments, an arms-length body of the Treasury that advises on all government corporate finance matters and manages significant government corporate assets, including Channel 4, the Post Office, Highways England and a stake in NatWest Group, the lender formerly known as Royal Bank of Scotland. He also earns £150,000 a year for a three-day-a-week non-executive role overseeing government military procurement as chairman of Defence Equipment & Support.
Siobhain McDonagh, a member of the Treasury select committee, called on the Treasury to ask Russell to “resign without notice” from DP World’s board over the treatment of P&O workers.
Mark Hendrick, a Labour MP, said: “The government should be speaking to Mark Russell as an employee of one of the government quangos with regard to his involvement in signing this off because it certainly is a disgrace that foreign workers can just be brought in and British workers sacked at a moment’s notice.”
DP World, the owner of P&O Ferries, is a port and cargo corporation owned by the Dubai government that operates in more than 69 countries. In the UK, it operates London Gateway Port, a £1.5 billion terminal capable of handling the largest deep-sea container ships, and a container terminal in Southampton.
• I’m booked on a P&O ferry — what happens now?
DP World is run by Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, a prominent Dubai businessman connected to the state’s ruling family. He was paid $7.4 million (£5.6 million) in 2020, according to DP World’s accounts.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge made an official visit to Dubai last month, during which they met Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum, chairman of DP World, and Sulayem. The company donated £1 million to the royal couple’s Earthshot environment competition.
DP World paid £322 million to buy P&O Ferries three years ago. At the time of the acquisition, the sultan expressed his pleasure to be buying a “strong, recognisable brand”. The investment has not gone to plan, with P&O Ferries losing more than £200 million over the past three years.
However, the fortunes of DP World have fared much better. It reported revenue of $10.78 billion last year and profit of $1.35 billion. It paid a dividend last year to the owners of the company of $44.1 million. Its annual report lists a proposed final payout to shareholders of $275.8 million.
Russell, UK Government Investments, DP World and the Treasury did not respond to requests for comment.
A P&O Ferries spokesman said: “The P&O Ferries board have independent authority to act in the best interest of the business. The P&O Ferries board duly informed the DP World board of its decision.”
