In full: P&O Ferries boss faces MPs after workers sacked

crack on perhaps i can just ask the members if there are any declarations of interest they may wish to register no thank you chair i would like um the everybody to know my members interests and also i was previously the maritime minister as well i'd like great committee to know that i'm a former member of the rmt union uh thanks chad i'm a member of the rmt parliamentary group and uh for a number of years i've known mick lynch and i did have meetings on monday with um some of the sat in victimized seafarers and with from the rmt and with um nautilus international uh actually as did i so i should also raise that uh interest i was there with you at the time graeme and uh yeah i'm also declaring my membership of the rmt parliamentary group and again i've had meetings with uh norton assange with rmt over this issue excellent okay i think we've all remembered that we've been meeting with the rmt on that basis right okay for reasons known to my clerk i need to swap the chair over to uh darren jones he's going to take us through the first four panels darren thank you hugh uh good morning everybody um so our first panel we're delighted to welcome on the screen professor allen bogg from the university of bristol and professor jason chu from city law school and in the room andrew burns qc good morning to all three of you first question please from simon chupp thank you chair much appreciated the key question i think with this session is what p ferries have done is it legal in this country and andrea if i can come to you first the law requires any employer that is contemplating making redundancies on a large scale to give two things first to give notice to the secretary of state and second to consult with the appropriate representatives there is a specific provision for employers who have employees on ships that are flagged in other countries apart from the united kingdom and that is that 45 days before the first dismissal the company must give notice to the appropriate country where the authority of the country where the ship is flagged so there are two matters i can't say whether or not what's happened is legal not because i'm not instructed on any of the cases i don't know the exact facts i know what i've been broadly told and so obviously what i say comes with that caveat but in broad terms all employers all employers with ships must give a notice the appropriate authority 45 days before the first dismissal and my understanding from what i've been told this morning is that the notice was given to the appropriate authorities in the uh countries where the ships were flagged only on the day of the dismissals and not in advance that appears to be a a breach of section 194 193a intentionally potentially 194 which is the provision which means that there's unlimited fine for failure to notify the secretary of state and if 194 is looked at in the light of 193a the amendments which are made for companies which have ships flagged overseas then it may be that they are liable to a prosecution the second point is that they are indeed potentially liable for claims be made for protective awards of up to 90 days pay from all of the 800 employees who were made redundant without the notice going to their appropriate representatives in this case i suspect the imt union and for consultation and the law says it's quite clear and it's abided by in my experience in the vast vast majority of cases which is why the circumstances we are facing today are so unusual employers will at least 45 days before the first dismissal and normally before that because the obligation is to do it in good time when redundancies are first proposed by the management of the company they must provide inviting to the the union or the appropriate representatives some statutory information and that is done in my experience in the vast majority of cases and also hr ones are supplied in the vast majority of cases i only know one other case where an hr1 was not supplied and that was a citylink case where the company effectively was on the brink of collapse on the 22nd of december and that thing didn't collapse until christmas eve and the hr1 was served on boxing day so very different circumstances to to this but i think that's the only previous prosecution that i know about so i can't tell you whether this particular case was lawful or not but that's the context of two of the broad matters plainly other legalities involved were the workers sacked fairly unfairly they paid they may have individual claims under dismissal is there a transfer of undertaking between piano ferries and the new company which is supplying the agency workers potentially there might be there's a potentially even maybe discrimination if there is a nationality uh element to who was dismissed and who was not dismissed there's a number of different options this appears to be a case which engages quite a number of the employment law rights that people who are employed in the united kingdom are subject to thank you very full samantha i just want to understand really uh as you can explain to the committee and those watching to what extent this matter is a matter for uk law international law because actually this practice has been done before you know that we'll talk about flagging later on in this session but this practice is commonplace but not on this scale so is this a bit of a gray area between uk and international law there will always be a dividing line between the extent to which uk employment law can intervene in a person who is employed not entirely within the uk and there are there's a body of case law about people who are employed in different countries but have are based here or have attachment here and there is a parliament has decided not to legislate in specifically to say who is and who is out of uk employment law but leave it to the courts and the courts have filled that gap by putting together a body of case law to say who is ordinarily working in it's actually great britain is the language it's used rather than the united kingdom and the difficulty comes that the different provisions of employment law sometimes have different jurisdictional limits so for instance national minimum wage applies if you are ordinarily working in the united kingdom and that doesn't apply to territorial waters it doesn't apply to international waters but it would apply when you're working in your port at your base for instance so one thing that the committee could consider is whether or not it's important now for parliament to fill that gap that has been filled by the courts up until now and legislate more particularly about who is covered by uk employment law and who is not just on that point then on the uk employment law there's been an awful lot on social media regarding the the concept that this and what piano have done was only possible because of a brexit or the fact that fire and rehire legislation wasn't agreed to by parliament in the last uh last couple of months is there any truth in that i am the higher legislation is irrelevant to this because uh what pno have decided to do is not which what many employers would have done which is say to the employees will you change your terms in order to make us more commercially viable and then go into negotiations with the employees and their unions to decide whether or not and that has been done successfully it's been hard but centrica british airways over the last couple years they came in for a lot of flak but they successfully consulted with unions and they reached for all or most their employees deals for doing that process so certainly there is that uh example that it does work has worked on many occasions it's very unusual for a company not to attempt it at all in in my experience and you've talked about how some of the legal implications of this what steps could the government take at this stage to do something about this retrospectively now i should say i've probably been dominating conversation i wonder with that i will open it up in a moment don't worry but you know what what would in your mind be the steps the government can take at this stage when the first thing that a union or employees know about dismissal is being told that it's happening now it's quite difficult for the courts to intervene because the courts generally won't grant an injunction to force somebody to employ workers and have an active uh employment relationship with them there are some cases in which employers are forced to keep employees on the books whilst the disciplinary process has gone through and there's been a recent case involving tesco in which courts have unusually said that dismissals in order to re-engage on lesser terms was unlawful and could be subject to an injunction but generally although fire and be higher has been much criticized by politicians and others it is subject to reasonableness and it may be that the reason it hadn't didn't happen in this case is that a view was taken that it wouldn't be reasonable in these circumstances to fire me higher because you can only fire and be higher lawfully if an employment tribunal finds that it'd be reasonable to do so and that is a huge break on fire we hire because and new legislation i think my personal view is that that doesn't help because we've already got the reasonableness test and the reason that employers do think very hard and long before they do fire and be higher is because the penalties of getting it wrong are financially very significant and reasonableness is a very good test because if it's reasonable to fire me higher why should it not be lawful to do so thank you i'll open it up to alan and jason if i may some of the points have been covered uh specifically around the the your interpretation of whether pno have acted legally in this case uh alan if i can come to you first yeah thank you so so i mean i i'd as a lawyer i'd have the same caveats um as andrew as abby's so i you know i'm not familiar with the detail of the facts uh and uh before i came to a conclusive view i would need to understand exactly what happened and be privy to the contracts and the time frames but on the on what i know there's absolutely no doubt that wouldn't be true there's very little doubt in my mind uh that what has occurred involves multiple breaches of labor legislation so the collective redundancy provisions uh dismissal perhaps discrimination law and i could go on so i think in legal terms and what happened was so blatant and so outrageous that there can be very little argument about whether the law covered it the key issue is an issue of remedies and a lack of effective remedies in situations of this nature and for me that should be the focus for the government as it now looks at piano within the wider context of an enforcement crisis in uk employment law jason i think you'd like to add to that so uh take an example of a breach of collective redundancy procedure so there is actually a penal award for that and that's leaving aside the possible criminal penalties which may be more controversial but for breach of the consultation procedure there is the protective award which is extensive um it's capped at 90 days but there's no limit on weekly pay for that purpose so it can be quite a significant financial remedy but for a company with the financial heft of pno the fact is there is a cap on the protective award the employer can calculate in advance what its financial like liabilities will be and it can then effectively buy itself out of the rule of law by offering compensation packages that go beyond what the legal remedies would be so i think uh in this kind of situation i would be in favor of removing caps and limitations on remedies in situations where you have such a gross violation of employment laws as you have here because it removes the possibility of efficient breach which is an affront to the rule of law it's effectively buying out of the legal system jason is anything like to add to alan and andrew's testimony so far thank you um can you hear can you hear me we can hear you loud and clear perfect thank you and i should add a health warning to what i'm about to comment on obviously i'm a maritime lawyer so i'm going to be focusing largely on the seafarers side of things rather than employment rights in general so the questions raise concern i think number one um legality of what you know fairies have done and number two what can be done as far as the government is concerned or any other stakeholders so i think as far as legality is concerned um and it was quite right to say that notice has to be given and that actually was a a change to our previous law uh following the sea various directive from the european union so that essentially meant that the duty to notify the secretary of state which was published in law before had to give way to a duty to notify the place where the ship was registered and there are three places where the ships were registered at cyprus the mueller and the bahamas so it is a 45 day period notice for cypriot registered vessels it is 30 days for me go around for the bahamas now asking what the consequences are i think i'm not an employment lawyer so i have to stress that but amongst the shipping circles there is some concern or some uh uh i suppose some troubling thought as to whether uh that the failure to notify the chip registries in these different jurisdictions actually would attract a penalty because the relevant section actually simply refers to the duty they notify or the failure to notify secretary of state it doesn't actually refer to a failure to notify the flag state and so we are a little bit unsure as to whether the failure to notify within those set parameters would attract any kind of sanctions under the trade unions and labor relations act so that's one aspect of i think the discussion that has been going on so far the so back to your secondary question earlier about to what extent has brexit got to do with this um to some extent i suppose one could say that the dispensation of the requirement to notify the secretary of state was actually introduced by eu law and that has been tapped as retained eu law and but of course with practicing it is now possible for uh parliament if so desires to change that and move it back to a duty to notify the secretary of state rather than uh the flag states uh registries so um let me pause there and see if there is any follow-up question and then i could move on to other aspects and hopefully some of your questions will be honest later in this session i'll hand over my colleague nasrat ghani thank you so much um so it's been made clear that the their obligations because of where they were flagged would have been to the states where they were flagged but professor bogg you talked about the multiple breaches in in managing the way that the employees were dismissed and you talked about what can can take place next and i wondered if you thought there was any um any support for the idea that theoretically because of the multiple breaches that you've spoken about there could be a way of seeking an injunction restraining p a from breaching uk employment law i know injunctions are very rarely granted but because there are so many people involved employees 800 and there seem to be quite a few breaches in the uk employment role in how you explain or conduct a consultation how a redundancy could take place what do you think professor could there be an injunction thank you very much for that question so um it's possible for there to be an injunction in circumstances uh like this but it would depend upon what was in the individual contracts of employment and whether there were specific procedures that have been incorporated from a collective agreement into the individual contract now that can sometimes be difficult because collective procedures as the courts would say are are not act for incorporation sometimes so at the current time i think it's very difficult to give a definitive answer what i can say is that there are um obstacles to seeking injunctive relief but um if i may say i think that provides um another argument in favor of statutory reform to give a provision in a case of this nature to free standing interim relief under the statutes so what you would say is you don't need to look at the contract you simply identify and anticipate a breach of the statutory consultation procedure and the statute then gives an option for interim relief which is what you have in trade union dismissal cases so it's possible to go to the court to get interim really to keep the contract on a footing until the issue has been considered by the court so i i think it's possible uh but there are difficulties but in terms of reform priorities um i absolutely think that this should be something to be considered and also in the fire and rehire bill um in the detail of that bill my recollection is that there was provision in clause two of the barry gardner bill for injunctive relief in situations work fire and rehire was in breach of procedure um so um there's no question this isn't a fire and re-hire situation but this is fire and rehire on steroids these are things that are on the same spectrum of contractual deregulation so i think what i would push back at andrew by saying is that the failure to deal with fire and rehire a set a broader tone about the seriousness with which parliament takes enforcement and that i think can encourage a culture of impunity which is maybe what we've seen here thank you professor bog because this is an extraordinary situation one could then apply extraordinary um responses which could then theoretically be an injunction my next question i'll keep it short i do need super short answers i'm afraid and i'll go to andrew yourself first um in legal terms has piano ad adequately demonstrated a business needed to reduce staff numbers and if they had what would that look like my understanding they aren't reducing staff numbers they are contracting out and having the same number of staff but rather than being employed in-house by piano ferries being contracted in from an external company and we all know that many many companies have found it commercially advantageous to rather than employ their own staff to contract in from third parties that provide that staff this is i think unusual to do it to this scale but what makes this case unusual is not contracting out but contracting out with no notice and telling everybody on the day and the reason it's here is because this almost never happens and the reason it almost never happens is that we do have very really serious financial penalties compensatory penalties for employers who don't follow the rules about notification and consultation and so one thing i would say is that although there might be a knee-jerk reaction to then law needs to change stop this happening we we obviously all need to consider that it happens really really infrequently because the present legal system does impose really really significant financial penalties against employers that don't give any notice at all thank you i think my time has run out thank you chairman thank you just two very um quick wash up questions um from me mr burns it's been suggested that p a ferries might say that their contracts of employment are based in jersey and the employ and the leadership in jersey made the decision to make the staff redundant if that was the case does uk law bite uk law yes can bite because the employment tribunals don't look just at what the contract says the employment tribunals look at the reality of the situation they look at where employees are based in reality and that's often looks where they're assigned to so if the employees in this case had bases in dover or hull or places like that where they checked in where they were managed where their employment was administered from there is a real likelihood that uk law and employment tribunals jurisdiction will apply to them whereas somebody who's based overseas where their manager is overseas where they're paid overseas where they're taxed overseas and what the employment treadmill does is look at a arrange a package of factors to see whether or not uk employment law has the closest connection to to their employment so the fact that the employer is based has an office overseas or the contract which says this is subject to a different law it isn't the fact of which wins thank you and professor chu if piano ferries didn't adequately notify uh the cypriot uh bermuda or bahaman competent authorities within sufficient time is that a breach of uk law according to the trade unions and labour relations act it would be a breach of uk law because it is quite plain in the in that statute that they need to notify these flags states registries however as i was saying earlier there may be a question as to what the penalties may be because the penalty uh provision relating to notice doesn't actually specify this particular seafaring uh category and that is perhaps a gap in the law which could be plucked uh hopefully in the future thank you hugh merman um thank you chair um andrew i perhaps i'll put this to you because you raised it the prime minister said that the government will ensure that mariners working in uk waters are paid the living wage is that a matter solely for parliament to to legislate to cause that to occur or are there international obligations in maritime you're aware of that could uh cause that to be impossible national minimum wage is domestic legislation it's unrelated to our membership of the eu it was something we put in domestically and we can we can enforce that as long as there's a con connection between the companies and the employees in the uk we plainly can't say that somebody who's employed at the other side of the world by a company on the other side of the world she paid a certain amount of money that's obviously ridiculous but if there's a connection with the uk it seems to me that we can we could legislate to potentially make the national minimum wage apply to let's say uk territorial waters at the moment the legislation says it doesn't so my understanding is at the moment you would be able to enforce the national minimum wage between say ferris going scotland northern ireland but not between dover and calais but you believe there should be a way for parliament to make that that happen parliament could amend the legislation in relation to seafarers at which there are specific provisions in relation to minimum wage for seafarers on uk flagships and seafarers on new non-uk flagships and at the moment the national minimum wage applies to the time when they're ordinarily in great britain or they're working they're based here so when they're on shore and doing their preparation and so forth but i think as soon as they go into waters i think we've we've chosen parliament's chosen that the national way shouldn't apply to them at that point sorry last part so bizarrely it could be that if you're going from dover to calais the time that you are in the english waters on on that straight you could actually apply the minimum wage then for that part i'm sure hopefully the french would do the same with their minimum wage on the other side at the moment i think that the and i haven't looked at this in real detail but i think that the national minimum wage will only apply uh while they're in port may i come in on that i i apologize i i i'm i've done a bit of work around the minimum wage for seafarers within territorial waters and continental shelf uh so the national minimum wage for uh offshore employment order was amended in 2020 and so that now places uh the requirement to pay national minimum wage for anyone who works or ordinarily works in uk territorial waters or in the uk sector of the continental shelf so this means that if we were uh if we have a a seafarer working on a vessel which is sailing from northern ireland to scotland they will be covered by the national minimum wage and if we were sailing from england to ireland then we will hit a non-confidential shelf waltons then we would it raises the question as to whether that sea barrier would be covered by a amendment introduced in 2020. so this is an anomaly which i know that uh parliament had uh deliberated over previously in uh uh 2020. so professionally sorry sorry to interrupt but i'm very conscious of time if you could write to us with the detail of that we'd be very grateful but i've got one very last quick question on this panel from ben bradshaw professor borg just very briefly um are there any significant differences in french and dutch label or which have led to piano not treating those workers in the same way so so i i think that the position uh in in both of those jurisdictions would be that the there are more significant restrictions in place for uh failures to consult of this kind uh and the difference would be in the remedies and enforcement uh and the possibility that dismissals might be uh amenable to an injunction or might even be null and void because they've been undertaken in breach of procedures if you could write to us with a bit more detail on that i think we'd be very grateful of course uh one very quick point if i may um i really uh very i remember i'm sorry i'm sorry it's cut it off press the button but i've got five panels of witnesses to get through but of course you're very welcome to write to us and we'd be very grateful all right i'll i'll send you a note thank you so much i'm grateful thank you to our three witnesses for our first panel we're now going to move swiftly on to panel two uh with representatives from trade unions uh we have mark dickinson who's the general secretary from nautilus international and mike lynch who's the general secretary of the rmt we'll just let you take your seats thank you good morning to both you gentlemen thank you for coming in at short notice um first questions are from alan brown please yeah thanks sir um just quite with him mark um i've seen a response from p o fairies back to the um base department where they argue that when they've done the notification on the day they did do a personal notification to seafarers on the ships rather than the reported same or pre-recorded messages is that right or is pino at it with that my understanding is that they the vast majority of our members heard about this via video via this zoom uh call other members who were obviously rostered off got all sorts of communications couriers uh postal services but i mean if you're not in the house you don't get the message some of our people have still not had their packages is my understanding they don't know what the company's going to reward them or award them with and so they're in a very difficult position and pno have said that they've got access to these lawyers they're not getting access to lawyers because the lawyers can't cope with the amount of um traffic coming their way so some of our people have still had no advice from the lawyers that piano have put up so they're in a very difficult position and they're also facing the this like this peculiar situation where all these eminent people up to the level of the prime minister are discussing their future and qcs and professors about the law nobody's discussing as far as i can see how we're going to get these people back to work because this company has made flagrant breaches of the law has just been described they've done it deliberately and they've factored in what they're going to have to pay for it and they're threatening it and blackmailing our people that if you do not sign this document by next thursday you will be out of work and you will potentially get no award whatsoever and you have to give up all of your legal rights to take this company to task this is absolutely outrageous so not only is it calculating in terms of what they've got to pay they brought into life this company lmf in moore six weeks ago it didn't exist so they're chooping people to a company that doesn't exist and they're informing people behind a brass plate in bermuda the bahamas and malta and cyprus about our members future in county and trim so what are you going to do phone up somebody in the bahamas and say i'm getting rid of a hundred of your people in county antrim and not tell their representatives the whole thing is a setup and the law in this country is a shambles and the politicians and the lawyers in this country have watched over the last 30 years while not only workers have been made vulnerable but our merchant marine has been decimated and destroyed and if this goes the way it's likely to go from what i've seen we won't have a merchant navy in this country there will be no ratings working out of british ports and on british ships british ships will choose to exist and british ratings will cease to exist and that's what p o are aiming to achieve to kill our merchant marine and to kill our employment laws and something's got to be done about it today the prime minister said he's going to prosecute this government has got to intervene now impound these ships and get our people back to work and then we'll sort out the law after okay um [Music] obviously that's your kiosk is impounding legal action the government seem to be doing something is there any any other kiosk that actually gets your employees back working well the key ask is is that we put a safety regime and get some safety inspections that are not just uh superficial i've got no faith that piano will run these these vessels safely and maybe mark will have some more comments on there but we have got a desperate race by piano to get these vessels back out on the seas they we understand they moved one of them last night to empty uh hull to get people over on an empty voyage over to to rotterdam they are desperate to get this back on the seas and they think it's all going to blow over as soon as they've got discount uh prices out to the hauliers uh and to the public and they think it's all going to blow over the government must do something the only people with power in this situation are the ministers of the crown they're either going to sit there and watch this happen or they're going to get the mca to impound those ships and not let them travel piano has already taken them out of the port so they're outside your jurisdiction so not only do they have contempt for the law they have contempt for your house you discussed it yesterday and what did they do last night move one of the vessels outside your jurisdiction so our ask is for intervention i don't mind which intervention it is as long as you stop pno breaking the law and putting two fingers up to every member of this house and potentially uh completely diluting employment law in this country what was said about that again just then to ask mark about the safety concerns that might be saying you'd want to comment and also can you outline what uk companies have been complicit in us in terms of bringing in this new staff to take over because that that's clearly a key issue as well thank you thank you alan for the for the question and uh i'd very much like to associate myself with mick's uh comments about the situation that our members face now the the issue around the safety case this has been a long running discussion with piano uh uh pinot ferries over the years i'll take dover as an example because in a way it's the most extreme example because in dover to calais you're running passenger and freight vessels across the busiest shipping lane in the world and you're crossing it at essentially you know right angles that's the way that's the way it works and the traffic is moving up and down in the in the separation zones it's an incredibly uh incredibly dangerous situation and you need skilled qualified experienced maritime professionals both mixed members of my own members on board the vessels to cope with that they do ten crossings a day and they do 12 hours a day two shifts obviously to cover the 24-hour such situation to two crews four crews in in total and we already know we can already see and they've tried it with us time and time again they want to move to two weeks on and two weeks off so that's two weeks on working 12 hour shifts looking after the safety of passengers and truck drivers moving to freight so this for us is one of the key issues and we have spoken to the company we've discussed this with the company i mean in 2012 they conducted a a a research project and produced a paper with cardiff university to look at the working patterns on board and you know from from my sense of that that's where one week on and one week off is derived from and we don't believe it's safe in the past we've made proposals to the company to increase the manning of of of crew in order to cope with a potential two week on two week off but the company rejected those proposals so we have maintained for the safety of those on board not just our own members but the passengers and the lorry drivers who we transport across on those vessels that one week on and one week off is the appropriate and for me that's one of the key issues and it goes to the heart of the safety case alan and mick mentioned that you've you've questioned me on now beyond that and this speaks really to the issue of whether these vessels can with a new crew or with a substantial number of replacement crew being drafted in to replace the saxy for us whether they can be readied in in a matter of days to conduct and reintroduce their services in a safe way and we do not believe that that can that can be can be done there are obviously international rules about these issues sdcw standards of training and conventional watch keeping convention from the imo there's the international safety management code ism code our estimation our view that actually in the scenario that we are facing it could take months not days to prepare a crew to safely operate those vessels i i i can see there are probably more questions so i'll probably limit my answer to that um if you could come back on and ask about uk companies being complicit because clearly has been a very covert operation with pno um to spring the surprise what what what companies have actually helped them in terms of trying to restart the shirts absolutely i would i would highlight two in particular that i'm aware of that i believe and the evidence suggests have been central to enabling piano ferries to introduce their their mass sacking of ukc for as a replacement of uh recruitment of their replacements and that would be colombia ship management of cyprus and clyde marine of the uk glasgow i i believe they're based there are one or two others um that have been quick to deny any involvement but some of the jobs they've been advertising look suspiciously like they are the jobs that that have been uh that have been vacated or that our members have been sacked from um but those two are the other principal companies that i would name uh okay and i'm gonna have to hand up a call very shortly but and we heard earlier on there that the crossing from scotland to northern ireland is wholly within uk waters so therefore the minimum wage shouldn't be breached at all what what terms and conditions are pino trying to put on staff that they're trying to you know move into um that crossing and would it reach the minimum wage in the uk well my understanding is that they'd have to pay the minimum wage on that crossing for ratings but that they will be without pension they will be without any terms and conditions there without holiday pay there will just be voyage only so it'll be for the hours they're on on board that ship there'll be no conditions associated with but we'll have to see um they will use whatever they can use and at the minute they're desperate to get people because people are walking off their ships is their understanding but we believe that they would have to honor the national minimum wage but of course our members weren't getting paid the minimum wage our members were getting paid negotiated decent terms and conditions so any step down to the minimum wage is a dilution of what we already had they've broken the union agreements they're also about companies just very quickly ellen they're undermining every other seafaring company in this country we've got good agreements with stenner and dfds what are they going to do how will they compete with this piracy on our on our shores and they're really concerned about that and we're really concerned about our members we could end up with a a race to the bottom initiated by piano and i think that's what it's designed to do to be pino and facilitated by clyde marine exactly and we've had it with irish ferris irish ferries have done exactly this this procedure already thank you thank you chris later please uh thank you chairman uh good morning gentlemen it's good to have you with us today the first question i had for you is could you confirm to your knowledge is this uh a matter for uk workforce or piano ferries only or are there other workforces in other countries that are affected do you know thanks for the question chris um you know my union sorry it's a straightforward answer yeah okay are there and if so where are the countries please no it's uk only lovely thank you very much i understand that there are 786 uh people who've been affected by these redundancies could you just tell me what percentage of those 786 are rnt members and also uh mark of your union roughly so of those 786 about 450 rmt members i presume the rest would be nautilus members okay so so so maybe 60 40-ish okay and of the wider workforce those who are not being made redundant are you aware of the number of staff that are not being made redundant so i i'm sorry i don't know the wider workforce number they said it's something about something above 2 000. but we that will be administrative market in finance they're not within our rnc this is the entire seafaring workforce that's very helpful uk those who are being made redundant you mentioned just now that they were paid above the minimum wage were those who've been made redundant paid above the living wage absolutely yeah properly negotiated you know there's a whole scale of salaries right up from the master who's a professional status to the people working in the canteen that's the same for i'm seeing on the same terms and conditions great okay um when were the last negotiations that the unions would have had with pno about terms and conditions i haven't got the dates on a regular cycle we could have been a two-year deal but what i would say we've got no beef with piano we're not in a dispute we were meant to meet them on the 18th about their prospects for new vessels which would be about new staffing i'm assuming mark's union was as well new crew in procedures instead of honoring that meeting they sacked all their members on st patrick's day some patrick's day massacre you might call it yeah but the last one so in terms of the last negotiations would you say what was 12 months ago i haven't got that figure but it would be on a regular cycle so i just wondered if both of you could confirm that at those last negotiations piano ferries will have given both of your unions and the mp for dover the assurances that those negotiations were going to safeguard the future of piano if you can't answer it today i understand that because your respective roles we would very much appreciate it if you would write to the committee and confirm if you could have maybe consult the regional organizer because i think this is a very important point i'm i've been informed um by those who have an interest that actually assurances were made to the unions and to the mp for dover that uh that those negotiations were going to safeguard the future so so that would be really good uh to understand and could i just ask um the employers affected where actually are they based so for dover many of them are in the dover kent area but the way that seafaring works and the way that it's been in decline we've got so we'll have members from ireland the republic and the north working at hull we may have people from great britain working in ireland so but in dover they are concentrated around that area but people do travel across the uk some people live abroad yeah so the people who are affected by this redundancy they are dover-based and any other bases they're not not you know they're not all dover-based i mean they're based often they work in the vicinity of the port simply for convenience for joining the the ships in their regular rotation so there will be substantial numbers in the dover area in the whole area liverpool ken ryan long um liverpool did i mention liverpool where i'm from there'll be significant numbers all these spaces have been affected by the streets yeah absolutely all of them yeah wonderful could you just confirm to your knowledge whether or not staff were physically and forcibly removed from ships what i can confirm is that security personnel came on board in security outfits that our members were told they had to leave the ship immediately they were escorted to their lockers and their cabins because our people live on these things for seven days at a time so they got their own personal effects the you know their part-time home they were made to load those into plastic bags and until they did that they would not receive the packages the packets containing the information about their dismissal and therefore the the compensation as they might call it so i don't i haven't heard of any force or any restraint or anything like that but there was intimidation in the sense you had four or five security guards standing around individuals or groups of individuals saying you must go to your cabin now clear out your stuff and remove yourself from the vessel understand and i'll just come back to you mark just a moment i understand um and i referenced the bbc and the independent that a leaked email that was reported actually suggested a company called interforce was engaged by piano and a little bit of research tells me that intervals are handcuffed trained security professionals are you aware of handcuffs being used to remove forcibly removed i'm not aware of any incident i don't know whether mick is directly of uh the handcuffs being deployed but uh been some suggestion i think from the company that though nobody was wearing balaclavas well i have information i have reports from my members that that's not correct they were some were wearing alex what ship that was like i can't but maybe i can you would writers and tell us i'm sure we'd appreciate what i would say and i just want to follow up the point mick made about our members live on these vessels for varying periods i've just received this morning a photograph of the personal effects of crew that was sacked in bin bags on the deck of the pride of kent by skips ready to be thrown in the bin just like the seafarers who've lost their jobs and i'm i'm sorry but that is that's the most disgraceful thing beyond what happened one week ago this day that's just a new low and i'm really shocked by it would you just would you agree that this is the most extreme form of corporate mass bullying you have ever seen in your in your career so far i mick and i um have been spending a lot of time together over the past seven days and uh and the the the anger that we feel is real i said not angry at being with him by the way i've learned he's a hell of a nice guy i'm not sure the pinot ferries intended to throw uh nautilus into the arms of the rnt or or likewise that's what's happening is what i'm asking so the answer to that straight question is absolutely shocking i've never seen anything like it in 44 years shipping you agree what i've said sorry thank you very much well it i'm an electrician and i was backlisted from construction that's why i'm on the railway and i have ended up on this job and i had to take uh mcalpine's and uh group to the high court to get that settled along with three thousand others so there are other examples of corporate hostility but that that made us paranoid because we couldn't see it all the time this is when it's in your face this is probably the most extreme i've seen in my career and i've never seen a reputable company destroy its reputation in such a quick time thank you could you i just want to go on now to what staff have been offered um first of all could you confirm that it's your understanding that all staff affected by redundancies have been told they must sign a non-disclosure agreement otherwise there is no discussion no negotiation and nothing to be uh to be offered in terms of recommendations yeah my understanding our members have got um settlement agreements they're called which have got non-disclosure in them so it's at a rate of two and a half weeks per year everybody's saying this is so generous that is under the level that we negotiate on the railway and many other companies it's not that generous they've given them 13 weeks to pay in lieu of notice because they never gave them any notice so they have to give them that and they've built in this that the qc was talking about a protective award they factored that in and you have to sign that you will not take any legal cases for any issue against pno and our understanding as well is that you can never talk about pno in the open at any time in the future and if you don't do that you'll you'll have to take them to tribunal for the statutory award of only one one week per year of service i think we've been clear on the undiscovered stream could you just find me because i've got to hand back the chairman shortly can you just finally tell us what have the staff affected by this redundancy actually been offered by the company that you know of two and a half weeks per year service they've been given 13 weeks pay in lieu of notice they haven't been given it it's in the document and a 13-week compensatory award to buy off the tribunal case and if they don't sign it they would have to take the statutory minimum awarded by the government at capped rates so it's blackmail in our view could i just add it as times um the point made earlier that there's no rehire involved in this well actually the companies put it in writing they want 91 of my members to come back and in addition to the the package that mick has outlined they're offering a uh re-sign bonus of uh which will be payable in 12 months time um and if they accept that today so there's an additional pressure on my members to sign today no later than today and if they don't sign by today but signed by next week that bonus offer is reduced by half 91 the the accruing strategy is in tatters because they didn't plan to do any of this rehire they plan to replace everybody with ukrainian seafoods and russian seafarers and for obvious reasons that part of the plan is in so this is this plan if you can call it a plan is plan b and i thank you gentlemen very much indeed for answering your questions back to you thank you so much thank you so much i must put on record that i am a trustee of the charity the seafarers charity mr dickinson you're a trustee as well my questions are to you the two short questions hopefully you can respond in short um answers too i'm anxious about one of the the lines of question that mr brown had and i want to make it clear that i've been having some private messages or dms from people on board the ship and they were not made aware of where they were being sent to they weren't aware that they were going to go to a piano ferry destination and there's huge anxiety that what they've been caught up in as well so this has just been dreadful for everybody involved and i don't want any for them to feel any more anxious and frightened and threatened either do you agree mr dickinson i agree and that's correct i have uh same information i've been receiving from members thank you mr now you're also anxious as much as i am that piano fairies thought they could turn this around in just 10 days consider the lack of experience and knowledge of crew board where do you think they would have come up with that number of 10 days do you think there were any conversations with anybody for them to be comfortable they could have those ships safe and ready to sell in 10 days i don't think anybody that knows the maritime industry or would consider themselves to be a maritime expert or a maritime professional would have come up with a figure of 10 days so you would you agree with me that they would be impossible for them to comply with the standards of training certification and watch keeping stcw or the icm code international safety management code within 10 days no you agree that it would be possible no sorry i would agree that it wouldn't be possible thank you so much thank you mr dickinson thank you very much well thank you mike lynch and mark dickinson for your contributions this morning we're grateful to uh both of you we're now moving on to our third of five panels this morning and we'll be welcoming dean beal who's the chief executive officer at the insolvency service brian johnson who's the chief executive of the maritime and coast guard agency and casey ware who is the director of uk maritime services all three of whom are with us in the room this morning uh we'll just let you get comfortable great and the first question is from hugh merriman uh thank you chair um perhaps we'll start with the maritime and coastal agency if i may and i know that i know that uh my colleague wants to carry on so the secretary of state has said that you as an agency will be going in to inspect the ships from a safety perspective um can you tell us what you've been doing so far what you've found and whether you consider this new crew to be safe to sail can i maybe just give a little bit of just a little bit of context a little bit yeah um so we operate within uh an international framework set by the international maritime organization the un agency and every ship is flagged with the state the flag state and that's the state whose legislation holds on board the ship and the international conventions lay down the accountability of the flag state so for these particular ships cyprus bahamas bermuda lay down the accountabilities for the flag state which are the primary accountabilities around the hardware the equipment the manning the experience the competencies of the crew living underneath that for each nation that a ship visits is the port state responsibilities that's like a safety net in this case for the uk to check that we're comfortable that the flag state has fulfilled its primary responsibilities so sorry that's the broad context for probably a lot of what katie and i might talk about today so actually in a way even if the sort of cypriot requirements have not been met you can ensure that the uk standards have to be met not just in port but all the way through the journey as well it's the cypriot standards that there are minimum standards that have to be met internationally and the specific standards on board the ships are set by the cypriot you're the safety envelope that we would require we would require within the uk uh but let me just be absolutely clear here so are you looking at the uk safety rule book and applying that or are you actually looking at the city right safety rules there are universal safety standards that have to be applied on on shipping and those are those of what we would apply so those include for example as previous witnesses talked about sdcw the maritime labour convention the ism the the international safety management system so we would ensure that those are those are being applied okay let me ask you another way around so if they were actually registered in the uk and cyprus wasn't in existence would there be any difference in the type of safety regime you'd go in and look yes yes i would because we would have dual accountability we would have flag state accountability so that primary uh overview accountability for all the standards on the ship and we'd be looking at it from this safety safety fallback position which is the port state regime right okay so let's let's drill in now to what you've actually so the secretary of state's been very bold in house of commons and said you're going onto those ships to inspect them what have you what have you done so far so uh the pride of hull which sailed yesterday probably uh it is is the one that we've been most engaged with we went in we did full port state inspections and those those cover um the certification of the crew certification of the vessel certification acidification of the crew includes what qualifications they've got it would look at hardware it would look at key safety drills actually run through those do those safety drills live with the crew so it's katie katie can describe in a little bit more detail if if that's helpful but uh essentially we'd be covering that we we covered all of that off you signed off on it correct uh and and on that vessel how many new crew were there what percentage would you say 18 in total were new 18 new crew new crew correct and how many crew and total were there can i see that 710 crew on board 18 when you okay right so a small percentage is that the sort of percentages you're expecting say for example the dover calais ships because obviously there's a heck of a lot of people have been we've been told all the seafarers have been made redundant or sacked so that's a small percentage i'm not sure we're clear about exactly what that situation is going going to look like at the moment the piano ferrets believe that they'll soon in days be able to move their ferries from dover how long will it actually take in this situation for you to fully inspect and sign off do you believe an inspection would take one day minimum uh could be could be slightly longer than that depending on what's found give us an example if if you've got a completely new crew say or you know there's a much greater percentage and so how long is that like i mean surely it will take you a heck of a long time to make sure that every single person who's come on board that ship who's not been part of the ship's crew before this is the one of the most dangerous shipping lanes uh railroad requirements are stricter perhaps after the herald of free enterprise i mean that's surely you will be taking a heck of a long time yeah could i maybe defer defer to katie on this one she can she can have a little bit of she can add a bit of color to exactly what those inspections involve which might help yeah we really want to know how detailed you can make this be just to confirm for the committee we have not actually got the port state control inspection scheduled for the dover fleet yet we are waiting for confirmation from piano with respect to the crew and so we've not got those port state control inspections scheduled we would go on board that vessel as brian has said we will inspect the certification of the actual vessel we will inspect the certification of the minimum safe manning of that vessel to ensure that they've got the right qualifications we will ensure that those members of the staff and that could be hotel staff who are responsible for dealing with passengers during an evacuation i've got the necessary safety familiarization okay you can actually speak up a bit with some of the members so for any crew that are not operating the vessel but are responsible for mustering and escorting crew passengers off the vessel when there's an emergency we ensure that they have got their proper familiarization around management crowd management risk assessments etc so when we go on board not only were we checking the certification but we will do full drills so we would take we would put in place a complete fire drill we would exercise those fire crews those hotel stuff to make sure that they're completely familiar and able to evacuate their ships in an emergency we also for example even drill down into making sure that those crew can take orders and can communicate instructions in the assigned language of the vessel so it's a very heavily focused operational exercise and as brian has said that can take us between one and two days i do not envisage them taking less than two days as we just said the pride of hull we were on the 22nd and the 23rd of march as we've shown from the figures that is a crew that is familiar with the ship but it still has taken us two days to do that port state controlled inspection okay thank you would you speak to every single member of crew to ascertain that they know what they're doing can understand as well as looking at looking at it from a team holistic perspective so we would watch the for example the fire parties the surveyors on board would watch those fire parties to do what they do in terms of the crew members like the hotel staff that are responsible for guarding passengers through we would talk to them and ask them questions about what their roles and responsibilities were so we were key that we understood that they understand what they're required to do for crew that were responsible for launching the lifeboat we would talk directly to each individual ones of those teams ask them to explain to us what they're doing in terms of launching and preparing those lifeboats we would then watch them launch their lifeboats maneuver those lifeboats and recover those lifeboats so it's an intensive discussion and you're responsible for hours of work or rest safety management certification of seafarers and training of seafarers just picking the latter up i mean obviously you can't just pitch up even if you've got experience and then actually be able to operate that boat it must take a long time to train to train up they must have to go out to sea there's a highly structured system in stcw uh which is is the international standard for seafarer training highly structured training system and we'd make sure that people were qualified to the to the right level and and the idea of that system is is that it can be internationally used and internationally applied on board ships so we'd absolutely check that people were certified to the to the correct standards on board as well as looking as katie's described at how they perform within the within the drills okay and just coming back to the the ship that sailed from hull is it the pride of hulk yes it was did did that uh get signed off did did it sail successfully and you've certified it yes yes you did well can i just introduce the there's a tweet going out breaking confirmation the mca have not given p 0 very proud of hull permission to return to normal operations no row packs means no passengers it's our understanding the vessel is on route to rotterdam for replacement crew and safety drills so we undertook port state control okay can you speak up again we understood that under the port state control it was completed yesterday my technical manager who leads in the northeast confirmed to us that that vessel was cleared by the mca to sail piano advised us that that vessel would sail from hull to rotterdam yesterday evening without passengers and cargo that vessel is due into rotterdam she will then be presented to the dutch administration and the dutch maritime administration will also undertake inspection of that vessel no road packs what does that mean there was no um there was no passengers or cargo on board they'd have to do this again with passengers on as well and you'd be inspecting at that point no we won't be inspecting them again but they're presenting the vessel to the dutch administration before they load passengers and cargo my final question is what conversations have you had with the secretary of state about the inspections that he feels you should be you should be delivering what you can do we've we've we've been clear um uh with with colleagues at dft that we will be absolutely enforcing all the port state inspections in in a really rigorous way we've been talking with the with the flag states as well so we've we understand what cyprus bermuda and bahamas are going to be doing in terms of inspections of those vessels and we've got um we've had french and irish colleagues who we've been in touch with who though these port state inspections are absolutely uk port state inspections colleagues from uh france and uh ireland uh also wish to witness those questions so you've been clear but what conversations have you had with the secretary of state you're the chief executive of the agency he's the secretary of state have you had a conversation with him or the my conversations have been with uh my opposite number in dft who i know has been in contact with an official not a minister i can help you there chair so um following the minister court statement in the house on the thursday the 17th i actually um contacted his private office to advise him that we would be inspecting all eight vessels um and that we had agreed with pino that we would be inspecting all of those vessels and that we advised that if we had any safety concerns that we would obviously enforce the regulations and if necessary we would stop those ships from sailing and that was i was sent that to minister quartz's private office on thursday the 17th would you not have expected a minister to contact you and say right we want to make absolutely sure these ships are safe you look in every nook and cranny speak to every single person uh would you have expected that conversation to come your way sorry chair i should have said that that email was in response from the minister um seeking my assurance that then the safety concerns would be addressed with piano okay well i'll leave it there because others want to come in thank you so much thank you nizo ghani please thank you and good morning um i've got some quite a few questions i'll try and keep them brief and the answers can be brief that'd be great you talked about the inspections taking place there is some anxiety that inspections are taking place without any passengers on board so how are they the new crew expected to evacuate potentially up to 2 000 people in an emergency how are you going to prove that inspect it and authorize it miss where it's a difficult question to answer um as i said i've explained how we do the drills and the operations it is quite normal practice for us to do it without passengers we very rarely use passengers for safety reasons as you can understand for those drills and often when we're doing those drills there are no passengers on board so that's not just applicable to the the ferries that's also the same for the class 1 passenger vessels we don't do it with passengers complicated because we've got new crew in a very difficult situation i'm now going to read out a message that was sent to me by a person that was arrived on the ship as new crew they didn't know where they were going they hadn't realized this is where the contract was and they sent me a message which has given me a huge amount of anxiety they said to me the safety of the vessel has not been considered the crew that i'm with have no knowledge of the vessel the ship is currently a situation whereby the engine could stop running as the crew do not know how to transfer fuel to them this morning the vessel almost run out of water i don't want to read too much i don't want to give the identity identity of the person or the ship away how absurd is it that piano thought that you're going to authorize these ships in 10 days and how can you authorize these ships fit when this is information we're getting from crew on board the ships difficult for me to respond when i don't know the ship if that information was shared with the mca and we knew what that ship would be we could obviously bring forward the inspection mr johnson yep same thing if if we have the information we can bring it forward you know we will we will apply uh as katie said the port state control inspections absolutely rigorously and you know if we've got safety concerns and our surveyors are good at what they do we've got safety concerns those ships will not sail all right another message i received um the mca will verify the vessel is safe to sail this is from a person on board the ship the mca will verify the vessel is safe to sell when the ship's master and officers indicate that they are ready and we expect a support state inspection as the vessels are flagged in the bahamas um as the ship officers were expected the vessels will pass initial inspection as the majority of the officers are unfamiliar with the ship how is this being managed how many communications are we having on board with people on the ship to give you the confidence that you can let the ships go so our surveyors would have conversations on board during the inspection that's a key part of part of what they do katy do you want you want to illustrate the sort of conversations that take place it's uh it's difficult for us to pre-judge until we get on board of those vessels but our absolute priority is when we get on board of those vessels is doing to ensure that the seafarers on board are familiarized qualified and are clear about their responsibilities so until we get on board it's difficult for us to pre-judge but you have my absolute assurance that we will go in absolute detail to ensure that those crew on board are familiarized qualified trained and that we are satisfied that they can operate those ships safely and those vessels will not leave until we are satisfied that they are safe to operate to be clear we are not working through a timetable on this i work into a time thing but they want to be done in 10 days so do you think it's gonna be 10 days or 20 days or three months i don't i don't have a view we we will do our job on the the port state port state inspections will do it will do it well a maritime coast guard agency has a really stellar reputation and what piano ferris has done has just undermined the reputation of the mca there were three flag states involved overseas why was there not better communication with the mca with yourselves for them to give new notice that they had been given notice so you could start communicating with piano ferries we we don't we've spoken to the flag states and they were not informed until the 17th one more time for the record mr johnson we we've been in communication with the flag states and they were not informed until the 17th that's thursday last week flag states themselves that is um cyprus bahamas that's correct that's that's what they've told us and the action of piano ferries i would argue has undermined all the work that the sector governments and even myself when i was in the department um all the work we're doing towards maritime 2050 taking a decision how we manage take care of seafarers in the uk and our relationship with companies such as piano ferris what do you suggest mr johnson i i think what we need to do is make sure that the maritime coast guard agency continues to operate with the absolute professionalism that it's that it's known for and our commitment is to do that and you take care of the flagging as well don't you wouldn't take care of flagging as well within yeah and doesn't this undermine flagging as well so we've got two more passenger ferry companies flagged with fantastic grade a seafarers their business model now they'll feel is is being being challenged of course we love to have as many ships on the uk flag as we this doesn't help well frozen's done it doesn't help that does it whatsoever i can't i'd love to have more ships on the uk flag and i just asked when was the last time you spoke to a senior representative of piano ferries and the last time you spoke to a senior representative at dp world i haven't had any communications with dp world i spoke to the chief executive of piano ferries on monday morning to uh to make sure that we had proper lines of communication and clarity on what was happening when so there was a teams call i had with him with one of his colleagues and me with one of my colleagues on monday morning can i just for the record ask when was the last time you were in a room with a minister providing evidence support or guidance over this issue you know can i do it with a team's call rather than a room can we do a virtual room uh that was yesterday first time sorry i thought you said the last time that was the last time was yesterday when was the first time the first time on this particular issue personally uh uh let me think back um i'm really not sure i think the the bulk of the communication has been the one that katie had thank you i've got two supplementaries but i'm also very conscious that mr beale i don't want you to feel like you've missed a morning in the sun the secretary of state has written to the insolvency service asking you to look at the notification requirements and the potential for penalty uh penalties to be applied to piano ferries we heard in the first panel that if piano ferries had not notified the flag nations with appropriate notice so cyprus bahamas bermuda that that is a breach of uk notification law do you agree with that i think you know my team are working through all of the facts on this case looking at the law uh and you know we will very quickly i think arrive at a determination as to whether you know there have been breaches and what action could be taken as a result when will you come to that conclusion well the secretary of state has asked for a response from us by the 8th of april so we're working very hard you'll have heard this morning by then and the officers why does it take so long to review we had a lawyer saying it was illegal we had several lawyers saying it was illegal how long do you need the their inquiry is ongoing um there are inquiries with the uh foreign jurisdictions that colleagues in the department for transport are pursuing we need to gather all that information in we need to please don't you you've been told that there were notified on the 17th of march uh and that is inappropriate there's a breach of the of the law we that is that is established it's what you now do with that sorry chair with the interpretation of that breach of the law i mean if we can come back to the secretary state quicker we absolutely will i think you probably should um and just on the question of penalties there was some confusion in the first panel about how you would calculate a penalty if this overseas notification was done inaccurately what's your view on that uh i think i think that's again it's it's really unclear i mean we heard this morning the complexities of the sort of different applicable laws that might be appropriate in in the case where there's multiple jurisdictions on the face of it my understanding is that the penalty for failure to notify would sit with the jurisdiction where that requirement to notify would exist we need to look at that very carefully very interesting um uh contributions from the speakers this morning which we will we will absolutely look at very carefully as well okay we have to move on but i suggest you really do you need to move quicker than getting an answer by the 8th of april um chris lowder please thank you mr chairman um brian and katie i just want to say that from what i've heard from you today and as someone who's worked in the transport sector for my entire career before coming to parliament i'm quite concerned about the effectiveness of the safety regulator from what i've heard from you today um i'd appreciate it very much if you would share with us the paperwork that was signed off for the pride of hold to sale and i think um certainly my colleague mr morris and i would be quite keen to understand a little bit more details and later point when you do further inspections to understand the extent to which we have confidence in that thank you thank you thank you merriman i just want to come back so the issues that's been raised is the concept of moving from one week on one week off to two weeks do you have a view given you know the rostering has got to be within safety do you have a view on whether that is normal safe concerns the key thing here is the hours of rest and ensuring that the crew so you could have crew on board for up to six months that's permissible the key thing is ensuring that those crew have their hours of rest that are required by law and when we go on board the vessels we inspect those hours of rest to ensure and they've got to be recorded um so the key thing is making sure that the crew are rested and able to perform their their jobs right do not look at it and say actually from a safety good practice perspective these shift patterns are a right good industry standard this isn't it's a deviation it's not for me to tell ship operators what their shift patterns should be the key thing is that they get their hours of rest i think it should be actually for you to tell them what the shift what their pattern should be because you're responsible for safety and actually if you believe that's not safe then i think you should sorry brian no it's okay so again this is a slightly complicated regime that we operate within so the the primary responsibilities around this are with let's say that sorry the ship was flagged with cyprus for example prime responsibilities you move the mic back over so we're kind of honey the prime responsibilities would lie with uh cyprus and the ship operator to get that right what we do then is is apply uh international regulation and then the appropriate uk local uk regulations so that's that's uh if the cypriots say it's safe test is it rather uk and if we're uncomfortable with that we can obviously we can write to the the cyprus uh flag regime but that's that's a slightly complicated um regulatory framework that we operate in and i'm coming to the conclusion i'm interested in your powers whether actually given given what i remember in terms of herald of free enterprise that i'm slightly concerned that we're actually relying on what the cypriot standards of safety are are asked on the straits of dover listen because you've just said actually that's a cypriot but it's it's but it's also governed by a set of international uh regulation and uh safety engineering yeah international i'm talking our own uk high standards here which seems to be a bit unless other members can completely understand it and i'm i'm missing the point we're not entirely clear here whether cyprus governs uk governs or whether you've actually got the best of both highest standards of both so perhaps answer that right so the cyprus flag they're responsible for setting the manning levels on board the safe manning levels on board what we would expect from report state control is the working hours to make sure that they're working the necessary and they're getting their rest hours in a certain set period i don't have to hand the exact specifics of what the working regulations but i can write you to verify that yeah can you write to us and just set out this hierarchy and which which applies and then the last point i want to ask is have you dealt with anything on the scale of this before in terms of seeing crews change such large numbers never in my career and then and you have the sort of holistic powers rather than just looking at the individuals i mean why wouldn't you turn around and say actually i'm looking at this from an entire practice it cannot be safe and certainly in terms of days to be able to completely change your crew and bring brand new crew on so rather than even looking at the individual parts can you look at this holistically and say this can't be safe we've got to operate within the powers of that port state control regime which are all set out we're part of the paris memorandum of understanding a group of countries that do port state inspections and our powers are really set out within that so we're dissatisfied with the safety on a ship we can detain it but it's on a ship by ship uh basis and we have to inspect it in order to use to use that power we we haven't got those uh those holistic uh powers that you might you might actually look at on a ship by ship basis to say this practice is so unheard of for us we can't cope with this as an agency we're really concerned about safety so therefore we'd have to base it on the inspections that we do when we get on board the ships and on the results of those inspections i've got two final supplementaries but i'm going to have to limit you to one minute question one minute answer please gavin newlands thanks just a point of clarification you mentioned uh wrestles and obviously working 10 regulations etc don't really apply here but as i recall from my previous career you've got different rest hours you've got your daily rest hours and you've got weekly and perhaps monthly rest hours depending on the job if you sit as long as you get a 12 hour rest per day that's fine or is it because i'm because the way you answer the question it sounds if they could work for six weeks only six weeks off as long as you get the 12 hours recipe per day so could you clarify that sorry uh my apologies mr newlands no we don't just look at the daily rest we look at the weekly and the monthly hours as well what would you be what's your minimum requirement on that i haven't got those details to graeme uh thanks very much um in the statement on the um hudson pakistan on the 17th of march the shipping minister laid grit stole by your intervention was having heard your explanation about the restrictions that apply in respect of the the the relevant flag i'm less than convinced you mentioned you'd had a number of meetings with ministers including yesterday some by zooming and and some in person how frequently have you met with the trade unions with nautilus international and the rmt they're the experienced safe fares and officers who know what safety systems are if i might just say i had a terrible experience many years ago going from strand alone in a very stormy sea and i was so grateful to have experienced seafarers who were able to anchor the hgvs that were moving in that stormy sea and could have jeopardized the safety of the ship wouldn't it be reasonable to have discussions with the existing crews and their representatives i'd say in answer to the general question uh we and the rmt in nautilus are in fairly regular contact but not we haven't been on this particular issue they have written to us and we have responded to the concerns that they put in put in writing to us and we we got another letter yesterday which we will respond to uh first thing tomorrow um but we haven't had face-to-face dialogue over this particular issue we have we have more broadly got very good communications i think between ourselves and the trade unions given the flat brian both you and katie have said this is unprecedented you know the scale of the sackings and the impact it's having in this particular sector in this operator wouldn't it be pruned to have face-to-face meetings with people who are actually familiar with safe working practices i think you know we're very ready to be to have dialogue with rmt and with nautilus uh in taking them through what our findings are on the inspections uh when we do the inspections i think i think though the you know one of the challenges here is as we were outlining earlier is is our powers are actually quite they're they're quite they're quite tightly defined so there's actually quite limited room for maneuver here we've we've got to do our job and we've got to do our job very very well and very professionally but there's quite limited flexibility around that because of the framework that we operate within i understand that but it's it's a it's a critical issue safety but sorry thank you thank you to the three of you for your contributions this morning we're grateful we're now moving on to our fourth panel uh where we're welcoming on the screen jasper christensen who's the chief commercial operations officer at maritime services for dp world and in the room we'll be welcoming peter hebelthwaith who is the chief executive of piano fairies we'll just let people join the screen and the room all right peter just the one next your name's on that one thank you i apologize and there's some fresh water there for you as well okay we'll get going uh mr hepworth wait um when i was reading your biography it seemed pretty light uh on your experience as a chief executive officer are you in this mess because you don't know what you're doing or are you just a shameless criminal thank you for giving me the opportunity to come and answer questions um and actually before i answer that question can i start please with an apology um actually an apology to um the seafarers that were affected on thursday last week an apology to their families an apology to the 2200 of our employees who have had to face very difficult questions over the last week or so and you may see this as a late apology and i just want to reassure you that the reason that um you're hearing this i guess for the first time today is because i've spent the last week in the business talking to our people one to one why didn't you talk to them in advance in a consultation with them with faith why apologize after you've sacked them all so the context of this incredibly difficult decision is that piano has lost an unsustainable amount of money and the reality is and this is the backdrop that i would ask you please to bear in mind is that we would have had to close the business if we hadn't i'm sorry to interrupt i have lots of businesses come to my committee and tell me that but they all consult before they make their staff redundant you didn't why not so we thought long and hard about the routes to this and we did consider every single option available to us and we concluded that every single option available to us would result in the closure of pno and ultimately and i haven't uh had a chance and it would be great to talk to you about what this actual new accruing model looks like but it is of such a it is a fundamentally different operating model and no union could accept um did you ask them our proposal did you ask the trade unions no okay in your letter to the secretary of state you said that you notified the relevant um competent authorities in cyprus the bahamas and bermuda on the 17th of march is that correct yes we heard earlier that was in breach of your notification requirements to notify cyprus within 45 days of the first dismissal and the bahamas and bermuda within 30 days do you recognize that not being a lawyer well i presume you have access to lawyers of course and and we we uh are clear that we have not breached that law who did you write to in cyprus i will have to get back to you who did you write to in the bahamas i'll have to get back who did you write to in bermuda let me respond did you sign off these letters no can you provide this committee with copies of them yes thank you what's your salary mr hepathway my salary is 300 basic salary of 325 000 pounds you have access to a performance related bonus i have access to two performance-related bonus um a short-term incentive planned a long-term center plan you've increased or decreased the value of p ferries by your actions i think the pno was otherwise going to close and didn't have a future and so if your employers are might i suggest mad enough to offer you a performance related bonus will you accept it or reject it at least i can't tell you how far that is from my point of principle will you accept it or reject it i don't know the answer to that if we managed to save the company there's a decision for you if i'm offering you a performance related bonus and you've just sacked 800 people will you as a point of principal say i'm not going to take that i don't know the answer to that i'm not i'm not i've got to be honest i'm not focused on that i'm focused on saving the business and getting the 800 seafarers new jobs right and you recognize that asking your employees to sign a settlement agreement means that they are withdrawing their rights for further legal action against pno yes i do and we are and we are making extremely generous payments as a result of that 36 and a half million pounds we think the largest maritime um settlement arrangement in history uh there will be people receiving upwards of 170 000 pounds but actually probably i don't know very few there will be about 40 who will receive um more than 100 000 but most importantly actually is at the other end of that scale where we have capped the minimum so if somebody started work with us in the last month or so actually we've said that we will pay a minimum of 15 000 pounds so we've uncapped the top and we've absolutely said as a minimum we will pay 15 000 pounds we recognize we did a very very difficult thing we recognize money isn't everything but we do want to compensate people fully and i absolutely want to be focused on getting them all new jobs thank you mr christensen on the screen please from dp world the owner of piano ferries are you going to sack mr hepathwaite for gross misconduct i couldn't imagine that we would do that no and did you sign off on these proposals so um dp world has been informed on a continuous basis on the situation in piano paris obviously as the shareholder did you sign up we've also been and we have we've also been informed of the evaluation that pfl paris have had in terms of different routes to making this business viable and sustainable and eventually also being informed and supporting the decision that was then eventually taken thank you and mr hepathwaite just said uh mr christensen that p a ferries is about to presumably go immediately bust unless you sacked 800 members of your staff do you agree with that assessment so the business piano ferris has definitely lost a lot of money over the last few years no business can sustain that forever the business was not viable in that in the situation or in under those conditions so a number of things have been evaluated and eventually this model was then chosen as the only route available as an alternative to um ending up in limitation or it's very strange mr christensen because lots of other businesses in trouble follow perfectly legal routes but um you seem to be having no regrets about the decisions taken by your business the last question from me was i've got you mr mr german with all your respect uh having no regrets you have not heard me saying that we have no regrets we actually would you like to express also also as dp world we acknowledge the pain that this has caused to a lot of people employees seafarers their families etc so you're not heard me saying that we do not acknowledge that well i'm sure the families are grateful for your regrets after sucking them mr christians in my last question for you is i understand that dp world owes 146 million pounds to the merchant navy ratings pension fund when are you going to pay that i don't know if the 146 is the right number uh i have no knowledge of that i understand it is and i also understand that you know 147 million pounds sponsoring a golf tournament so it should be affordable for you shouldn't it may i add the point please so the uh liability for the pension fund as i understand is a pno liability and we have um an agreement and we will all of those agreements to make those repayments thank you and dp world will be giving you the money to do that presumably given you don't have any well sadly the reality is this was a very difficult step that we had to take to make the company viable and profitable at which point we will be able to honor our own commitments very good andy mcdonald uh thank you chair uh mr christensen you talk about um this being painful and difficult uh your company paid out 376 million uh dollars in dividends to shareholders the last two years alone couldn't you use some of that money to treat the workforce at piano with some decency and dignity don't you think that was your duty so dp world has taken absolutely zero dividends out of piano ferry for the last many years so we have we on the country we have kept on supporting the business over and over again supporting the existence of that business for a number of years with hundreds of millions of pounds okay without regard to the welfare of the of the workforce um uh mr hepathwick uh did piano have a duty to consult the unions in good time over the redundancies pursuant to section 188 of the uh trade union act of 1992. there's absolutely no doubt that we were required to consult with the unions we chose not to do that because we believe she chose to break the law because we chose not to consult and we will come and we are and will compensate everybody in full for that i recognize that this is a really you get in your car and drive on the motorway you see the 70 mile an hour sign do you sound that that's not going to apply to me i'm going to do 90 because i think it's important that i do that is that how you go about your life no no it isn't did the collective agreements in place between piano and rnt and nautilus provide for negotiation over such matters as redundancies all right could you rephrase the question you had collective agreements correct with rmt and pia and nautilus that provides for negotiation over such matters of redundancies you've done it before why didn't you do it what was the moral justification for you not doing that okay so this is these are very extreme circumstances let me can i in order to answer that question fully can i explain the difference between the operational uh model that we previously had and the one that we are moving to so you understand how fundamental a change it is and that helps me explain why we had to take the route we had to take would you allow me sorry is this is the chairs already pointed out there's many companies that have difficulties they obey the law and they consult with their but their members through their trade unions you haven't done that we've moved from one operating model to another you haven't you haven't escaped the law of this country you've still got to do it within the legal framework you can't just decide that you're going to absent yourself from the legal system united kingdom so it is it was our assessment that the change was of such a magnitude that no union could possibly accept our proposal oh you're right about that i've never heard such farcical answers to a series of questions okay can i move on chair um in selecting uk employees most of whom will be uk nationals or residents or residents when you selected them for dismissal pno was evidently discriminated against them on grounds of nationality what was the legal justification for doing this to be clear actually these weren't exclusively uk nationals they were largely uk nationals but this is this was a group of international employees so what are the new rates of pay to be offered to the new crews how much are you paying them so the two models the two models are very different so to answer that question is a bit more complicated if you can allow me the time the previous operating model required us to have four crews for every ship on dover cali the new operating model um requires us to have two ship two crews and pay people when they work so they're assessed in slightly different ways the answer to your question is that the average jersey seafarer was in was paid 36 000 pounds and will receive 46 and a half thousand pounds so a year and a third in compensation so that's part of the answer to the question the second part of the question is what are the hourly rates of pay for the new model so the average hourly rate to pay is 5 pounds 50. on top of that there is a pension contribution there is food and accommodation and then so can i make a couple of points please so on the routes that are international routes that are governed by itf standards we are paying above itf minimum wages and on our domestic route which i think was referenced earlier lanca ryan where we are governed by national minimum wage of course we are paying national minimum wage and and so uh so the seafarers aboard the vessels that are leaving dover the replacement crew they're going to be paying on average paid at the rate of 5 pounds and 50 pence per hour yes that's below the national minimum wage of this country how do you how do you reconcile that where we are governed by national minimum wage we will absolutely pay national minimum wage this is an international seafaring model that is consistent with uh models throughout the globe and our competitors did you live on it mister hepatitis 50 now could you could you sustain your lifestyle five pounds fifty an hour no you couldn't could you why do you expect people who've got such responsible jobs to be able to do that how do you expect them to be able to feed their families and pay their bills at five pounds fifty an hour there's a couple of very very important points here one yes it's one that's called gas one scores electric those are the important points they can't pay their bills one couple of important points please um these uh the seafarers who are joining us are international professional seafarers with all the international certification these are these are experienced seafarers i've got to move on can i can i ask mr christensen because mr christensen on your website dp world you say the dp world respects and supports the human rights of our employees you're going to say amongst other things in relation to collective bargaining dp world respects the laws and labor practices for each country and will not hinder the development of means for independent and free association how would you square that with the experience of your company piano sorry your the line was breaking up one more time please the latter part of the question well you you'll be familiar with your own human rights statement uh which adheres to the universal declaration on human rights the ilo declaration on fundamental principles and rights at work the guiding principles on business and human rights and yet you've completely trashed them in this they're not worth are you going to take this down off your website because it's an insult so i do not believe that it's an insult and i do not believe that any of what we have done uh to ask the 800 people is in conflict in conflict with any of that of course it's a direct conflict i you know we hear some ridiculous things but for you to say that those those principles still obtain when people have been summarily dismissed without no notice whatsoever and replaced by people on 5.50 an hour is an outrage there's some nda's here mr hepleth are you going to rescind those because quite frankly the members of this committee think this is absolutely thuggery and criminality you're behaving like gangsters to blackmail people into this situation will you withdraw those ndas and let people have the freedoms that we all enjoy i assume you're talking to about the confidentiality clause that's in the severance agreements agreements yes it's a standard confidentiality clause and actually it's there to protect both sides oh god um okay i i'm just getting into the end of this um let me just ask one one more um you and why did you employ private uh private security firm to remove seafarers uh from your vessel we were you pleased with what you saw on our televisions on social media of people with handcuffs marching up the gang plants onto these vessels why did you do that i i don't think you have seen pictures of people in handcuffs because actually it was very clear we did employ a security firm of professionals and actually what i and the reason for that was to keep our people and the ships safe and the reality is coming out of this is that we have didn't get a single incident throughout the day we kept everybody safe everybody's secure mr hepburn people were terrified they were going about their work in the ordinary way to see people invade the ships and start ordering them about telling that they had to pack their bags and go is that a humane way to treat loyal employees who've given you such incredible service is that decent the security team were there to keep the ships and most importantly the people say for the time that was genuinely a stressful time for them it was our assessment that that was because you made it stressful you were the author of the stress there's no doubt that when people hear that they are losing their job it is extremely stressful we wanted to keep the ships and most importantly our people safe thank you thank you kevin newlands please thank you much chair i think just to come back on this can you perhaps clarify for the committee and to everyone watching on to um the penal workers what employment law provisions have you breached so we have not consulted and for that we are fully compensating people for that in full upfront how much how much is the business going to save each year by sacking the crew similarly and employing agency staff so this entirely different model is about half the price of the previous model about half the price yeah and you said the average um wage of the of the seafarers in the new model what's the lowest minimum lowest early rate in the new model 515 the lowest yeah you said an answer to mr mcdonald the average was five pounds 50 is everyone from the bottom fifteen five fifteen five fifteen the average range is from 550 to about six pounds depending on exchange rate but i gave you the low end of that five pounds fifteen and and do you think that's a fair wage do you think that international maritime laws in terms of wages are are fair and sustainable or as many people now now see it as modern day slavery which would you say to that so the rates that we're paying are in line or above itf minimum standards and it is it is the it is the uh operating model that the vast majority of operators across the globe work to so this is the competitive standard i appreciate that but do you think the itf standards are fair and reasonable is that something that the world perhaps in light of this that your action are going to have to look at and address i think that their negotiated rates of pay and therefore um you know those have been successfully negotiated on both parts i'm not sure how successful it was in the workers partner to be perfectly honest um over the last year have pno or ndp world broached with any government minister or official uh that you may be changing practice at any point not an official notification of what you what you did last thursday but any hint or indication as to what you might be doing or looking at i can share my understanding but i wasn't at the meeting so i believe that on the 22nd of november the secretary of state for transport was visiting dubai and at expo he met with some of the dp world exec team and that as as part of a broader ranging discussion which included ongoing investment in the british economy the subject of piano ferries was brought up and that we would be needing to make some changes to our business this year beyond that i can't confirm all i can say is that at that point in our planning we hadn't finalized our plans so i doubt any conversation went further than that but i don't know i appreciate that the final plans hadn't been made but um but that's quite an important point you've just raised could you perhaps look into that and provide the committee with more detail on that meeting because the fact that the government perhaps were warned that some things are fit months in advance um is quite an interesting point the committee might want to know can i turn my attention to um to mr christensen um is this has any other dp world company ever undertaken such an action is this standard practice for dp world is this a first i don't know to be quite honest in the period of time of time that i have been occupied with dp world i do not think that there has been anything similar to this but we've also not had a situation in the company or in the businesses that is owned by dp world that is similar to the one that piano ferris has been finding itself in just for clarity could you perhaps again write to the committee just to confirm that indeed this is the first time a dp world company has has undertaken this sort of action and for deputy impact on dp world are you concerned um what this might mean for dp world and its relationship with the uk government uh moving forward and as we understand it you have an agreement in place with the government with regards to free ports and do you think this will have an impact on that agreement so i am responsible for the maritime activities in dp world and cannot speak for what that means to other parts of the business but i can assure you as we have done both mr hipperswath and me in this session that we've taken a lot of consideration to the decision that was taken here piano various board have been coming to dp world consulting with us on this we've been informed we have made everything that we could to make sure that that all proper care was taken we have taken everything that we can do to make sure that the people affected are being looked after so yeah of course we have taken into consideration that that this decision could have some kind of impact um beyond uh piano various but still we have had given or we have given a piano various the support for that decision under the prevailing circumstances did you did you essentially force piano to take this decision or was it just a broader they must save x million sorry one more time did the dp world force piano to take this decision so piano ferris is um business in his own good right and the piano various board will have to take the business decisions for piano ferries that it has to take so dp world is interested and and obviously focused on making sure that our businesses are viable whether they are in the one corner of the world or the other but at the end of the day the operational decisions in piano various is piano fairies to decide upon okay thanks and back to mr uh he will wait did you anticipate such a reaction could i also just confirm mr christensen's point this was a piano ferry's board decision we of course required funding and support to do it but ultimately this was a pno ferry's decision this was not forced on us or even suggested to us idp world but um sorry your question was um what was my question again were you expecting this reaction yes oh sorry i do apologize the reaction to this has been extremely strong there's no question about that and i i do regret that and i recognize it i really really do recognize it but there was no piano without the changes that we needed to make so we anticipated this would be very difficult very controversial and lastly for me for a handbag you're not concerned that these actions will actually bring about the end of puno rather than save it i think we've got a tough job to do now to rebuild the business but i think a piano with a future and a piano that is able to be competitive pay its own bills and offer the customer service that is required has a much better chance thank you i'm i i'm afraid i have indications for questions from literally every member of the community so apart from you so i'm going to call you all but please just keep your questions and answers tight and keep it moving please nazareth ghani okay mr evil wait is it accurate that you said that the minister was informed on the 27th of november 22nd 22nd of november my understanding which one which minister secretary sorry the secretary of state for transport if i misspoke i apologize you have a minute of that conversation i don't know what a mess what a mess so piano fairies have been operating since 1844 and then one zoom meeting you trash it all trash it all 800 people now on the dole and um you're now trying to clean this up having ruined the reputation of piano fairies and undermined everything we're trying to do in the sector even encouraging people to come forward and become seafarers and you're saying that you've got a number of regrets i've just seen been sent a picture of pride of kent where i believe crew that you've dumped on the dole all of their bits and pieces are in bin bags why have you done that why don't you fix that right now why don't you fix that right now make sure that the people that you fight have some dignity and get hold of the items that they've left behind can you fix that right here right now so actually i've already taken steps to see what has happened there and i have been assured so we will find out the specifics of that photograph but i have been assured that the team are taking personal responsibility for returning people's belongings to them take them out the bin bags and give them back to the people they belong to give them some dignity so can i just the bags that people were given was on the day so they could have something to carry off the possessions that they could carry the possessions they're otherwise taking we're returning to them and we're employing companies to do that and box them up and return them you would heard from the early session the anxiety that we have that the mca will be able to credibly allow the ships to sail and you've come forward to say you've got a number of regrets and we would have hoped that maybe you're going to be treating a new crew a little bit better i've had i've had messages over the weekend from people on board and this doesn't give me any confidence you're going to treat the new crew any better um so the messages say the replacement officers were not informed they were replacing crew being made redundant and we were told that a new company is being set up and it could possibly be from glasgow no representatives from pno were present when they were on board the ships to brief the new offices and we've had no direction from piano as to next steps to take you must understand the fundamentals of managing a passenger ferry service surely you've been told and briefed this gives me no confidence that the new crew have confidence in in the leadership or even your leadership or whether they think the the ferries are competent to sail what's going on it just seems to get worse every day so a couple of things um we did employ a professional security firm to talk to people we had to talk to them all at the same time you mentioned a zoom call so the nature of this crewing model is that at any one time half of our seafarers were on board and the other half were at home spread throughout europe and so we wanted to inform everybody at the same time so people on board where at all possible we spoke to them in person people who were not and who are at home and spread throughout europe we had no option but to invite them to a teams meeting that was uh there was a live meeting yes it was scripted but it wasn't pre-recorded i think that's important and then we followed that up with one-to-one phone calls where we could get hold of them and of course we followed up in writing replacement offices yes why have they not been given one-to-one meetings where have they not been spoken to by piano leadership piano ferris leadership we've we've been on board in fact we've had some of our fleet management team and our and our and our and our ship's support services have actually been living on board the ships to help with the familiarization and the training we i've been on board i've spoken to the new crew and the new officers we've had 51 officers ask for the paperwork to join the crewing management company and come back and help rebuild the business can i ask why you didn't come forward to the department to ask for more advice or guidance to try and get you out of the situation you felt that you were in so we uh we think we felt it's important that we were able to have a viable ongoing business and we needed to move to a competitive operating model that is recognized throughout the world and our competitors also use it was a very uh it was a very difficult very difficult step we had to take and all of my regrets around it are around the impact it's had on the individuals but i do recognize it as a step we had to take we didn't talk to really very many people at all because of the nature of we knew it was going to be controversial and it needed to be confidential because without that confidentiality we simply wouldn't have been able to implement this incredibly difficult decision you change anything knowing what you know now what you did last thursday that's a really really difficult question the business would close the business was not viable this is the only way for us to save this business and we have moved to a model that is internationally recognized and widely used across the globe and by our competitors i um i would make this decision again i'm afraid well um just one quick clarification before i go on to another member um you said mr hebel vote to miss ghani that you had a discussion with the transport secretary on the 22nd of november i didn't uh have a i didn't i wasn't part of that discussion but i believe that um that a conversation was had in dubai at expo on the 22nd of november with who with the state electricity who was the secretary having a conversation with it wasn't you who was it transport sorry the transport secretary had a discussion with somebody in dubai yes who i uh some some senior executives at dp world i don't know if you who i wasn't there mr christensen who had that conversation with the transport secretary in dubai i don't know either i was also not participating in the presumably you can find out for us and let us know yes and i think i think that mr newlands asked us to do that thank you can i can i please reiterate at that point our plans were nowhere near finalized so it is unlikely that that conversation would have had any real substance to it i suspect you didn't participate okay greg morris please thank you thanks chair um you you may recall uh mr hamill white previously all this is a joint committee with the uh of transport and buys there was an invitation and from transport to to where to come to our committee we were looking at corvid support during the pandemic and there was a change in the chief exec at the time that wasn't possible but that was a rising out of the corvette support the company received and the i think that the frayed grant as well it was around about 15 million pounds but it was also because a number of redundancies had been announced affecting a number of ports uh where penal phrase were involved what was different that you were prepared to respect uk law and consult with the recognized trade unions on that occasion and yet weren't prepared to do it on this occasion so it's quite a lot that was different but it's a good question so um during the covid uh pandemic during the height of it we anticipated it would come to an end in the early part of 2021 and we anticipated that we would be able to restructure the business with limited redundancies and that that was a reasonable conversation and we absolutely consulted with that the curve pandemic has gone on much longer and we now need to fundamentally address the viability of this business otherwise it closes in 2000 an additional 2 200 people lose their jobs and so in this situation we will need to change our operating model and on that basis and i know i know the reaction i got last time but it is true that we assessed that given the fundamental nature of change that no union could accept it and therefore we chose not to consult because a consultation process would have been a sham and we didn't want to go put anybody through that and we want and we want and we are and we are compensating people in full and up fund for that decision do you have a name for this new operating model the the new operating model that you're applying with the with the reduced crewing and so on and the i mean it's called multiple things people call it agency crew um i i i talk about running our crew through a crewing management company i've heard it rather referred to as the skeleton um crew model i think that's i think it's really dangerous that we that we i that i'd let that light these are very very experienced fully certified professional international seafarers they just have some decent wages then i know time yeah we're on 50 an hour i know i'm not trying sorry i'm gonna have to move on i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'll just call you in the end at the end if i've got time paul howell please thank you chair i i i just find it bizarre that um you know as a business you've chosen to break the law as a business decision it's just it's incomprehensible to me um you know you know and now we're laughing stock you know i think whether you'll find that it's your german ratna moment in terms of a business you're seen as contemptible by any right-minded people as to the way you're running your business i really don't understand how you think that um the government or anybody else is going to want to engage with piano or dp world in anything with any faith or any trust that you're going to do anything that you say that you're going to do in future with with hindsight do you really think this is a sustainable way to have your future do you think that this is is a viable way to run a business i think we weren't viable before and i know that if we hadn't made radical changes the business would have closed and i know i keep repeating it and i apologize for that but genuinely that would not have been 800 redundancies with substantial severance packages that would have been 3 000 people losing their jobs and the impact on 3 thousand people throughout multiple nationalities uh mr christensen um you know you made the comment earlier that um you know it's a it was a your part of the business that was involved in this and that i've got the impression that the broader dp world um assessment wasn't fully considered into this and it was you know you talk about not have been associated to the the teams that are involved in the free ports type agendas do you not regret that i mean it seems to me as though what you've done is you've exposed your entire business to contempt not just the risk of p if p and all going down do you have any cent regret of that from even just from a pure business strategy point of view let me once again stress that this decision was also not an easy one for us to um you know sign off and support uh in terms of piano variance of course it wasn't um i think the commitment and of ep world to the uk uh economy about billions of pounds of investment in terminals and free zones etc you know that that commitment i think is is second to none i mean we have not invested more funds anywhere else outside of dubai than in the uk and the commitment to you know ferris and therefore also a british icon somebody mentioned back to 1847 yeah that the commitment is also a part of us being very observant too in this case that that we have done everything that we could to make sure that people were taken care of and it was also noted a little bit earlier that the packages that have been offered to the affected employees that they are funded out of dp world and they are and therefore that has been very important to us to make sure that we did everything we could support support support the people who were affected by this that is a you know also a commitment that we do to make sure that no that doesn't make the decision any easier but at least we have taken very seriously to try to make the impact as bearable if i can use that word as possible just just to wrap it check and it really just i think i think it's bizarre that you think that the right way to do it is to buy your way out of following uk law and i think that's just something that will come back and bite you sorry chad thank you thank you simon jack please thank you mr hamborthwaite you've said in this session that what you've done to 800 working people including people in my own constituency was necessary to save pno you might have avoided financial bankruptcy but in the minds of many customers you are morally bankrupt what have you done to the brand so no question the brand has taken a hit there's no question about i don't deny that and and you know we did something that was incredibly difficult and we knew was going to be controversial but we now have a business that we can rebuild and grow a competitive modern business i am very very sorry to those 800 people and their families um but otherwise the whole business would have closed and we'd lost a british icon and 3 000 people lost their jobs and that is the back the icon's admired though now the icon is mine in this this disgraceful behavior how will you recover your brand it's no longer an icon it's not a british icon anymore it's not it's not something we're proud of well i we have a future now we wouldn't have we don't have to close the place if you've got a future do you think the customers will want to buy tickets from you knowing what you've done i really do i think it will take a while i do think that there is a hit to our business and i am again incredibly sorry but we do have a future we do have a business that is now competitive that now can meet the customer needs and can pay its bills are you hearing from your booking systems that people are cancelling tickets uh cancelling their trips yes to what extent uh well we're not actually on sale um obviously because at the moment we're not in the future the future if huge tickets have already been bought for things and tricks that people were looking forward to have they cancelled them as a result of this some people certainly have and it's the the reduction in bookings is different on different routes partly because uh people buy with a different um in a different pattern on different routes so on dover calais we have taken a particularly large decline but it's because those bookings tend to cut be made two weeks ahead on something like hull europort where people make bookings three or four months in advance we're still maintaining strong levels of booking as we are online can ryan okay thank you simon chris please thank you chairman um mr healthway thank you i have three very short questions for you one um basically sacked employees and outsourced employment to agency staff i think that's the correct assumption to approximately a third of your workforce that is dominantly also to uk citizens can you just tell us briefly why you haven't done that to french citizens or dutch citizens why it's just uk citizens the vast vast majority of our crewing model was employed through jersey we have i mean it might be double figures of french employees and we have very very very few numbers of dutch employees so this was about the suck from here that's right okay okay um where is your office based i have an office in dover and i have an office in hell could you just tell us why your ships are flagged in cyprus bahamas and barbados when they sail from the united kingdom so this predates me by some way but there was a change made and i believe that the move to cyprus was um to do with our maintaining our um commitments to the french tannish tax that we have you and very briefly i'm assuming you risk assess this enormous change in your business and i'm assuming you had a safety risk assessment could you tell us what the result of that risk assessment was and whether or not you actually uh shared it with the maritime and coast guard agency so one of the reasons for engaging this security firm was to keep everybody and our ships but most importantly everybody's safe and i have to reassess i have to restate and i think it's really important point that with all the rumors out there the reality and the facts are that we didn't have a single incident i'll just be clear with you i'm talking about your ability your licence to operate this is what it's about have you risk assess the enormous change and have the mta signed off that risk assessment because in my opinion i cannot understand how you can continue to operate ships safely in a way where you completely remove your workforce and the mca have not signed that off and i i'm sorry i didn't ask the early witnesses that question specifically but i don't think that's been signed off so let me just confirm a couple of things for you we engaged with the mca before we before the 17th march we engaged with them first thing on the 16th it could completely let me finish the assessment is the question please so okay so specific specific thing i i i don't know the answer to that let me find out but can i just reassure you about really just finally i'm sorry i'm just about to finish i apologize but do you mean to tell this committee that the chief executive of pino has not signed off a safety risk assessment for massive change in in your business is am i am i right in saying that all of our team have been on this i haven't seen the risk assessment i will i will get that would you can i i hope the mta listening to this because this is outrageous i cannot believe that you can maintain your position sir i'm so sorry that you have signed off such enormous change and you have not directly seen the safety risk assessment mr chairman i'm going to hand back to you thank you thank you um alan brown please um black employment law are it's this is done under uk employment law could you do that under french law or under law of the netherlands in terms of employment law that's typing mass sacking i haven't explored that so i don't know the answer to that i'm not a lawyer i'm afraid and at no point you've taken advantage of what lapse was in the uk so this was not a uk the intention here was not the uk the intention was to move from one operating model to another um thank you ben bradshaw sorry clarification on that you have dutch and french-based staff yes very treated in the same way correct so but but in fact to be clear they are a very small proportion of our overall crewing models why haven't you treated them in the same way because this was about uh addressing a uh uncompetitive and unsustainable crewing model that we have from um our jersey-based crew model doesn't answer and then there was one final question from graham thanks very much we're looking for a remedy here and the option that you've gone for the model that you've gone for must be hugely expensive the recruitment costs the specialist security firm and suspending operations so there's no revenue at the cost of redundancy of the loyal workforce are there any circumstances perhaps the threat of one of an unlimited fine that would cause pain or furries to think again and reinstate the workforce as i say the business was unviable and unsustainable and would have had to close had we not made this incredibly difficult decision and i'm genuinely deeply sorry to those people affected and their families the answer is no the answer is if we went back to the previous model we would have to close the business it is not viable thank you mr hepath at the beginning of this panel i asked whether you either didn't know what you were doing or whether you willfully broke the law you said to this committee today that you willfully broke the law you chose not to consult even though you know you should have done but you decided to pay people off with compensation in order to break the law does that not give you concern that you're in breach of your legal obligations as a company director and a company law so as i say i completely hold our hands up my hands up our hands up that we did choose not to consult that's quite amazing isn't it you're coming to this parliament and putting your hands up and saying you willfully chose to break the law believe it we did not believe that there was any other way to do this compensating people in full okay i'm afraid we've run out of time but peter helped wait um and uh just kristen said thank you for your time we're now going to change the chair in order to start the ministerial session i'm told i therefore need to suspend the session just for one minute order order the proceeding is currently suspended the proceeding is currently suspended the proceeding is currently suspended the proceeding is currently suspended order order we now have our final panel before us it's the uh ministers and officials can i just quickly ask them to introduce themselves to start with minister courts robert courts the maritime minister minister scully paul scully uh minister for labour markets in this regard lauren mike warren the labour market director at bayes uh john connell deputy director maritimer

Channel: Sky News

Views: 165,025

Keywords: P&O, Ferry, MPs, Politics, Select committee

Id: oOtWoi4quOk

Length: 137min 10sec (8230 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 24 2022