UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said Friday that P&O chief executive Peter Hebblethwaite should resign from his position following the company’s controversial decision to make 800 workers redundant last week.
“I thought what the boss of P&O said yesterday about knowingly breaking the law was brazen and breathtaking, and showed incredible arrogance,” Shapps said while speaking to UK-based Sky News.
“I cannot believe that he can stay in that role having admitted to deliberately go out and use a loophole – well, break the law, but also use a loophole.”
When quizzed as to whether Hebblethwaite should resign, the secretary said, “Yes.”
UK-based maritime operator P&O Ferries has been under fire since it took the decision to make 800 staff redundant with immediate effect last week. The decision was taken following a huge £100 million ($131 million) loss year-on-year which the firm’s owner, Dubai-based port operator DP World, has had to cover.
“What I’m going to do … is come to parliament this coming week with a package of measures which will both close every possible loophole that exists and force them to U-turn on this,” Shapps told Sky News.
“We are going to legally require them to go back on it they might as well start on that now,” he added.
A spokesperson told Arabian Business following the announcement that the firm was “not a viable business” without the redundancies.
“Our survival is dependent on making swift and significant changes now. Without these changes there is no future for P&O Ferries,” the spokesperson said.
Ferry operators around the world were hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic over the last couple of years as lockdown rules clamped down on the number of travellers.
“We took this difficult decision as a last resort and only after full consideration of all other options but, ultimately, we concluded that the business wouldn’t survive without fundamentally changed crewing arrangements, which in turn would inevitably result in redundancies,” P&O Ferries said in a separate statement.
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