P&O Ferries owner DP World is no longer part of the leadership team of a freeport project because of the controversy over its subsidiary making 800 crew redundant last month without consultation.
The government confirmed on 7 April that DP World would not be taking a leading role in the scheme after the resignation of its UK commercial director from the scheme’s board last week. Aart Hille Ris Lambers quit the Solent freeport board after coming under pressure from fellow board members including Portsmouth council leader Gerald Vernon-Jackson.
Stephen Greenhalgh, a minister at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and the Home Office, announced on 5 April that DP World resigned from the Solent freeport board and were no longer a partner in the freeport consortium.
Labour and the TUC had demanded that DP World be removed from freeport schemes in the wake of the redundancies and the replacement of UK crews by workers from abroad on below minimum wage pay. It is thought that DP World was to benefit by at least £50m from UK taxpayers for its roles with two freeports, Solent and London Gateway.
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Greenhalgh added that “the government is continuing to work to understand whether DP World or P&O Ferrymasters are in breach of any of the requirements on them as investors in the Thames freeport”, raising the possibility that DP World still had a role to play in the scheme.
Alan Whitehead, the Labour MP for Southampton Test, whose constituency includes the freeport, welcomed DP World’s withdrawal from the steering body given its track record on employment rights.
He told the Guardian: “It’s right that they take more of a back seat now. I don’t think it’s just the resignation of a director, the freeport consortium has decided that, and certainly that has my support,” he said.
Last week Ernst Schulze, chief executive of DP World UK, was dropped from the government’s post-Brexit trade advisory group created to support global business opportunities.
On 7 April the only P&O Ferries crew member who refused to take the company’s compensation offer launched an employment tribunal case, claiming unfair dismissal and discrimination.
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