A minister has suggested the Treasury should try to claw back furlough money from a firm which sacked 800 staff with immediate effect on a video call.
James Heappey said P&O Ferries’ behaviour was “disgraceful” and “shoddy”.
The armed forces minister said the government was only informed that the workers were losing their jobs at around the same time as the employees.
He suggested that the firm could potentially be forced to pay back £10m in furlough money it received during the pandemic as punishment.
“It sounds like exactly the sort of thing that if I were the Treasury I would be asking for, but but I don’t know exactly how these things work,” he told Sky News.
P&O caused widespread anger on Thursday after 800 members of staff were fired with immediate effect on a Zoom call.
A 24-second clip of the recording was obtained by BBC South East on Thursday.
A P&O Ferries boss in the footage tells the room: “The company has made the decision going forward that it will be primarily crewed by a third party crew provider.
“Therefore I am sorry to inform you that this means your employment is terminated with immediate effect on the grounds of redundancy.
“Your final day of employment is today.”
The company has claimed it is not a viable business in its current state and that it had been a “tough” decision to fire so many employees, but it was necessary for its survival.
But Heappey told Sky News the firm’s conduct was “disgraceful”.
“To be honest with you, as far as I know from colleagues around government, I don’t think the government got much more notice than the employees at P&O did.
“It’s shoddy to do that, and to not give the Department for Transport any notice of the fact you’re going to do it.”
Asked whether the government could intervene to help save the jobs, Heappey said: “Sadly, it is the case that the government cannot force an employer to continue to employ people that the employer has said it doesn’t want to employ.
“Absolutely horrendous way to treat their staff, and I know there is a lot of anger among ministerial colleagues in the Department for Transport.
“They’re seeing what they can do to try and make the situation better, but the reality is that P&O have made a commercial decision, and as much as we disagree with it, I fear for those workers — they’ve been badly let down by their employer.”