The expectation of how businesses hoping to seek Liverpool City Region investment has been laid out in the aftermath of the P&O Ferries scandal.
Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram said companies that don’t meet the standards expected of an ethical business looking to trade in the city region “won’t be getting any of our money”. Mr Rotheram was responding to a question regarding proposed action against P&O Ferries after the firm sacked 800 seafarers last month.
Groups gathered outside the Port of Liverpool in Seaforth to protest the removal of the hundreds of workers by pre-recorded message. Metro Mayor Rotheram said he had met with campaigners at the port and conceded the city region’s options were limited in relation to that case.
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He said: “Even the Government has accepted that they (P&O) acted illegally. If you’re getting the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Secretary of State saying they’ve acted illegally, under advice I’m surmising from the Attorney General, then we need to take them through the legal process for that illegality don’t we? What can we do?
“Not a lot, I’ve been down to the picket line, I’ve spoken to a lot of people down there who are genuinely concerned about the way the workforce was treated. As we know, they can go through a tribunal but all they’ll get is a limited amount of money, they won’t get their jobs back, so what’s the real point of that?”
Moving forward, the Metro Mayor said businesses seeking to trade within the city region limits would have to follow a way of conducting itself if it were to succeed. He said: “What we need is to ensure that anybody who does come to the city region and wants to locate into the freeport abides by the spirit of the frameworks that have come through the combined authority.
“If you want some of our money currently, I think it’s only right that people should use local supply chains, local labour wherever possible, employ people from underrepresented groups, take on apprentices, don’t use zero hours contracts, recognise unions, all of those things you’d expect. They are the standards we would expect from ethical employers looking to locate or relocate in the city region.
“If they don’t, they won’t be getting any of our money.” Mayor Rotheram, who was joined by a number of politicians on visits to the port, admitted that there was a limit on how much restriction could be placed on companies coming to the area.
He added: “If a P&O type of company wanted to come in here and believe fire and rehire is a way in which they could circumvent the law of the land, then yes, we could stop them from being either within the freeport or from receiving any funding from the combined authority, but we can’t stop dodgy companies coming here.”
