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Labour has suggested Boris Johnson was playing “fast and loose with the truth” when he told MPs yesterday that the government was definitely taking P&O Ferries to court for breaking employment law when it sacked 800 workers last week.
Johnson told MP at PMQs that he thought the company had broken the law and he said:
We will therefore be taking action ... If the company is found guilty, it will face fines running into millions of pounds ... We will take ’em to court, we will defend the rights of British workers.
But, during the P&O Ferries committee hearing this morning, ministers could not give details of when legal action might start, and one official said powers were not available to get an injunction against the company. (See 12.03pm.) And in the Commons, when Emily Thornberry, the shadow attorney general, asked if the government law officers agreed with the PM that the law had definitely been broken, Alex Chalk, the solicitor general, refused to back Johnson’s statement. And, asked if there would definitely be a prosecution, Chalk just said the firm would be taken to court “if the law allows for a prosecution”.
Thornberry has written to Suella Braverman, the attorney general, asking her to clear the matter up. She says:
Can I therefore ask you again, as a matter of urgency, when the prime minister said yesterday on multiple occasions that the government would be taking P&O to court for breaching the 1992 Act, is that statement correct, is that actually happening, or was he playing fast and loose with the truth, with the law and with the hopes of hundreds of P&O workers, by claiming to take action that he is not?
Johnson expected Keir Starmer to raise the P&O Ferries sackings yesterday and, by explicitly saying a prosecution would take place, he was partially able to parry Starmer’s claim that the government had been ineffective in response to the scandal.
