P&O chief who prompted outrage by sacking nearly 800 staff is to quit
The chief executive described as “Britain’s most hated boss” after sacking almost 800 workers at P&O Ferries is to leave the company.Peter Hebblethwaite prompted outrage in 2022 after P&O Ferries dismissed 786 staff and replaced them with low-paid agency workers, who received considerably less than the UK minimum wage.At the time the cross-Channel ferry company was accused of operating like “pirates of the high sea” and during questioning at a parliamentary hearing Darren Jones, then chair of the business committee, asked: “Are you in this mess because you don’t know what you’re doing, or are you just a shameless criminal?”Hebblethwaite always said his actions were the only way of saving the ferry group from going bust.No criminal charges were brought after the sackings.A spokesperson for P&O Ferries, a subsidiary of the Dubai-based ports operator DP World, said: “Peter Hebblethwaite has communicated his intention to resign from his position as chief executive officer to dedicate more time to family matters.
P&O Ferries extends its gratitude to Peter Hebblethwaite for his contributions as CEO over the past four years.“During his tenure the company navigated the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, initiated a path towards financial stability, and introduced the world’s first large double-ended hybrid ferries on the Dover-Calais route, thereby enhancing sustainability.We extend our best wishes to him for his future endeavours.”The change of management at P&O Ferries, which was first reported by Sky News, follows the company wrestling with its governance after twice failing to publish its annual accounts on time, which is technically a criminal offence.The ferry operator’s 2022 accounts were almost 11 months late when they were belatedly published in November last year and showed that the company spent more than £47m on jettisoning its UK seafarers.
Earlier this year, it emerged that P&O had hired a tiny four-person auditing firm to replace KPMG, one of the “big four” accountancy firms, which resigned from approving its annual accounts in March.When P&O Ferries’ 2023 accounts were finally published in July, they revealed that Hebblethwaite had been paid £683,000 in the financial year after making the controversial dismissals, a pay rise of at least 55% that included a £183,000 bonus.“I reflected on accepting that payment, but ultimately I did decide to accept it,” Hebblethwaite told MPs.“I do recognise it is not a decision that everybody would have made.”The increased remuneration contrasted sharply with the pay that had been received by seafarers onboard the company’s ferries.
In 2022, the businessman told parliamentarians that the lowest-paid agency worker would receive £5.15 an hour, only for a Guardian and ITV News investigation in March 2024 to reveal how some seafarers were receiving an hourly rate as low as £4.87.Sign up to Business TodayGet set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morningafter newsletter promotionHebblethwaite was recalled to appear in front of another select committee hearing two months after the expose and conceded that “the lowest, fully consolidated hourly pay is about £4.87”.
When the Guardian and ITV News had previously asked P&O about the £4.87 an hour figure, a spokesperson had said: “We do not recognise the pay rates that you are referencing.No member of our crew on our Dover-Calais vessels earns less than $2,400 per month, equivalent to £5.20 per hour.”The company was able to pay rates considerably below the UK minimum wage because maritime workers, employed by an overseas agency who work on foreign-registered ships in international waters, were exempt from the relevant legislation.
As P&O used that specific model, the level of pay on board its vessels was legal,However, last year new legislation in the UK and France became active,Pay rates are understood to have risen onboard P&O vessels since,In its latest accounts, the company lost £91,4m before tax in 2023, a considerable improvement on the £249.
4m losses in 2022.The accounts show that it transported 4.6 million passengers in 2023, a 45% reduction on the 8.4 million carried in 2018.
Scott Quinnell’s son delights Welsh rugby fans as drag queen Heidi Heights
Sipping coffee in Cardiff Bay during a break from his day job as a personal trainer, Steele Quinnell, a scion of the Quinnell rugby dynasty, is matter of fact about how his path in life has diverged from that of his relatives.His grandfather Derek, father Scott and uncles Craig and Gavin are renowned as literal and figurative giants in Welsh rugby – all well over 6ft tall and fearless on the pitch.Like the other members of his family, Quinnell, 26, is in the public eye, but on a very different stage – as drag queen Heidi Heights, an act he launched in the spring. Earlier this month, the Ffos Las race course, where Quinnell regularly gigs, asked him to give an interview to promote a race weekend, which then exploded online as delighted rugby fans realised there was a plot twist to the Quinnell legacy.“I mean, nothing I said in the interview was bad or wild or anything, but I think I was a bit naive to the fact that it was going to go big … I thought it was just going to be a local thing for the people around the race course
Embroidering history: the V&A should take a pluralistic approach in the Middle East | Letter
We were interested to see your gallery of pictures from the exhibition Thread Memory: Embroidery from Palestine at V&A Dundee (‘A symbol of Palestinian presence and identity’: the personal and political world of ‘tatreez’ – in pictures, 18 August), having visited the partner exhibit at V&A South Kensington.The tatreez embroidery tradition should indeed be celebrated, but as scholars we are concerned by the failure to use historically correct language, and to recognise the diversity of cultures that existed in the area presented here simply as “Palestine”. Formally speaking, there was no such place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when several of these objects were produced.The showcase is situated within a larger gallery devoted to the “Islamic Middle East”: a framework that erases the historic presence of Christians and Jews in the region. The V&A possesses interesting Jewish textiles from Iraq, but alas there is no space for them in the section dedicated here to “Ottoman embroidery”
Susan Sarandon, Whoopi Goldberg and Caliban’s take on The Tempest: the best theatre, comedy and dance of autumn 2025
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French screen and stage legend Isabelle Huppert will bring her acclaimed performance as Mary Stuart, AKA Mary, Queen of Scots, to Australia in March as part of an exclusive season for the 2026 Adelaide festival.Mary Said What She Said, a one-woman show created by late theatre luminary Robert Wilson for Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, where it premiered in 2019, stars Huppert as the ill-fated monarch and devout Catholic whose dispute over the English throne with her Protestant cousin Queen Elizabeth I cost her her life.The play, written by novelist Darryl Pinckney, is set in the lead-up to Mary’s execution for treason in 1587 after 19 years in captivity and draws on Stuart’s letters to craft a “testimony” against accusations that she plotted, among other things, to assassinate Queen Elizabeth.Reviewing the show’s UK premiere in 2024, the Guardian critic Claire Armitstead described Huppert’s performance as “astounding”. “Alone on stage for 90 minutes, she performs something between a rite and an elaborate courtly dance, her stylised, repetitive movements and moments of stillness accompanied by Pinckney’s poetic script casting a spell over her audience,” Armitstead wrote
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