P&O Ferries boss got pay rise of at least 55% after firing almost 800 workers
The boss of P&O Ferries was paid £683,000 in the financial year after the cross-Channel operator outraged the public and parliament by dismissing almost 800 mainly British workers,The windfall, revealed in much delayed 2023 accounts seen by the Guardian and ITV News that report more than £90m of annual losses, represents a pay rise of at least 55% for Peter Hebblethwaite, who was the company’s highest-paid director,The top pay package in 2022 of £440,000 was earned by a former P&O Ferries board member,Hebblethwaite told a parliamentary select committee last year that his salary was £325,000, and he had received a bonus in 2023 of £183,000,He was asked during the appearance if he was “a pirate” who appeared to be “robbing staff blind”.
“I reflected on accepting that payment, but ultimately I did decide to accept it,” he told MPs about the bonus at the time.“I do recognise it is not a decision that everybody would have made.”The pay rise, which suggests Hebblethwaite’s total remuneration may have included elements not mentioned in his testimony to parliament, is likely to be viewed as controversial coming after P&O Ferries sacked 786 staff in 2022 and replaced them with low-paid agency workers who received considerably less than the UK minimum wage.Hebblethwaite confirmed to MPs during last year’s session that the group’s lowest-paid seafarers had been receiving “fully consolidated hourly pay [of] about £4.87”.
Two months before making that disclosure, the company had distanced itself from that rate, telling the Guardian and ITV News: “We do not recognise the [£4,87-an-hour] 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,”Hebblethwaite’s pay package emerged in accounts that are expected to be published by Companies House in the coming days, but are already nine months late.
The figures – the first to be signed off by a tiny four-person auditing firm that replaced KPMG, the “big four” accountant that resigned in March – show that the company lost £91,4m before tax in 2023, a considerable improvement on the £249,4m losses in 2022,Hebblethwaite has long argued that P&O Ferries would have gone bust had it not made the 2022 sackings and started paying the overseas agency workers much lower rates,The accounts state that it transported 4.
6 million passengers in 2023, a 45% reduction on the 8.4 million carried in 2018.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 promotionWhen Hebblethwaite addressed MPs last year, the UK minimum wage was £11.44 an hour, but the rates did not apply to maritime workers employed by an overseas agency who work on foreign-registered ships in international waters.P&O uses that model, so the pay onboard its vessels was legal.
Since then, the UK and France have introduced legislation intended to secure minimum-wage rates for seafarers, which is expected to increase P&O Ferries’ costs,The operator said it was “unequivocally committed to adhering to the legal requirements of applicable national and international laws”,A spokesperson for P&O Ferries said: “These results show the progress we’re making in transforming the business,Losses are down and financial performance is improving,Our focus on high-quality experience is driving growth across both tourism and freight, with more people choosing to travel with us and satisfaction scores rising.
We’re matching capacity to meet demand, and continue to invest in greener, more efficient vessels.“Our accounts are prepared in accordance with relevant accounting standards and subject to independent audit in line with auditing standards.”
‘A billion people backing you’: China transfixed as Musk turns against Trump
Few break-ups have as many gossiping observers as the fallout between the once inseparable Donald Trump and Elon Musk.The ill-fated bromance between the US president and the world’s richest man, which once raised questions about American oligarchy, is now being pored over by social media users in China, many of whom are Team Musk.The latest drama comes from Musk’s pledge to found a new political party, the America party, if Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill, which Musk described as “insane” passed the Senate this week (it did). Musk had already vowed to unseat lawmakers who backed Trump’s flagship piece of legislation, which is expected to increase US national debt by $3.3tn
AI companies start winning the copyright fight
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. If you need me after this newsletter publishes, I will be busy poring over photos from Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez’s wedding, the gaudiest and most star-studded affair to disrupt technology news this year. I found it a tacky and spectacular affair. Everyone who was anyone was there, except for Charlize Theron, who, unprompted, said on Monday: “I think we might be the only people who did not get an invite to the Bezos wedding. But that’s OK, because they suck and we’re cool
China hosts first fully autonomous AI robot football match
They think it’s all over … for human footballers at least.The pitch wasn’t the only artificial element on display at a football match in China on Saturday. Four teams of humanoid robots took on each other in Beijing, in games of three-a-side powered by artificial intelligence.While the modern game has faced accusations of becoming near-robotic in its obsession with tactical perfection, the games in China showed that AI won’t be taking Kylian Mbappé’s job just yet.Footage of the humanoid kickabout showed the robots struggling to kick the ball or stay upright, performing pratfalls that would have earned their flesh-and-blood counterparts a yellow card for diving
Whitehall’s ambition to cut costs using AI is fraught with risk
A Dragons’ Den-style event this week, where tech companies will have 20 minutes to pitch ideas for increasing automation in the British justice system, is one of numerous examples of how the cash-strapped Labour government hopes artificial intelligence and data science can save money and improve public services.Amid warnings from critics that Downing Street has been “drinking the Kool-Aid” on AI, the Department of Health and Social Care this week announced an AI early warning system to detect dangerous maternity services after a series of scandals, and Wes Streeting, the health secretary, said he wants one in eight operations to be conducted by a robot within a decade.AI is being used to prioritise actions on the 25,000 pieces of correspondence the Department for Work and Pensions receives each day and to detect potential fraud and error in benefit claims. Ministers even have access to an AI tool that is supposed to provide a “vibe check” on parliamentary opinion to help them weigh the political risks of policy proposals.Again and again, ministers are turning to technology to tackle acute crises that in the past might have been dealt with by employing more staff or investing more money
Musk vows to unseat lawmakers who support Trump’s sweeping spending bill
Elon Musk has vowed to unseat lawmakers who support Donald Trump’s sweeping budget bill, which he has criticized because it would increase the country’s deficit by $3.3tn.“Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame! And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth,” he wrote on his social media platform, X.A few hours later he added that if the “insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day”.With these threats, lobbed at lawmakers over social media, the tech billionaire has launched himself back into a rift with the US president he helped prop up
Gov.uk smartphone app to launch with limited functionality
A government app intended to “cut life admin” will be free to download by millions of UK citizens from Tuesday, but its functions will be limited and the cabinet minister in charge has admitted: “The design is not as we would like it to be.”The gov.uk app will be accessible on smartphones for people aged 16 and over and is intended to be the main mobile hub for many citizen interactions with the government, although not the NHS or HM Revenue and Customs.Peter Kyle, the secretary of state for science and technology, said the version launched this week would only steer users to existing government webpages, with more functionality to be added by the end of the year.A generative artificial intelligence chatbot trained on 700,000 pages of the gov
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