P&O Ferries is not a rogue operator, the business secretary has said, as the government attempted to draw a line under the damaging row that has engulfed the buildup to its international investment summit on Monday.
Jonathan Reynolds told the BBC on Sunday that he did not regard the company as “rogue”, despite his cabinet colleague Louise Haigh having described it in that way earlier this week.
Ministers have been in damage limitation mode since Haigh made those comments, which reflected Labour’s previous position but which triggered reports that P&O’s parent company was threatening to pull out of Monday’s summit.
In an official statement, Haigh, the transport secretary, called P&O a “rogue operator” because of its decision in 2022 to sack 800 employees without notice and employ agency staff instead on lower pay. Haigh then added in an interview that she was boycotting the company and had encouraged her department not to deal with it.
With DP World threatening to cancel a planned £1bn investment in the UK, Keir Starmer said Haigh’s comments did not reflect the official government position – a stance echoed by Reynolds on Sunday morning.
“That’s not the government’s position,” Reynolds told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg. “I’m happy to clarify that I speak for the government on business issues. As a business secretary, we will always make clear what happened [in 2022] was wrong. That’s why we’re changing the law to make sure it can’t happen again.”
He called the mass firing by P&O “a particularly egregious case”. But he added: “Where companies accept that we’re not allowing that to happen any more, and we can work with them on investments into the country, we can have a conversation with them, we will do so. It’s not the government’s position to boycott them.”
Allies of Haigh said she had not been told that DP World was planning to attend the event, nor that it was preparing to make a major investment in the UK, before she made her comments. They added that the press release referring to P&O had been signed off by Downing Street, and they alleged she had subsequently been “hung out to dry” by people in No 10.
The prime minister attempted to patch over the cabinet rift on Saturday, calling Haigh to tell her he had full confidence in her as transport secretary.
He is hoping that the statements he and Reynolds have made in recent days will have reassured companies planning to attend Monday’s event at the Guildhall. The business department announced on Saturday that DP World would be one of those after all.
About 200 senior executives are signed up to participate in the summit, as well as a string of cabinet ministers, including Starmer and his chancellor, Rachel Reeves.
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The government hopes to use the event to demonstrate its ability to attract inward investment, although many business executives have expressed concern about the summit being held before knowing the outcome of this month’s budget.
Charlie Nunn, the chief executive of Lloyds Bank, told the BBC on Sunday that he was concerned about the impact of taxing employers’ pension contributions, something Reeves is considering before her announcement on 30 October.
Nunn said: “Anything that helps people continue to invest and take appropriate risk, we think, is really important. Anything that does the opposite would be a handbrake.”
He added: “Pensions, and contributions to pensions, are critical. We see about 40% of people in the UK have a pension which won’t give them even a basic living allowance when they retire. So we need to increase enrolment and investments in pensions.”