Grant Shapps has called for the boss of P&O Ferries to be sacked after he admitted breaking the law by sacking 800 workers.
The transport secretary said Peter Hebblethwaite’s behaviour in front of a committee of MPs was “brazen and breathtaking” and the government would act to force the company to U-turn on their decision.
Giving evidence to the Commons business committee yesterday, Hebblethwaite admitted he had broken the law by failing to consult with trade unions about their plans to lay off hundreds of staff on the spot and replace them with workers earning less than the minimum wage.
The chief executive went on to admit that he would do the same thing again if he had to.
Committee chairman Darren Jones accused the company of “behaving like gangsters”.
Appearing on Sky News, Grant Shapps said Hebblethwaite should be out of a job.
He said: “I thought what the boss of P&O said yesterday about knowingly breaking the law was brazen, breathtaking, showed incredible arrogance and I cannot believe that he can stay in that role.
″[He] admitted to deliberately go out and use a loophole, well, break the law.
“What they did was they flagged their ships through Cyprus, avoided having to tell anybody about this - or they felt they did - and even though they know they’ve broken the law, what they’ve done is to pay people off in such a way to try and buy their silence.
“It’s unacceptable. So what I’m going to do about it is come to parliament this coming week with a package of measures which will both close every possible loophole that exists and force them to U-turn on this.
“We are not having people working from British ports on regular routes between here and France or here and Holland or wherever else and failing to pay the minimum wage. It’s simply unacceptable and we will force that to change.”
The minister said new laws would force the company to pay workers minimum wage.
He told BBC Breakfast that maritime law was “very, very complex” but that he was preparing a package of “about eight” different measures to bring to parliament.
He said he had spoken to shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh and believed there was “very, very broad parliamentary agreement” that new legislation was needed.
“There are a whole series of different things that we need to do because of the complexity of maritime law,” he said. “There’s not a single process but we’ll pass different types of legislation.
“I just want to be completely straight with your question, P&O will need to re-employ people on the proper salaries.
“We’re simply going to make sure that these loopholes that they’ve very, very creatively, and rather evilly exploited, are closed in lots of different ways so they can’t find a way round them.”