P&O Ferries boss asked if he is 'modern-day pirate' for paying staff £4.87-an-hour

The boss of P&O Ferries - which infamously axed nearly 800 people and replaced them with cheaper agency staff - has admitted paying workers just £4.87-an-hour. Chief executive Peter Hebblethwaite, who earned more than £500,000 last year, including a £183,000 bonus, admitted he could not live on such a low hourly rate.

But he hold the House of Commons Business and Trade Committee that staff were not being exploited and dismissed any need for a separate probe into company hiring practices. He said: "We are paying considerably ahead of the international minimum standard. We believe that it is right that as an international business operating in international waters, we should be governed by international law.

"All we want is a level playing field with our competitors."

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Two years ago P&O let go 786 staff members without any notice or union involvement and replaced them with lower-wage staff hired through an external recruitment agency. The Insolvency Service later announced it would not pursue criminal proceedings against the company, owned by Dubai-based DP World since 2019.

The company, which replaced the workers with overseas agency staff, told Parliament in 2022 that agency workers' average pay was £5.50 per hour. But a joint investigation by the Guardian and ITV News revealed payslips indicating some of P&O's agency workers were paid as little as £4.87 an hour, a figure confirmed by Mr Hebblethwaite at the committee meeting.

Asked by committee chair and Birmingham Hodge Hill Labour MP Liam Byrne if he was "basically a modern-day pirate?", Mr Hebblethwaite did not give a direct answer.

Mr Byrne also asked: "Do you think you could live on £4.87-an-hour? " to which Mr Hebblethwaite admitted, "No, I couldn't." Labour MP Charlotte Nichols called for Mr Hebblethwaite to agree to an independent review of the firm's employment practices, but he declined.

He said: "You can take from the retention levels the crewing agent experiences and their ability to recruit the highest standard of international seafarers is hard evidence that people who could work anywhere in the world on any ships have chosen to work for P&O."

The UK minimum wage increased to £11.44 in April. But those rates are not applicable to maritime workers employed by an overseas agency on foreign-registered ships in international waters.

The Government had vowed to address the loophole following the controversial job cuts by P&O Ferries. Earlier this year, it was announced that new legislation aimed at addressing the issue was anticipated to come into force this summer.

Mr Hebblethwaite agreed to endorse a voluntary Government Seafarers' Charter, pledging to pay maritime workers at least the UK minimum wage within British waters. He said the company would sign the charter "within months".