I appreciate what they have done is abhorrent and breached employment law, but unless I have missed something I don’t think what they did was criminal.
Of course the consequences of what they are doing now in terms of staffing the ship could well leans to criminal charges if someone were to get killed.
He should have stepped down by now, reality will be that this was a board decision not his alone.
Not being a lawyer and being in a rush this morning, I can't answer you properly 'Scaf'.
Suffice to say.
Pleading ignorance of a law that you break is never a defence. He (the CEO) admitted in public, on record to a
Commons Committee, that he knew what he was doing was unlawful, even if he didn't know exactly or all of the laws he was breaking by his planned actions. For some criminal offences, intent is enough to be guilty. If memory serves.
There's a term in law called 'mens rea'. Its Latin for 'guilty mind'. Some offences depend on proving 'mens rea' and he admitted this when he testified that he knew he was breaking the law, had planned to break whatever laws applied to his actions and went ahead and did it anyway.
So, specifically which laws did he break. That needs to be investigated. However, there is one huge complicating factor for this man, if the government decides to 'hang him' as an example and throw the book at him.
He conspired to commit whatever offences he's guilty of. The offence of conspiracy is an extremely serious one in criminal law, because (I believe) it usually only applies to the most serious offences and in effect multiplies the seriousness of the offences you may have committed.
He has definitely broken laws relating to his responsibilities as a company director. Criminal offences.
If he can be shown to have compromised the health and safety procedures/ safeguards of his ships, employees and potentially of passengers, those would be criminal offences.
Breaching employment law, which he did by his own admission, is a civil matter, but still involves stiff penalties for the company and perhaps also for the directors personally.
Must dash. To be continued. With Perjury to Parliament
Don't have to dash after all. If I were the Attorney General, I'd be looking for examples in previous health & safety related or other cases, where company directors putting one business unit into operation, were found to have breached health and safety law. And then planned to put other business units of a similar kind into operation without ensuring thorough health and safety compliance. I'm thinking of the Larne ferry here.
For a private company, breaches of H&S law are extremely serious, depending on the seriousness of the breach.
Penalties include fines and imprisonment for those found responsible. Of course many shady companies flout H&S law, but from my own personal experience, I can tell you that if private companies that wish to maintain a good reputation, the seriousness of breaches would be regarded as extremely serious by boards of directors.
(because they are aware of the penalties)
Perjury to Parliament. Suffice to say, its unlikely to apply here. Sadly. But if it were to be enforced, it would be regarded as seriously as would perjury to a court of law, with fines and imprisonment as penalties.
I cannot understate the depths of stupidity of the P&O CEO and his board of directors. They have made themselves
liable for large fines and imprisonment and made P&O liable for enormous fines and impounding of their ships at a cost per unit of a million pounds per day.
Suffice to say. I doubt that any of the P&O board will ever be directors again in the UK. I suspect that this plan, if you can even call it that, was imposed by DPWorld but whether British authorities can ever secure the evidence to support this, I wouldn't like to guess. I'm stating the obvious, however, I'd say that whatever penalties are imposed ultimately, will be decided largely by the PM and Attorney General, via the courts.
I hate to say it, for more reasons than I care to explain. And very personal reasons too. But, I feel that we're about due for another Herald of Free Enterprise disaster. Before the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster, the previous ferry loss was thirty-four years previously, in the storms of early 1953 and involved the Princess Victoria ferry, which sailed between Stranraer and Larne. Its thirty five years since the Herald of Free Enterprise sinking and the 'institutional memory' of that incident has dissipated. Disasters rarely happen for one reason. Contributing factors build up over time. Both in number and severity. The warning signs are usually there to be seen or ignored.
When you have the blood of others on your hands. You can never wash it off.