Former UK Home Office Minister Norman Baker has urged Prince William to severe ties with Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, the executive chairman of DP World,
the parent company of P&O Ferries, which sacked 800 British staff without notice on Thursday.
Earlier this year, the sultan, who gets £5 million ($6.5 million) a year from the Dubai royal family, who owns DP World, provided £1 million ($1.3 million) in funding for the Duke of Cambridge's Earthshot Prize for eco initiatives. Last month saw a photo showing Sulayem and Prince William attending DP World's flagship Jebel Ali Port in Dubai during the prince's visit to the Middle East.
Referring to the sackings, Baker stressed that "Prince William did not create this situation but it's an embarrassment to him and he can't simply ignore it".
The ex-Home Office minister added that he believes the Duke of Cambridge "needs to use his personal connections with his friend, the chief executive [of DP World], to get P&O to change policy on this and to reverse what they've done".
The remarks came as UK Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng warned in a letter to P&O Ferries' chair Robert Woods on Friday that the failure to give due notice of large-scale redundancies via the Insolvency Service and the Redundancy Payment Service "is a criminal offence and can lead to an unlimited fine".
Shortly after, however, it emerged that Woods resigned in December 2021, with business department officials blaming the error on P&O Ferries' website not having been updated.
Earlier on Friday, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Boris Johnson asserted that the way the firm's workers were informed was "completely unacceptable", a stance that was shared by Conservative MPs and trade unions. The spokesperson added that Cabinet ministers were investigating whether P&O Ferries had broken the law, describing the company's behaviour as "extreme".
The ferry company has since defended what it described as a "last resort decision" to sack 800 UK staffers, asserting that the move was "difficult" but that the firm could not have survived otherwise.
In a statement on Friday, a P&O spokesperson said that it had made "all efforts" to notify workers personally of their redundancy, and only a quarter of staff were told over a Zoom call.
The statement was preceded by the company's owners saying in a video message to UK staff on Thursday that "[P&O] vessels will be primarily crewed by a third-party crew provider" and that the staffers "final day of employment is today". This was followed by the ferry operator cancelling all its services for the next few days and travellers being advised to make alternative arrangements.