The story I posted here yesterday, on the late-filing of the accounts of P&O Ferries, reached ITN today, and it looks likely that parliamentary involvement is now likely:
As Joel Hills of ITN notes:
MPs are threatening to formally summon the chief executive of P&O Ferries to parliament unless the company can explain why it has failed to file accounts on time.
The accounts of P&O Ferries Division Holdings Limited for the year ending December 31 2023, are seven months overdue.
Company accounts provide a snapshot of a firm's financial health. If a company delays or seeks to avoid filing, it leaves investors, creditors, suppliers, staff and customers in the dark.
Liam Byrne MP, chair of the House of Commons Business and Trade Select Committee, has written to Peter Hebblethwaite, the chief executive of P&O, demanding an explanation:
“A company can't be safe unless it is financially sound. And we don't know today that P&O is financially sound because they are so late in filing their accounts,” Liam Byrne told ITV News.
The report also notes my work on this issue, saying:
Richard Murphy, Emeritus Professor of Accounting Practice at Sheffield University Management School and a former chartered accountant with KPMG, says the language in the resignation letter is “decidedly unusual”.
In a blog post, Murphy argues the letter signals a “fundamental breakdown” in trust between KPMG and P&O.
He writes: “The construction of the letter makes it very clear that, in my opinion, [KPMG is] questioning the judgement of the management of this company.”
In Murphy's view, the letter suggests P&O either refused to make payments for audit work to be carried out or obstructed it.
Either way, he infers KPMG has “serious concerns about the future funding of P&O and that they have drawn this concern to creditors, as they are legally required.”
He adds: “Filing accounts is...both a crime and a moral abuse of the business community and society at large”.
KPMG and P&O have chosen not to respond to Richard Murphy's comments.
There is a link to the ones I made that were broadcast on ITN last night on their website, here.
I look forward to what MPs have to say.
A version of the report on ITN is available in this tweet for those who still use Twitter:
Back in troubled water: Has P&O gone rogue again?
MPs are threatening to formally summon the chief executive of P&O Ferries to parliament unless the company can explain why it has failed to file accounts on time.
Full story by @ITVJoel: https://t.co/fQ1r0nLZ8f pic.twitter.com/pcidDWlDXU
— ITV News (@itvnews) May 13, 2025
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“Filing accounts is…both a crime …”
Failing to file accounts, surely?
It was in the original
Good to hear that you may have helped to get this issue picked up.
But really, it should have got picked up anyway.
Agreed.
What @PSR said – well done you and your contributors
Well, well, well…….
Over 200,000 companies file late (Charles Russell Speechlys). In 2023/4 Companies House fined companies £34m for filing seriously late for two consecutive years (Forsters). By the time the law steps in, however it is far, far too late. How does this state of affairs happen?
Parliament and Government are responsible. Regulation is inadequate, and Companies House is seriously under-resourced. The same could be said of HMRC (invest in forensic accounting and high level legal resources there and the tax returns would be enormous). Politicians hauling in the CEO of P&O is more than just a little rich (How will this play: a storm in a tea cup. It will soon pass. Yesterday’s news).
If you wanted to design a ‘market’ economy that offered the greatest opportunity for every charlatan, cheat and rogue trader the most indulgent environment to thrive, it would look much like the UK today. Then you would rely on a tabloid press that is on a permanent mission to undermine regulation and complain constantly about the only problem holding back British enterprise and growth – ‘Red Tape’ – to keep the indulgence of low standards going.
Oh, look ……………
Much to agree with
Thank you, John.
May I make you laugh.
The Foreign Office and Department for Business have initiatives to sell British corporate governance know how around the world. A delegation, including from the stock exchange, goes around the world, lecturing the natives on best practice, probity and the attraction of listing in London.
🙂
Further to my comment, it seems that the Foreign Office is as much a sales function on behalf of UK PLC as anything else. That was not the case say a decade ago. One reason given is that the UK is skint and these services, know how, London listing, mobilising investors on behalf of a country, is more effective. The plan is for an eventual fee to be paid for such consulting. Africa is the target. Asia less so. It often feels as if the Foreign Office is struggling to find a post-great power role.
These activities don’t come without some of the perennial issues that affect Blighty. Employees are divided along class lines, Oxbridge versus red brick, secondees from London on a luxury package versus local employees. My friend and mole is an attache, from overseas, but granddaughter of Scottish immigrants (“They either starved in the Highlands and a Glasgow tenement or went to the tropics for survival.”), detests the upper class and Oxbridge elite, and reports, horrified, how many Foreign Office officials treat their postings as colonial missions, civilising missions even, and how some officials have Buck House connections (a la former cabinet secretary).
much to agree with, go well..
The whole company accounts system is nowhere near fit for purpose. Having been on the receiving end of a significant investment failure along with many other, we are testament to that.
There should be mandatory, realtime integration & monitoring with accounting systems (Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent etc) so that Accountants and Government agencies, have an immediate window into the financial health & position of all companies, along the lines of & expanding making tax digital, including use of AI. Annual / Manual accounts should be a thing of the past.
I promise you that is not realistic in the case of the smallest companies.
But the government already has data on all VAT registered ones.
They have no resources to use it, though.
Well, I dare say it is not realistic from the POV, there will be little will by the Gov to develop the required legislation, but this is easily technically feasible. Perhaps MTD will morph into something approaching these lines.
As you said a while back, £1BN should be spent on additional tax offices and/or more digital processing, which would collect way more tax.
Also, the smallest companies would be the easiest to mandate use of digital accounting, with perhaps more responsibility on accountants to report issues! It’s the bigger ones that have all kinds of opaque tax avoidance going on.
The laws are being flouted, the sanctions and fines are inadequate, the gov looks the other way and auditing firms are too close to their client. So, what’s to be done about this longstanding and deteriorating situation. Not a lot, I suspect. Richard Murphy has been saying as much for years and offering feasible solutions for the gov to implement. No response from them or the accountancy institutions.
So has my friend, Prem Sikka.
As i recall it P&O are owned by DP world .
This may be just a way to dump liabilities.
As i recall it P&O are owned by DP world .
This may be just a way to dump liabilities.