The story of the fourteen Foreign Office cleaners who wrote to Philip Hammond about being paid National Living Wage has become murkier. After their note reached the Foreign Secretary, the cleaners — who work for Interserve, a private contractor — were called into a meeting. According to reports yesterday, the cleaners say that three of them were made redundant and the others were accused of ‘bringing the contract into disrepute’.
In an attempt to bat off any suggestion that the cleaners were being told off for daring to contact their boss — something that would be a very bad look for the Foreign Secretary — Hammond said at Foreign and Commonwealth Questions this morning that no action had been taken, following a question from the shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn:
‘I have confirmation from Interserve that although a review meeting was held, no disciplinary action was taken against any cleaners as a result of writing that letter. It has also been reported that some of the people involved in the writing that letter were the subject of redundancies, redundancies that were unfortunately necessary because the Foreign Office is surrendering the Old Admiralty Building as part of our campaign to reduce the estate footprint of government departments and save the taxpayer money. He will be pleased to note that all redundancies announced by Interserve in connection with the Foreign Office contract were carried out in consultation with the PSC union.’
Benn was not happy with this response, telling Hammond ‘I’m sorry that he didn’t feel able to condemn even the calling of those cleaners to a meeting because people should be able to right to whoever they want’. The cleaners needn’t fret, the Foreign Secretary said, as they will eventually get a pay rise in 2016:
‘The good news is that next April, all cleaners working for Interserve, including those on the Foreign Office contract, will receive the National Living Wage when it is introduced.’
While the jeering from the Labour benches suggested that the party that the party won’t be letting the cleaners saga go, there was another piece of good news welcomed across the Commons. The Foreign Secretary also said that he did not expect Karl Andree, the 74-year-old grandfather allegedly caught with homemade wine in Saudi Arabia, to receive 350 lashings he had been sentenced too. Nor does Hammond expect Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, to be executed for protesting against the regime.
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