THREE former City Link directors were acquitted of breaching Britain’s notoriously weak labour laws yesterday after sacking thousands of staff on Christmas Day.

David Smith, Robert Peto and Thomas Wright had denied failing to notify then business secretary Vince Cable of more than 2,356 redundancies before City Link’s collapse on Christmas Eve last year.

The Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) alleged that the trio should have filled in a two-page Insolvency Service form warning of “inevitable” job losses.

City Link was also accused of failing to provide 45 days’ notice of dismissal for staff when the company went into administration on Christmas Eve.

But Judge David Goodman dismissed the charge against all three men after hearing that a £17 million offer to rescue the Coventry-based courier firm was rejected following its slide into administration.

However, finding all the directors not guilty, Mr Goodman told Coventry magistrates’ court: “The defendants each gave evidence that they genuinely believed a sale in administration was not only possible but quite probable.”

Earlier this month counsel for BIS Paul Ozin had implied that Mr Smith would have known that the collapse was inevitable if he had looked into “a crystal ball.”

The judge responded: “Retrospective use of a crystal ball is a concept I struggled at the time to understand.

“But even if applied at the time, that is not the test.”

Responding to the acquittals RMT general secretary Mick Cash said: “This verdict will be a bitter pill to swallow for the thousands of City Link staff brutally dumped out of their jobs on Christmas Day last year when the company eventually admitted that it had gone bust.

“It shows the weakness of UK employment law and will send out a green light to bad bosses the length and breadth of the country to carry on treating their staff like dirt.

“RMT will continue to fight for stronger laws, as recommended by the Parliamentary Inquiry into the City Link collapse, and will campaign with the wider trade union movement to protect British workers from the raw bandit capitalism laid bare at City Link last Christmas.”