Thomas Cook urged to hand over Corfu ‘blood money’

Thomas Cook is under pressure to give some of the compensation it received for the Corfu hotel carbon monoxide leak to the parents of the two children who died.

The family’s Labour MP Mary Creagh is urging the operator to share some of its compensation, reportedly £3.5 million, with the family of Christi Shepherd, 7, and her brother Bobby, 6, who were killed while on holiday in Greece in 2006.

Carbon monoxide had leaked into their room from a faulty boiler at the Louis Corcyra Beach Hotel.

According to the Daily Mail, which covered the story extensively over the weekend, Thomas Cook was awarded 10 times as much as the parents from the hotel owners, Louis Hotels.

The travel giant had claimed for damage to its reputation, the cost of hiring ‘media advisers’ to deal with the negative publicity and the impact of cancelled bookings.

It also claimed for loss of revenue because staff had spent a ‘considerable’ amount of time dealing with the tragedy.

"We had the right to reclaim costs related to the trial from the hotel. The costs incurred by the company far exceed the amount that was received from the hotel," said the travel firm.

But the children’s mother, Sharon Wood, told the Daily Mail. "It seems our children’s lives are worth only a fraction of Thomas Cook’s reputation."

Her local MP, Mary Creagh, who is a Labour leadership candidate, said: "People will be horrified that Thomas Cook has received such a huge sum out of the tragic deaths. No amount of compensation can console a parent for the loss of a child, but if Thomas Cook had a shred of decency it would start talking to the parents about providing them a proper settlement."

The calls were made after an inquest ruled last week that Thomas Cook had breached its duty of care to the family.

West Yorkshire coroner David Hinchcliff said he would make a series of recommendations to the travel industry at a later date.

The manager of the Louis Corcyra Beach Hotel and two members of staff have already been found guilty of manslaughter by negligence at a criminal trial in Greece in 2010, but eight others, including two Thomas Cook reps, were cleared.

The inquest had heard that the brother and sister had been overcome by fumes from a faulty boiler located in an outhouse next to the bungalow they were sharing with their dad Neil and his partner Ruth, who went into a comma but survived.

Thomas Cook claims the hotel had lied, saying there were no gas water heaters at the complex.

The operator has been criticised for its ‘wall of silence’ over the tragedy.

During the inquest, several Thomas Cook employees, including the group’s current and former chief executives, had gone into the witness box and exercised their legal right not to answer questions.

Current chief Peter Fankhauser said he was sorry ‘thoroughly, from the deepest of my heart’, but when pressed by lawyers for the victims’ family, he said he did not need to apologise because ‘there was no wrongdoing by Thomas Cook’.

Thomas Cook has since sent a letter of apology to the family, but the parents said it was ‘too little, too late’ and accused the firm, who gave the letter to the media, of using ‘just another public-relations ploy of the most cynical kind’.

A Thomas Cook spokesman confirmed that Fankhauser sent a letter to the family on Friday, ‘where he did say sorry to them’.

"We are not in a position to share any further details regarding this correspondence at this time," he added.

"Everyone at Thomas Cook was shocked and deeply saddened by the tragic loss of Robert and Christianne Shepherd in 2006. Thomas Cook recognises that the pain caused by this terrible accident will never go away and must be still very hard for friends and family to bear."