- Staff Notice
Cabinet ministers have concluded a crisis meeting about keeping vital public services going after the collapse of contractor Carillion.
The construction giant, which provides services for schools, prisons and hospitals, has gone into liquidation.
A rather good report on Newsnight last night.
They reckoned it was due to the government getting more aggressive at driving prices down that directly led to the collapse of this company. They think that the government has gotten a lot better in recent years at getting a better deal for taxpayers by only awarding contracts to the lowest bidder. All sounds good to me, except...
The government was warned that current arrangements for public/private finance initiatives were not sustainable, it was a race to the bottom. They were warned that companies were only having a tiny profit margin and by winning the government contracts because they put the lowest bid in, Carillion were shooting themselves in the head. So, is it all the government's fault then for demanding ever lower prices on government contracts?
What about the fat cat salaries of its bosses? They paid themselves huge wads of money and issued dividends to shareholders despite knowing about the massive deficit in the pension scheme and basically carried on regardless. Finally, a matter not touched upon yet by the media - the accountants and regulators. Where were they when the black hole in Carillion's pension pot was getting ever wider?