Thomas Cook
Debate between Gavin Newlands and Grant Shapps(5 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Grant Shapps
As the hon. Lady knows, I share her concerns. I do not want to abuse Mr Speaker’s counsel, so I refer the hon. Lady to my previous comments and will have the Insolvency Service look fully into the situation.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
About 250 Thomas Cook staff based at Glasgow airport in my constituency, along with countless others in shops across Renfrewshire, have lost their livelihoods; my thoughts are very much with them. Can the Secretary of State tell us whether, in taking his deeply disappointing decision not to intervene, he asked his Department and other Departments to calculate not only the cost of Operation Matterhorn itself, but the related costs, including out-of-work benefits, the loss of tax revenue to the Exchequer and the wider economic impact of the collapse?
Grant Shapps
As the hon. Gentleman will know, there are pretty strict rules involved in when the state can and cannot intervene in private businesses. If it intervened all the time, other much more successful businesses would be disadvantaged and those employments could be affected. As I mentioned briefly earlier, an accounting officer would not have signed off that kind of intervention because it simply would have represented a big problem for the state, and we almost certainly would have ended up having to repatriate people in any case, as we are today.