Carillion

Eleanor Smith Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his suggestions. I note that the Chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), said today that his Committee is going to launch an inquiry into Government procurement. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) makes some important points about the need to have a look at how successive Governments have conducted the procurement process. I hope he will understand if I say that today, and in the immediate future, my wish is for Ministers and officials to focus above everything else on the continuity of the provision of public services and on doing all that we can to give help and reassurance to employees, subcontractors, suppliers and pension holders. There will be an occasion to return to some of the broader questions posed by my right hon. Friend.

[Eleanor Smith (Wolverhampton South West) (Lab)]

This morning, the 400 employees who work in the Carillion headquarters in my constituency in Wolverhampton, along with many others, woke up to the news that Carillion had gone into liquidation. It probably felt like a bomb had hit them. The Minister says that the Government are going to give them support, but what type of support will that be? It is absolutely not enough to say that people can ring the jobcentre. What other futures are there for those employees? I seek an urgent meeting with the Minister to discuss this issue, because the headquarters are in my constituency. Will the Government commit to investigating why contracts continued to be handed to Carillion despite the company’s known difficulties?

[Mr Lidington]

On the hon. Lady’s last point, I responded at quite some length to similar points made by her Front-Bench colleague, the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett). The Government are, as I have said more than once in these exchanges, not only offering advice but paying the wages and salaries of people who are involved in the delivery of public services, until such time as the official receiver has found an alternative provider, whether in the public or private sector. I am happy for either I or another Minister in my Department to meet the hon. Lady to talk about her particular constituency concerns.