Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jack Dromey and Esther McVey

Monday 26th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms McVey]

The regulator is independent, and that is what it does: look at pension schemes. We have, through the White Paper, strengthened the regulator’s powers and now for the first time brought forward criminal sanctions should any director or employer bring into harm wilfully and neglectfully the workers’ pension scheme.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

The catastrophic collapse of Carillion saw thousands of workers pay the price, including with their pensions. It was a monumental failure of governance and by Government, who knew Carillion was sinking into difficulties and went on awarding contracts despite profit warnings. The Secretary of State has said before the Select Committee that the Pensions Regulator knew about the mounting problems in 2014; were the Government alerted and did they choose to ignore those warnings, or did the regulator chose to ignore them and fail to alert the Government?

[Ms McVey]

The regulator and assessors are now looking into a whole series of issues. Fundamentally, one of them has to be how Carillion’s books went from being a healthy balance-sheet to, a year later, not being a healthy balance-sheet. The auditors and accountants who had signed those books are now being thoroughly examined to establish what happened there before the regulator would have had to look into things, so a lot of investigations are going on.