Carillion: TUPE

Debate between Justin Madders and Stephen Kerr

Wednesday 21st February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West (Eleanor Smith) on securing this extremely important debate. She clearly has a significant constituency interest in the matter, but as we have heard, such is the reach of Carillion that no part of the country is unaffected by its demise.

I will not repeat the stories of greed, arrogance and, probably, negligence that have led us to where we are today, except to say that it is a bitter irony that many of those culpable for the current state of affairs are the least affected by it. We know the company ramped up dividends, borrowed more and more money to effectively hand it over to shareholders, delayed payments to creditors and generally behaved as if there was no tomorrow, with no thought of the consequences of its actions.

[Stephen Kerr]

On that point, the hon. Gentleman did not mention—it is worth mentioning—the salaries and bonuses the directors were awarding each other, which should bear on our minds as we consider the wee people who the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) described and who we should all be thinking about.

[Justin Madders]

Absolutely. This is a tale of a corporate system out of control. It sends a real message about how not to run a company responsibly. I hope that some concrete action will come to prevent these kind of scandals happening in the future. Comparing the pension deficit to the bonuses paid really brings home how unfairly and avariciously certain people have behaved in this case.

While it is hoped that, in the short term, there will be some protection for jobs—as we have heard today and as I will go on to explore, there are some questions about the precise arrangements—we must not forget those who work for subcontractors and those who have already been made redundant who need our support as well.

I am told that there is an issue with the liquidators providing termination numbers to redundant Carillion staff. Some of those staff have given a lifetime to the company but have been told by the liquidator that, until that number is issued, their claims for notice pay and redundancy pay cannot be processed. Those who have received those details have been told that they may have to wait up to six weeks for the Redundancy Payments Service to actually process the payments.

As we know from the universal credit discussions we have had in here in recent times, expecting people to wait six weeks for payment after losing their job is far too long, so I do not see why we should allow that situation to occur here. I hope that, when the Minister next speaks to the liquidator, he will raise these issues and ensure that those who have been made redundant are able to access their statutory entitlements as soon as possible. Will the Minister inform us what resources have been allocated to the Insolvency Service to ensure that those payments are processed as quickly as possible?