Business of the House

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

I think we all realise what a debt of gratitude we owe to our fire officers, who do such an amazing job, so quickly and at so great a risk to themselves. I absolutely pay tribute to them, alongside the hon. Gentleman.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

With my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), I would like to request an urgent debate about requiring private companies providing public services to be subject to the same standards of openness and transparency as the public sector, so that companies like Carillion can no longer hide behind commercial confidentiality.

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Lady raises an important point, again in the context of what has happened with Carillion. She may rest assured that the Government will be looking carefully at whether we can improve processes as a result of this experience, but equally she must recognise that there is great value to the taxpayer in being able to use private sector companies to deliver some services that are of much better value and efficiency to the public sector than bringing them all in-house.