Carillion

Matt Western Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I am advised by the Ministry of Defence that the services provided by Carillion are provided through joint ventures, and therefore the other joint venture partners are required to come forward and shoulder the responsibilities that Carillion was exercising. The MOD is working with those partners to ensure the services continue to run effectively. If the hon. Lady has evidence of things going awry in her constituency or county in this respect, I encourage her to take that up with the Secretary of State for Defence and his team, because they are rightly determined to make sure that things go as smoothly as possible for our servicemen and women and their families.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

In the statement the Minister says, “We have been monitoring Carillion closely since its first profit warning in July 2017”. For 18 months, however, from March 2016 until July 2017, Carillion was the most shorted stock on the UK stock exchange. In fact in July, after the 70% drop in share price, there was still a 21% shorting of the stock. Just how closely were the Government monitoring the situation—or did they for some reason have a blindspot?

[Mr Lidington]

There is no question of any blindspot. The Government, in common with any other party that was doing business with Carillion, clearly did not have access to the company’s books. The evidence of our concern is the very fact that the relevant Departments and agencies ensured that there was protection through the creation of joint ventures on key contracts when it became a matter of public record that Carillion had difficulties.