Carillion
Debate between Meg Hillier and Karin Smyth
Meg Hillier
My right hon. Friend, as ever, raises his point in a very effective way. This is one of our concerns about the size of these contracts. If the collapse of a large supplier means that a hospital in our one of our constituencies is not completed, we see that the system is skewed to try to ensure that does not happen, but that means that the interests of the supplier can come first, in that they might end up being bailed out. Carillion was deluded in believing that it would be given a bail-out, and we want to examine why it kept believing, right up to the moment of collapse, that a loan would come.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
I commend my hon. Friend and the work of the Committee for the report. When I had the pleasure to serve on the Committee with her, we looked very seriously at apprenticeships. In my constituency, the City of Bristol College stepped in to pick up the apprenticeship programme to ensure that young people in particular were still able to remain in it. Will the Committee bring the two issues together and recognise the important work of other providers to pick up work from the collapse of Carillion?
Meg Hillier
I thank my hon. Friend. That would be outside the remit of our next inquiry, but she highlights an important point. The collapse of a large supplier has a wider impact than simply the contracts it runs, because suppliers are so embedded in the system. The way in which apprenticeships work means that, quite rightly, private businesses are providing apprenticeships, but there is a real risk of a ripple effect when a large supplier collapses. That goes back to the point about how large such suppliers are and how difficult it is for the Government to allow them to fail, which can then skew Government decision making.