Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact on jobs, growth and investment of major corporate collapses linked to audit and governance deficiencies over the past decade.

The Government has not made such an assessment. At one level, almost all corporate collapses can be linked to governance deficiencies, since company directors have a duty to promote the success of the company. Audit deficiencies tend to exacerbate problems rather than being the cause of a company’s collapse. As an example of the impact of a major corporate collapse over the past decade, the failure of Carillion left approximately £4.5bn of debt, affecting around 7,000 first-tier suppliers and contractors, and displacing 19,000 UK jobs.