Don’t feed the fatcats

THE catastrophic collapse of heavily indebted Carillion is a warning about how not to do business or run the country.

It’s a grim if regrettably all too familiar tale of fatcats, corporate recklessness, blameless workers thrust into the line of fire and a public sector struggling to pick up the pieces of another private disaster.

Tory ministers have many serious questions to answer when they were putting big contracts the way of Carillion as the firm was clearly teetering, the Government fuelling the crisis instead of putting out the fire.

Nationalising work in the NHS, education, rail and defence would safeguard services and jobs, which surely must be the priority.

Not a penny more of taxpayers’ money must go to the firm’s owners and bankers who don’t deserve rewards for failure.

But we also require a review of existing deals and a halt to new Private Finance Initiative projects which are not good value for money. There must be a better way of doing business.