Theatre of bad dreams as Carillion gears up to face MPS

Comment Martin Flanagan

MPs on both the business and pensions committees at Westminster will be all over the bosses of collapsed services and construction giant Carillion like a badfitting suit at hearings next month.

Well, it is de rigueur in such cases. Think of the demise of Bhs, or the nationalisation of losses in the banks back in the financial crash

Even now, MPS’ indignation will be being buffed, soundbites polished. That is not to say this parliamentary scrutiny isn’t worthwhile. It is, holding potentially poor corporate governance to account is vital for democrach, and Carillion has left this corporate life with massive losses, a massive pension deficit, and massive job insecurity for thousands of workers employed on building sites and outsourced services the company gave to numerous public departments including health, jails and the Ministry of Defence.

It is not a pretty tale and it is right there is searching public scrutiny. However, as a veteran of many of such hearings, you cannot help being somewhat sceptical because there is almost an element of theatre about it as well that can be sterile.

The MPS and the media have a somewhat symbiotic relationship in the process, the politicians getting genned up on the facts of the company’s collapse through a trawl of media articles that supply them with ammunition to berate the bosses.

But Carillion’s humiliated top brass will also be honing their pre-planned answers, a mixture of contrition and excuses.

Corporate humble pie has to be eaten, but there are usually factors that the business people being grilled can point to showing that, while errors were made with hindsight, and areas of strategy were misguided, it takes two to tango and Carillion may have been unwittingly helped to ruin by civil servants giving them contracts with such risk and low profit margins that a fair slice of luck may have been needed to make a success of them.

It has been said already that government was still awarding big contracts to Carillion when the company’s fortress walls had been busted by cannonballs and fire had engulfed the perimeter.

The MPS will point, as they always do to the discrepancy between those who have lost their jobs with the Carillion board’s big salaries for failure. Sad, but eminently predictable. We have been here before