Fatcats the only Carillion winners
QUITE how the Government was caught out by the collapse of Carillion beggars belief, given that it had issued three separate profit warnings and its shares had nosedived in value. It was hugely in debt to its lenders and had shamefully neglected to pay almost £600million into its employees’ pension fund.
In her pathetic ‘defence’, Theresa May lamely suggested that the Government were “customers” of Carillion, not the “managers”. I have news for her – it’s her Government’s responsibility to assess the firm’s suitability and to monitor its performance on behalf of taxpayers, which they have astonishingly failed to do.
Theresa May should resign due to gross incompetence. David Flynn, Southport, Merseyside
Jeremy Corbyn was absolutely right to say we must put a stop to PFI after Carillion was added to a plethora of Tory privatisation blunders. It has left 20,000 workers with an uncertain future and our beleaguered public services even more hopelessly underfunded. This was avoidable. Using public money to make bosses richer and then award contracts to the firm after three major profit warnings is as ruthless and reckless as it gets. Eric Thorpe, Salford Gtr Manchester
The Labour Party leader and its MPs should stop blaming the present Government for PFI and the resultant collapse of Carillion. They should remember that PFI was introduced by the previous Labour government when Gordon Brown was Chancellor.
Many contracts still in existence are ones signed by that Labour government. By all means be constructive, but do not blame others for a situation that the Labour Party was instrumental in creating. Ian Bentley, Pudsey, West Yorks
The Carillion chairman, Philip Green, has previously donated money to the Tories, as have various hedge funders. The very same funders who disgracefully bet on Carillion failing.
The Tories should put some funds aside to help workers in dire straits because of Carillion’s collapse, but I will not hold my breath on that. Gary Martin, East London
While Jeremy Corbyn was quite right to take the Government to task over the handing of public money to Carillion after the firm had issued several profit warnings, Theresa May was just as right to point out that several contracts being undertaken by the firm were put in place by the last Labour government. Instead of scoring points, concerns should be about who is going to finish this work, build the schools, prisons, roads and railways, and who is going to feed the schoolchildren. And what about the 20,000 families who have lost their breadwinners? A J Smith, March, Cambs
Parliament may well be falling down, but not as much as the rotten political corpses inside it. From Carillion to Brexit, common sense has been removed. I am a floating voter, seriously losing the will to float in this sea of muddled mediocrity. I have no wish to spout ideology, I just want idiocy taken off the agenda. Collin Rossini, Dovercourt, Essex