Carillion is set to go into liquidation, putting at risk thousands of jobs and leaving question marks hanging over its involvement in major government projects, including HS2. The firm’s troubles are hardly new: repeated profit warnings have been issued in recent months. Yet still new contracts were handed to the company by ministers. Why?
The Times points the finger at the transport secretary, saying that Chris Grayling ‘is at the centre of a mess of his own making, and there is nothing funny about it’. The paper points out that shortly before the contractor won ‘lucrative deals for work on the HS2 rail line’, the ‘unexpected profit warning’ troubled investors but did not seem to bother the transport secretary in the slightest. Of course, this looming disaster is not the only thing to go ‘wrong on Mr Grayling’s watch’, argues the Times. When the ’biggest rail fare increase in five years’ came into effect earlier this month, ‘Mr Grayling flew to Qatar ‘to support the UK overseas’’, leaving furious commuters bearing the brunt of the price hike back home. And when ‘Lord Adonis resigned as chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission, accusing Mr Grayling of a ‘nakedly political manoeuvre’’ over deals with Stagecoach and Virgin, Grayling’s competency was again called into question. Even Grayling’s supporters would probably have to concede that the transport secretary ‘has been found wanting’ in the role’. ‘A more hard-headed assessment’, says the Times, ‘is that he has been had, by Stagecoach, Virgin and now Carillion’. Grayling has said ‘I’m very happy’ doing the job as transport secretary. ‘Taxpayers may not be as happy’, concludes the Times, which says it is time for May to consider whether ‘it is time that this transport secretary left the station.’.
The ‘priority’ now ‘is to see what can be salvaged’ from Carillion’s wreckage, says the Daily Telegraph. Whether much can be rescued or not, ‘questions will be asked why ministers and officials placed so many public-sector eggs in one private-sector basket.’ Ministers were right not to bail the firm out. Yet ‘because so much of Carillion’s work involves state contracts, ministers still have a responsibility – and their options now are limited,’ argues the Telegraph. But whatever does happen, the Telegraph is adamant that one thing will not be tolerated: ‘the company responsible’ walking away ‘enriched’. ‘There have been too many instances of failure being rewarded. It is time it stopped,’ concludes the paper.
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