Carillion and Public Sector Outsourcing

Marcus Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)]

I start by saying that I am disappointed by the motion before the House, not just because there is clearly a mechanism through the Public Accounts Committee to scrutinise these matters, but because there are tens of thousands of people involved and politics should not be put before people. Regrettably the whole cut of the Opposition’s spokesman’s jib was ideological—private bad, public good. That is not the debate that we should be having. We should be debating what will happen to the people affected by the situation and what went wrong with Carillion. We need to hold the people involved to account and discuss how we can help those who have been affected. We also need to talk about how we can provide and sustain the important public services and projects involved in this situation.

The Government’s initial response has been positive. Working with the official receiver, as well as with a number of Carillion’s joint venture partners, the banks and finance providers, public service providers and the trade unions, they have ensured the continuity of the vast majority of services and projects. We should not forget, however, that we need to keep the dialogue going to ensure that services are maintained for as long as possible and that there is a soft landing for most of those contracts. If there is not, we risk losing more jobs.

In the short time available, I want to mention pensions. It is good to see that there is protection for the vast majority of the workers involved in this case, but it is clear that Carillion was not putting as much into its pension deficit as it should have been, and we need to look at pensions in the context of public procurement. We also need to look at small and medium-sized enterprises. The Government have a strong target of a third of public sector contracts going to SMEs, and we should ensure that that happens so that we have a more diverse sector. We should also ensure that big companies such as Carillion do not keep small companies to 120-day payment terms. We should do more to ensure that small companies and the people who work for them are protected, that services are maintained across the piece and, importantly, that workers are supported throughout this problem.