Express & Star comment: Carillion bosses must be sanctioned

The session in front of the work and pensions select committee and their counterparts on the business, energy and industrial strategy committee, marks the first chance we have of hearing detailed explanations over what went on at the firm.

Up to this point, the former directors of the Wolverhampton-based business have been quiet.

Their silence means we have been left with weeks of political point scoring attempts from the Labour party, coupled with speculation from the worlds of business and finance.

More on the collapse of Carillion

• Another 450 jobs axed at projects nationwide

• Wolverhampton-based construction giant enters liquidation as council launches city taskforce

• How the mighty have fallen

• Why did it collapse and what happens next?

And while the immediate priority must be the company's staff and the thousands of other firms caught up in this mess, there are numerous questions that must be answered over the running of Carillion.

Why did directors not take steps sooner to increase payments to the company’s pension scheme, despite pleas from trustees?

Why did Carillion raise its dividend last year, giving the false impression that all was rosy in the garden?

And most pertinently, should the Carillion board take sole blame for the company’s collapse?

This is not the time for the blame game, but those who oversaw the collapse of this once powerful firm must be held accountable.

The pensions scheme is a case in point.

Liability

In a letter to the work and pensions committee, Robin Ellison – who chaired the board of Carillion pension trustees – said he and his colleagues had pushed the company as hard as they could to increase payments to the retirement scheme.

Yet when the firm collapsed, it left behind a £381 million scheme deficit that is expected to saddle the Pensions Protection Fund with a liability of up to £990m.

The bottom line for pensioners is a future payments cut of around 15 per cent.

The MPs probe comes the day after Carillion announced its latest wave of redundancies. Some 450 jobs will go, including workers in the Black Country.

This is the true cost of the collapse of Carillion.

Workers and apprentices have lost their jobs. Other businesses are suffering.

There must be some teeth to this investigation.

Those responsible cannot just be allowed to walk away without appropriate sanctions.