What the papers say: Carillion represents a catastrophic failure by politicians

Theresa May has said the collapse of Carillion is ‘extremely regrettable’. But with tens of thousands of jobs at risk and the firm’s numerous contracts now in jeopardy, ‘it is worse than that’, says the Times. The paper argues that the outsourcing giant’s ‘failure calls into question the government’s ability to agree and manage contracts with such companies’. It also raises another question: why did ‘ministers fail to anticipate this fiasco’? After all, the firm’s troubles were no secret: Carillon has issued a number of profit warnings and hedge funds have been betting against the firm for a number of years, the Times points out. Despite this, ‘Carillion was contracted to maintain nearly half the country’s prisons, manage 11,800 NHS hospital beds and build new facilities for the Ministry of Defence’. And when they should have been ‘limiting taxpayers’ exposure to Carillion, ministers increased it’, argues the Times. The paper concludes its editorial by saying the government appears to have tried to ‘avert disaster by shovelling more public money towards a company that was already doomed’.