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.
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