Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:59 pm on 4 July 2018.
I commend Lee Waters for bringing this motion before the Assembly this afternoon and for the succinctness and accuracy of his speech and its diagnosis. I agreed with everything that he said. This is a grotesque case. Carillion, which is what I want to concentrate on in particular, is a company that on its collapse has left £7 billion in liabilities, £2 billion of that to suppliers and £2.5 billion to the pension fund. I think it's important to recognise that this case is an example of failure at all levels. First and most obviously, of course, failure of management of those who had responsibility for running the company, as the report of the business committee in the House of Commons makes clear, and the non-executive directors failed to scrutinise the accounts, failed to challenge the corporate executives and utterly failed in all their duties. The top corporate executives utterly failed to manage the company with any degree of competence, and possibly honesty. That remains yet to be investigated.