The Carillion debacle is the most recent example of the failure of market forces and of the policy of privatisation that fuelled the unbridled growth of companies like Carillion. The reports of the National Audit Office and the House of Commons joint select committee should be seen as more than an analysis of the failure of one company, but an exposé of the economic and political corruption at the heart of the so-called free market economy. For this reason, the debate is timely and of direct relevance to this Assembly if we are to plough a different economic and social pathway, one that promotes the policy of social partnership, recognises the importance of the public sector, and one that recognises the fundamental role of Government in the provision and promotion of social responsibility, ethical employment and social equality.

The 2017 Conservative manifesto declared,

'We do not believe in untrammelled free markets. We reject the cult of selfish individualism. We abhor social division, injustice, unfairness and inequality. We see rigid dogma and ideology not just as needless but dangerous.'

And just like the Tory manifesto commitment to railway electrification, just like the Tory commitment to the tidal lagoon, this is just another broken promise. It is just another election deceit and another election fraud.

In his book, The Corruption of Capitalism, Guy Standing explains how global capitalism has become a system rigged in favour of a plutocracy—an elite that enriches itself, not through the production of goods and services, but through the ownership of assets, including intellectual property, aided by subsidies, tax breaks, debt mechanisms and revolving doors between politics and business and the privatisation of public services.

Meanwhile, we see all around us wages stagnating as labour markets are transformed by outsourcing, automation and the on-demand economy. And the Carillion story is part of that ongoing story—a company living off public procurement and privatisation on an ever-downward spiral of delivery, standards and ethics under a Government that has sold its soul to the private market. We see the classic signs of this with the Tories' knee-jerk obsession with the privatisation of the failing rail franchises. We see it here with the Tories in Wales and their obsession with calls for the re-privatisation of Cardiff airport, which failed under privatisation.

As Carillion began to flounder, the directors continued to increase dividends and executive bonuses, treating the pension fund with contempt. The report, as has been said, is damning. The consequences are clear, with the taxpayer being left to foot so much of the bill for the Carillion clean-up operation, and the failure of the regulatory system compounded by what appears to be the complicity of regulators, accountants, Government, lawyers and directors, ultimately at the expense of everyone else. And the various auditors creamed off £72 million. The UK Government failed to back a plan that could have recovered £364 million from Carillion. The pension fund was starved and left with a pension liability of around £2.6 billion, thousands of workers were not paid, and small companies and suppliers were left with a bill of around £2 billion and 27,000 pensioners now live on reduced pensions.

Cabinet Secretary, my reason for endorsing this motion is not just to expose Carillion and companies of a similar ilk, but to expose the very system that has created monsters like Carillion and allowed them to flourish. As well as calling on the Welsh Government to publish analysis on the lessons for Wales, we must look to a different way of doing business, one that recognises the importance of the public sector, recognises the advantages in certain sectors of public ownership and co-operation, recognises that our economic policy and our £5 billion-or-so procurement should be based on ethical standards of business, ethical standards of employment, fair work, an end to the culture of minimum wage, an end to the culture of enforced self-employment and zero hours, a recognition of the important role of trade unionism in achieving these objectives, and an overriding operating framework of social justice, equality and prosperity for all.

In this new global economic system we are embracing—a system of hyper technology, automation and artificial intelligence—we must ensure that we learn the lessons from the past that a system that is based on the philosophy of greed and exploitation is doomed to failure. We must show that, in Wales, we can do things differently, that we can do things better, for business, for workers and for our communities.