YP Letters: Action is needed to tackle industry bosses '˜asleep in post'

So the big beast that is the construction giant Carillion, with enormous debts of £900m, has come crashing down (The Yorkshire Post, January 16).

Local employment across Yorkshire is now seriously under threat, with small companies owed sums that will never be paid.

This situation resembles the total collapse of the Redcar Steelworks under the ownership of SSI when huge debts were allowed, without query, to go ignored or unchecked. Consequently, the Redcar Works employing 5,000 construction workers closed, men were made unemployed overnight and small companies who relied on the plant for their economic future disappeared with it.

There are a number of causes for both industries in manufacture and construction being left with uncertain futures, in the case at Redcar none at all as this once great steel-making plant and the future of its highly skilled workers are left in an economic vacuum that is roughly what it is today.

And all because despite the company giving at least three profit warnings, as another £20bn worth of government contracts were awarded to Carillion.

We need a root-and-branch ‘cull’ in Britain’s top service and manufacturing industries that sees the posts held at the top filled by executives on over-inflated salaries who similarly failed to noticed the mounting debts and were asleep in post.

From: Keith N Baxter, Rycroft Gardens, Swinnow, Leeds.

Here we go again, the hand-wringing and the beating of breasts has started already. Over the last ten years it has been a familiar script. A large firm goes bust owing hundreds of millions of pounds. Fatcats walk away having trousered millions in pay, pensions and bonuses.

Small firms and loyal workers go to the wall and are left at the mercy of the dole queue. It turns out that the firm had no assets so had nothing to sell and therefore could not go into administration and was forced to go into liquidation. It was taxpayers’ money that paid for the contracts to be carried out no doubt it will be taxpayers money that will bail out the bank lenders.

The cry will go up that all large-scale government contracts should be nationalised or completed in house. This time the cry may be heeded as this debacle may be the last straw for the long-suffering public. I seriously doubt that this Conservative Government will recover from this latest self-inflicted disaster.