Despite watching the company gorge and fatten from the contract trough, and stumble into increasing debt, the government continued to award them contracts. Outsourcing became a mantra of government efficiency. Carillion embraced the need. It ate itself on increasingly less lucrative contracts and increasing debt.

Of course, you could blame the civil servants who approved the contracts. Civil servants on massive pension guarantees (paid by our taxes) were quite happy to do their job – which was awarding contracts to the cheapest bid and going out for regular and expensive dinners with the Carillion bid teams to “review contracts”. Due diligence means cheapest. But, they appear to have paid absolutely no attention to ability of the contractor to actually deliver or opine on its financial prospects.