1. We and our predecessor Public Accounts Committees have reported on projects and programmes across the whole of Government and the wider public service. That work has frequently involved considering the quality and effectiveness with which private companies have delivered against public-sector contracts.
2. Successive governments have contracted out public services to large private companies. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has long been raising concerns about the state of Government contracting and its impact on public services.
3. The PAC's role is to examine the efficiency, effectiveness and economy of Government spending. This is taxpayers' money spent on public services-the citizen and user experience as well as the taxpayer is at the heart of our work. Our criticisms are not new but Carillion has sharpened thinking in Government.
4. We examine the worst failures. The House of Commons vote to release the Government's own risk assessments of large contractors has given the Committee an inside view of how contracts are performing across the piece. We also called in several the Government's strategic suppliers.
5. Outsourcing is at a significant crossroads. The collapse of Carillion has brought to a head concerns about Government's approach-both from a policy and a practical perspective.
6. Government maintains that the collapse of Carillion was managed successfully and demonstrates that no company is too big to fail. But it was clear that Carillion believed until the end that it was too big to fail.
7. Government has been keen to trumpet its delivery of a contingency plan which enabled most of the public services delivered by Carillion to continue the day after it went into liquidation. But it cannot rest on its laurels. It faced a huge task assessing the contracts at risk and the detail of the supply chain. Had Carillion collapsed in December there would have been serious problems-the game of brinkmanship was a close-run thing.
8. And although Government is now developing plans to manage any future collapse, the pool of suppliers is shrinking. A contingency plan in case of failure relies on there being other suppliers who could step in if a company collapses.
9. The knock-on effects of Carillion's collapse are yet to be fully understood. We need to be clear about the real costs to the public purse of the Government's management of the collapse and understand the impact on Carillion's supply chain and the SMEs it sub-contracted to.
10. The Government needs to consider how it responds to a number of its main suppliers experiencing severe financial pressure, and in the case of Carillion becoming insolvent. The market created and sustained by public sector contracts is not working-for the companies involved, for those who rely on those contracts being effectively delivered, or for the Government, which must ultimately pick up the tab.