I NOTE with concern that Carillion, the UK’s second largest construction firm, has gone into liquidation.

It appears that the Government is to take measures to ensure that various public sector outsourced contracts will continue to function.

While regretting the threat to thousands of jobs, I’ll shed no tears for what has become a morally bankrupt outsourcing agenda.

Steve Burton, Lowther Street, York

We need change for the good of country

THE demise of the vast Carillion construction empire did not amaze me.

The incompetence of Government and Whitehall did not amaze me even more.

Indeed having had a stint with the latter over a period of two years, I came to the conclusion that these people lived in a bubble remote to reality.

Whitehall could be renamed the “don’t rock the boat steady-state”. Change was an anathema to them - they are insular always, looking inside themselves not to others from the outside.

All ministers rely on these people for their advice. This is where it all goes so horribly wrong and why concerns like Carillion were given huge Government contracts when it was known that they were in a terrible financial state.

For the good of the whole country, Government and Whitehall has to change - not in political colour (that would just be more of the same) but in terms of who runs these establishments.

Dr David Hill, CEO, World Innovation Foundation, Huddersfield