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Zafar Khan, the former finance director of collapsed mega-contractor Carillion, has been banned from being a company director for 11 years. It is the longest ban imposed on an executive of a listed company by the Insolvency Service (IS) in 60 years, raising the prospect of lengthy bans for seven other former directors being pursued in relation to the collapse.
Khan, 54, is a former Ernst & Young accountant who joined Carillion’s senior finance team in 2011. He was promoted to chief financial officer in August 2016, replacing the long-serving Richard Adam, though he only remained in post for nine months as the company’s financial troubles prompted a boardroom clear-out.
Carillion then collapsed in 2018, putting thousands of staff out of work and leaving debts of around £7 billion, including a pension deficit in excess of £1 billion.
The government said that Khan’s disqualification was for several reasons, including causing the company to rely on “false and misleading information” that led to a material misstatement of profits in various projects to the tune of at least £209 million. He also sanctioned a £54 million dividend payment that couldn’t be justified because it was based on financial statements that did not give a fair view of the company’s position.
Khan has yet to respond to the announcement. The fact that only his disqualification has been announced suggests that he may have reached an agreement with the IS, perhaps in exchange for a lighter punishment. The remaining directors, including former chief executives Richard Howson and Keith Cochrane, as well as Richard Adam, are due at the high court later this year to defend the IS’s disqualification actions against them.
Khan, Howson and Adam have also been fined a total of almost £1 million by the Financial Conduct Authority for issuing misleading statements to investors about Carillion’s finances. They are reportedly appealing – again, it will be interesting to see whether this still includes Khan.
Carillion was created in 1999 after being spun off from construction group Tarmac. It mainly built and operated government buildings and infrastructure, and appeared to be in good health for much of its corporate life.
It was hard to see how the company could suffer from liquidity issues, particularly when it reported a record annual dividend of £79 million as recently as 2017.
However, Carillion’s fall from grace was swift and dramatic. On January 15 2018 it was placed into compulsory liquidation by the high court, the biggest of its kind in UK legal history.
As well as the loss of jobs, this had huge ramifications for Carillion’s many ongoing building projects, including schools, hospitals and roads – not to mention a facilities management business providing, amongst other things, school meals to children.
The government’s Official Receiver was put in charge of the liquidation, but appointed PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to help oversee the process. This has involved things like completing schools and motorways, transferring hospital jobs and numerous contracts. PwC has earned more than £50 million in fees as a result.
Meanwhile, the 27,000 members of Carillion’s defined benefit pension scheme have seen their pensions reduced, and roughly 30,000 suppliers are likely to have lost most of the billions of pounds owed to them by the company.
The collapse initially triggered investigations by the National Audit Office and by several parliamentary committees. The parliamentary findings did not mince their words, finding that the directors “misrepresented the reality of the business”.
The report described the company’s collapse as, “a story of recklessness, hubris and greed … its business model was a relentless dash for cash”.
There have been previous high-profile actions against directors. The directors of the failed MG Rover group were disqualified for between three and six years in 2011, while the IS brought an unsuccessful case against the trustee directors of the Kids Company charity in 2021.
The difference with Carillion is that the directors face longer bans, and now the former finance director of all people has accepted the punishment instead of waiting for the court hearings. It may indicate that he agrees that the evidence is sufficient to show that he behaved in an unfit manner as a director.
It looks as though the IS has stuck to its guns over Carillion and is potentially heading for a significant success in its efforts to ensure that directors of listed companies do not see themselves as immune from the consequences of poor management decisions.
It hopefully sends a signal that the government is serious about punishing corporate wrongdoing. The big question now is what happens with the rest of the directors.
John Tribe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Conspiracy theories aren’t a new thing, and for as long as they’ve been around they’ve ranged from the benign to the absurd. From the six moon landings being faked to the Earth being flat, or our ruling class being lizards, we’ve all probably come across them in one form or another.
Yet, in a surprise twist, the hottest conspiracy theory of 2023 comes from an unlikely corner: town planning. This relates to the idea of “the 15-minute city” and has even gone so far as to be mentioned in UK parliament by an MP who called the idea “an international socialist concept” that will “cost us our personal freedom”.
As town planning academics who have published research on 15-minute cities, we know this is nonsense. But what actually is the 15-minute city? And what’s the fuss about?
The 15-minute city itself is a simple idea. If you live in one, it means that everything you need to go about your daily life – school, doctors, shops and so on – is located no more than a 15-minute walk from your house.
The concept, which originated from the French-Colombian urbanist Carlos Moreno, is the current zeitgeist in planning, and calls for city design that is centred on people and their needs rather than being designed for cars. It gained international attention when the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, announced her intention to make Paris a 15-minute city following her reelection in 2020, with the plan to enhance neighbourhoods across Paris while ensuring connections between them. The idea flourished in the wake of COVID, when lockdowns and working from home had more of us ditching the car and recognising the need for well-served local neighbourhoods.
Yet this connection to how our towns and cities are changing in the wake of COVID is also probably the reason that 15-minute cities are now a hot-topic in the conspiracy world. Among other things, the charge sheet against 15-minute cities is that they are a “socialist”, or even “Stalinist”, attempt to control the population by actively preventing citizens from straying more than 15 minutes from their homes.
However, the reality is that the 15-minute city does not seek to exclude people or to prevent them from leaving. Instead, the idea is about providing high-quality neighbourhoods so that you don’t have to travel further to get the service. Crucially, this doesn’t mean you’re trapped where you live.
Yes, if travelling by car, the 15-minute city might make the journey to leave the neighbourhood longer as the urban realm and roads shifts from car dominance to a more equal distribution of space for active travel. But this might also mean that other ways of getting about town (walking, wheelchair, cycling, bus or train) might make sense for most journeys, with the car used only when necessary.
It’s fairly easy to see how Moreno’s idea has been perverted here. Within this, it’s also equally easy to trace a line between this and the prevalence of conspiracy theories surrounding COVID and the role of government. In this world, encouraging us to use cars less is seen as a limitation of our freedom rather than an opportunity to live in more vibrant and less polluted neighbourhoods.
The thing is, like so many other conspiracy theories, it gets into trouble when it comes into contact with reality. In many British cities, the reality is that having most services within a 15-minute walk of your house is already closer than you might think – what matters more is the quality and equity of those services.
What’s more, these ideas are popular. Not only have organisations like Sustrans consistently shown that more than two-thirds of people are in favour of these sorts of interventions, they are also endorsed at the ballot box. For example, when some candidates attempted to turn local council elections into a referendum on active travel interventions, they largely failed to get this opposition off the launchpad.
If anything, the 15-minute city envisages even the most urban parts of the country as something quintessentially British: a small market town. Indeed, if harking back to the past is your thing, then the past 50 years of transport planning has done more to damage this British ideal than make it a reality.
In fact, you would imagine that the Conservative MP who raised this conspiracy theory in the House of Commons might regularly get correspondence from the public bemoaning the lack of high-quality services in their neighbourhoods.
After decades of car-dominated culture there is a “gear change” happening in which pedestrian and cyclist experiences do increasingly matter in city planning. There is still a long way to go to make our streets and neighbourhoods places for all, and movements fuelled by conspiracy theory risk slowing these transitions and spreading unjustified fears.
While the 15-minute city has nothing to do with creating ghettos where people will be locked in, fake news like this circulates broadly and quickly, making it crucial for policymakers to convey clear messages about what’s at stake.
Alex Nurse has received funding from EPSRC-funded DecarboN8 to analyse how traffic data can be used to co-design 15-minute cities with local residents, and the local impacts of cycling and walking interventions.
Alessia Calafiore has received funding from the University of Liverpool's Partnership, Recovery and Resilience Fund to analyse walk access to services in Liverpool City Region.
Richard J. Dunning has received funding from EPSRC-funded DecarboN8 to analyse the local impacts of cycling and walking interventions.
Shrinking is advertised as the story of the grieving therapist Jimmy (Jason Segel) who has lost his wife and wants to try a new approach to his loss, one that involves honesty, including telling his clients exactly what he thinks of them and their problems. Humour (it is hoped), insight into human nature (presumably) and a thoughtful consideration of the role of honesty in therapy will follow.
Unfortunately, for this viewer at least, there was precious little humour, less insight and some rather bizarre assumptions about human nature in general.
As a clinical psychologist of many years’ experience, I can tell you Jimmy commits many major errors of judgement within the first five minutes of screen time. Almost nothing of Segel’s character’s behaviour bore the faintest resemblance to the experience of real life therapy – even in the rather extreme environment of Hollywood.
The central conceit, that Jimmy tells his clients the truth, is clearly not only professionally unacceptable, it isn’t even true within the logic of the show. Jimmy does not “tell them the truth”, he tells them what he is assuming, what he’s fantasising about, what he wants to say, without filtering those thoughts to meet the needs of his clients.
I am no po-faced puritan. I like farce and I love the idea of puncturing the arrogance of therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists. I would have enjoyed being outraged. I wasn’t, I was irritated.
This is, of course, a work of fiction but many of the ideas are harmful (even when you know they’re fictitious). The central concept is of course based on professional misconduct, but that isn’t even the start of it.
I have worked as a clinical psychologist for over 30 years. I was also particularly struck by the purported reasons why people might end up seeking therapy and – most especially – what might actually help. My experience, as a client and as a therapist, is that most people come to therapy in considerable emotional pain, with significant real-world problems that are affecting their mental health; people who deserve a serious responses and for whom glib answers would be harmful.
On the (relatively few) occasions that I have been asked by a client to be honest, my truthful answer has been something along the lines of:
If I were in your position, I would almost certainly find myself acting more or less like you are. My only advantage over you is that, simply because I’m not living your life and I haven’t been through what you’ve been through, I have the benefit of a little perspective.
It’s a sign of huge arrogance to assume – and to put into the mouth of an actor –the idea that a therapist can not only see “the truth” but that somehow this could help a client.
It is true that cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT, the form of therapy featured on this show) relies heavily on the ideas of “thinking errors” or “dysfunctional beliefs”, but even CBT practitioners are fully aware of the limitations of their own perspective. They know the risks they run when they make assumptions about what’s “really” going on, and serious commentators prefer to discuss the advantages of expanding the range of perspectives on an issue, rather than imposing “the truth”. Even advice is usually seen as ill-advised; Jimmy’s behaviour is anathema.
Jimmy indulges in cocaine and alcohol to excess, as well as exhibiting other significantly worrying behaviour. He turns up at work high, drunk and sleep-deprived. He makes assumptions about his clients, and bullies them into taking part in supposedly therapeutic activities that would, in reality, only serve to harm most clients. Therapy involves sustained attention on the part of the therapist, helping the client link ideas, drawing out the meaning and significance of details. Drug-addled and sleep-deprived therapists cannot function professionally.
If you are lucky enough to be referred to see a therapist, rest assured that even the worst-credentialed practitioners bear no relationship to Jimmy’s pre-adolescent jumble of emotions and behaviour.
There is poor practice, of course. Many of us are engaged in a deadly-serious campaign to root out abuses within the mental health system and to bring in more enlightened approaches.
What we mean by “more enlightened” is moving away from the idea that people are distressed as a result of “disorders” that can be treated with the help of medication or, indeed, through the input of therapists who somehow (despite their own failings) can offer insights and advice unavailable to their clients.
Shrinking is entirely unrelated to that effort because it is so far from reality as to be irrelevant even as a form of parody of misconduct.
Jimmy is at least as flawed as his clients. I love the idea that we’re all human, but I found little humanity in this portrayal – here, everybody is portrayed as damaged.
The therapy industry is ripe for parody. But Shrinking fails to do that. If you want to see high-quality drama about therapy, watch The Sopranos. If you want to see a parody of infuriating craziness, watch It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. If you want to see unprofessional antics, watch the UK version of The Office. Taste is a very personal thing; I could see what the writers of Shrinking were trying to do. But I’m afraid – for this viewer and clinical psychologist – they missed the mark.
Peter Kinderman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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