JOHN McDONNELL urged a crackdown on poor practices in the accounting and auditing industry at the weekend, pledging that “there will be no more Carillion scandals on Labour’s watch.”

At Labour’s State of the Economy conference on Saturday, Mr McDonnell announced that the party had commissioned an independent review of Britain’s corporate auditing and accounting regime.

The shadow chancellor said Carillion’s demise had “once again highlighted the catastrophic failure and inadequacy of our regulatory system,” adding that “the accounting and the pensions regulators have once more failed to do their jobs.”