Members of the parliamentary Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy have written a letter to the secretary of state for the area, Andrea Leadsom, with a list of findings and recommendations that arose from the Cook inquiry. 

These include stronger mechanisms to “claw back” large director bonuses; binding agreements from lenders to support people made unemployed through a company’s insolvency; and greater diversity of a company’s board members. 

The report also criticised the current use of goodwill and potential conflicts of interests in the financial auditing process. 

Chair of the committee, Rachel Reeves, lamented that the upcoming December general election has cut short the inquiry process. 

“It is a matter of some regret that given the expected dissolution of Parliament on 6 November, we are unable to report in full the extent and depth of failures in corporate finance, in audit, and in government support – in particular for former employees of Thomas Cook,” Reeves wrote. 

She concluded: “Urgent steps need to be taken, not least the introduction of long overdue legislation to empower regulators, in order to mitigate against the worst impact of corporate failures on employees, consumers, suppliers and taxpayers.”

Cook collapsed in September this year, leaving thousands of people unemployed.