THERESA May intends to introduce large fines for irresponsible company bosses who “line their own pockets”.

The Prime Minister will outline her plans in the coming weeks in the wake of Carillion scandal.

Proposals include giving the pensions regulator specific powers to issue punitive fines to company directors in cases of clear wrongdoing, it was reported yesterday May said there will be “tough new rules” to tackle the behaviour of “executives who try to line their own pockets by putting their workers’ pensions at risk”. She said this was “an unacceptable abuse that we will end”.

May added: “Too often we’ve seen top executives reaping big bonuses for recklessly putting short-term profit ahead of long-term success. Our best businesses know that is not a responsible way to run a business and those who do so will be forced to explain themselves.”

Meanwhile, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Liz Truss, has said ministers do not yet know how much the collapse of Carillion will cost the taxpayer. She said it would be “completely wrong” to speculate on the cost, but that it would be a “significant amount of money”.

Truss told ITV’s Peston On Sunday: “At the moment we don’t have a full estimate. We’ve been working to make sure public services keep going, that’s of course our priority,”

“There’s a lot of investigatory work to do in terms of what the directors knew and when they knew it, but we also have to make sure we can move these contracts on, either to organisations within the public sector or to other private-sector organisations.”