The Government has been accused of “shutting the door after horse has bolted – yet again” by ordering a probe into the collapse of Thomas Cook.

The Unite union reacted with scorn after business secretary Andrea Leadsom asked the official receiver, which oversees liquidations, to undertake a “fast-paced” review into the sudden collapse of the tour operator.

It branded the probe – which will also see the official receiver investigate whether the actions of bosses at Thomas Cook “caused detriment to creditors or to the pension schemes” – as “too little, too late” and accused the Government of having failed to learn the lessons from the collapse of Carillion.

The review comes as the spotlight continues to fall the top directors at the company, who according to reports, have been paid a combined £20 million in in salaries and bonuses since 2014.

It is a stark contrast to the thousands of pounds so far raised through a GoFundMe crowdfunding platform to help the thousands of staff who face being laid off without any redundancy pay after Thomas Cook went out of business during the early hours of Monday.

The company employed 9,000 people in the UK and operates around 600 high street stores, including at Kendal, Ulverston, Barrow, Whitehaven, Workington, Penrith and Carlisle.

Employees working in Cumbria have admitted to being heartbroken by the news, which seen some consumers see their holidays vanish and left 150,000 holidaymakers stranded – forcing the Government to oversee Britain’s biggest peace time repatriation.

Unite – which represents 3,000 Thomas Cook workers ranging from cabin crew to engineers – said the collapse, along with other high-profile casualties include Carillion, Patisserie Valerie, British Steel and Interserve, demonstrated that the UK’s financial regulatory system was “broken beyond repair” and needs radical overhaul.

Its assistant general secretary Diana Holland said the investigation by the official receiver would being “no comfort” for employees and holidaymakers.

“Yet again the government is guilty of being asleep at the wheel,” she said.

“It failed to learn the lessons from Carillion’s collapse. If the Government had done so the collapse of Thomas Cook may have been avoided.

“The UK financial regulatory system is broken and without proper checks and balances we have no idea if other Thomas Cook’s and Carillion’s are in the pipeline and no ability to prevent them from occurring.

“The collapse of Thomas Cook has not been allowed to happen in other countries as their governments and regulators have mechanisms to stop such a disastrous and immediate collapse as has happened in the UK.

“Radical reform of the UK’s financial regulatory system must be an absolute priority to prevent other workers in the future being dumped on the scrapheap without warning, through absolutely no fault of their own.”

Unite put forward a series of reforms in its report: Ending Bandit Capitalism: learning the lessons following Carillion’s collapse.

They include cutting the number of financial regulators, with the creation of new regulators who have reals powers and the ability to intervene before companies collapse.

Meanwhile, it also blasted the Government for being too slow to publish the investigation into Carillion’s demise.

The official receivers report is not expected before the beginning of 2021 – three years after the company’s collapse, the union said.