The transport secretary has explained why the government did not provide a £250 million bailout to Thomas Cook. Grant Shapps highlighted the travel agent's £1.7 billion-pound debt and its first profit warning "five or six years ago". He said: "I think if we'd seen a business that clearly had hot prospects and all it needed was something very simple and then it would carry on, that would be very different." Mr Shapps added: "I don't think that there was a route through to pumping in taxpayers' money and then actually avoiding today. I think today would have happened even if we'd done that." Report by Jonesia. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn