MG Rover

Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 11:19 am on 14 June 2005.

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Photo of Julie Kirkbride Julie Kirkbride Conservative, Bromsgrove 11:19, 14 June 2005

I am sorry, but I shall not take any more interventions for the time being, as it is not fair to other hon. Members who wish to take part in the debate. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend Mrs. Spelman says that I have been very generous. I agree.

Just this morning I got an answer from the Minister in charge of the Motability scheme, and it is interesting to note that there is little support for our domestic car maker there either. Of 171,638 Motability cars bought with the help of Government funds last year, just 2,606 were bought from Rover.

The company creaked on. There was a possible deal to be done with the Chinese, who basically took the Government and the PVH directors to the cleaners. They bought the intellectual property, but without the car plant, and without the future of production at Longbridge. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer went to China and failed to produce a deal, the writing was on the wall that the company would close, because without a foreign investor, it simply could not carry on.

Ministers were left in something of a dilemma. The clock was ticking towards a general election, and they did not want the whole thing to blow up just beforehand. Sadly, it became clear to them that if they could not hang on to the situation, it was much better to let it blow up early in the general election rather than closer to polling day on 5 May.

I am sure that Labour Members will not believe me, but they might believe the business editor of The Birmingham Post, John Duckers, who also made this point. In his article of 22 April he wrote that when Ministers returned from China, the Government determined that they must not have a Rover crisis breaking in the days immediately before polling day. They dared not risk that happening, so they decided to dump the ailing car giant well ahead of polling day.

John Duckers went on to quote a highly placed source:

"'The election was happening and Labour could not afford something like this towards the end of the campaign. The Pope was dying, there was the Royal wedding between Charles and Camilla and that was concentrating attention.' Labour, he said, had to keep the issue controlled and so news management went into overdrive. No one is suggesting that the MG Rover might have necessarily been saved, but, it is maintained, the Government chose when it was to go down".

I agree with that, bearing in mind the fact that the previous Secretary of State announced that the company would be going into receivership before the board had even decided that it would. The Government's complicity in this is clear. [Interruption.] I am not surprised that Labour Members are having a fit about complicity in selling Rover to the PVH consortium, because the record of what PVH has done, and John Towers in particular—