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MG Rover

I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) on securing this important debate. I want to focus on the issue of training and its evaluation, which has been raised by other Members, but there are a few points that I want to make first. I welcome the inquiry; it is important that we should know exactly what happened. Some of the arguments have been put in context today: things sound different when one reads the quotes that people gave at the time. Those of us with slightly longer memories hope that the inquiry will also recall how Rover came to be in the hands of BMW in the first place, and how the tie-up with Honda—one of Rover's most successful periods—was severed by the actions of the Conservative Government, in what workers in the area would describe as industrial vandalism. I hope that the inquiry will look at the whole picture. I welcome what the taskforce and the regional development agency appear to have achieved in the short period of two months or so. I was intrigued to hear the hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Miss Kirkbride), a member of the taskforce, ask about the training components. I hope to find, when I read the minutes, that she has been asking such demanding questions there too, because it would be a bit pointless if she were only asking them here, when she has been afforded such an opportunity elsewhere. I look forward to seeing the taskforce's work. Many of us were at a meeting with the representatives of the taskforce last week in the House of Commons, at which I was interested to hear that it intends to write up the whole experience, so that for the future we will have a model of what can be done if we have to face job losses on this scale again in any part of the country. That is a welcome process, and I look forward to reading about it. We will be able to read about the input and the actions of the taskforce. Welcome though those are now, we do not know what will happen to the affected people, many of whom are to receive further training—some short-term, some in higher education—which I also welcome. I believe that the hon. Lady said that slightly less than 10 per cent. of those people have found new jobs, but we do not know what will happen to the larger mass of affected people—those employed by MG Rover or related industries—and their families, many of whom live in my constituency. We should look systematically at what happens to such people. I did not think that the answer afforded by taskforce representatives at last week's meeting was wholly convincing. It is not enough to assume that learning and skills councils will track the outcomes of training for those employees. If we are to have a report on Rover, what happened at the outset and what the taskforce did, we need to know about the outcomes, too. There is an argument, which I hope that the Minister will consider, for a systematic study of what happens to Rover workers and their families. I should like to know what training they had, how many of those training episodes had a successful outcome, how many people started small businesses, and how those businesses had fared by the end of, say, two years. I would also like to know how many people were forced to leave the area, as that will have implications for further work needed in similar situations. It is not sufficient to rely on the learning and skills council, not least because, as has been pointed out, about 40 per cent. of Rover workers do not live in Birmingham, so the work would involve more than one LSC.