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MG Rover

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. It is particularly gratifying given that I had tabled a Private Notice Question this morning on the same subject. It should have been clear to everyone involved that such an important announcement could not be swept under the carpet by means of a short Written Statement. I am also disappointed that the First Secretary of State is not in his place to answer questions on the matter. Although my noble friend Lord Hunt has been caught unawares by the Written Statement and was therefore unfortunately unable to return in time, the Secretary of State can have no such excuse; his department has been sitting on the original report for more than a month and had complete control over the release of this information. Furthermore, I see that he had time to be interviewed on Sky TV this afternoon. Further delays to any understanding of what actually happened in the lead-up to Rover's collapse, although not surprising, remain deeply disappointing, especially for the 6,500 former workers who must now wait a further indeterminate period before they can receive any of the modest sums of compensation due to them. The Government have played a questionable role in MG Rover and its collapse. There is ongoing uncertainty as to the grounds of accepting the original £10 bid, for example. There was also the scandal of the Government paying out a £6.5 million bridging loan weeks before the last general election, despite written warnings that it would not save the company. In 1998, the Secretary of State, who is now the First Secretary of State, stated that he considered Rover capable of, ""a commercially successful, viable, profitable future".—[Official Report, Commons, 21/10/98; col. 1284.]" Seven years later under a Labour Government it went into administration. The lessons to be learnt from that disastrous record are even more important today; once again the question has arisen of government aid to a struggling motor industry. Without proper understanding of these failings the last time around, how can the noble Lord expect us to have any faith in their competence today? Further questions have arisen over the inquiry that was meant to shed some light on the whole sorry incident. Not only has it taken four years and nearly £16 million for the inquiry to finish, complete with embarrassing reports of more than £100,000 being spent on accommodation and £30,000 on food and drink, but the end result has been promptly hidden away. Now, more than a month after the report should have been published, we learn that there will be further delay. One cannot help but notice that once again a general election is on the horizon, and once again the Government’s failure to manage the economy and support British industry is a topic of intense interest to the general public. Of course, if there is evidence of criminal activity, the police must get involved. But, unless the Minister is implying that government involvement also warrants a police investigation, burying those parts of the report looks less like an attempt to avoid commenting on an ongoing investigation and more like yet another ploy to avoid public disclosure of the incompetence of the Government until after a general election. It has apparently taken the Minister’s department a month to read the report and to identify possible grounds for a criminal prosecution. How long does he expect it to take the SFO to decide whether to investigate? If it decides to prosecute, will the Government use that as an excuse to delay the release of any part of the report until a final judgment is reached? What will happen to the compensation payments in that case? If there is a criminal case to answer, the Government should look carefully at the report and publish those parts that do not relate to that case. As he finished, the Minister said that the legislation does not provide for the report to be published in part. Although the Government do not have a duty to publish the whole, they most certainly have the power to publish in part. There are many questions to be answered that do not relate to criminal activity, but are extremely pertinent to an assessment of the Government’s competence. In 2005, when launching the inquiry, the then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Alan Johnson, said: ""People want to know what happened"." They still want to know what happened—now more than ever—but once again, the Government are trying their hardest to make sure that they do not find out.