Ministers do not emerge with any credit from MG Rover report

Shadow Business Secretary Ken Clarke says that questions need to be asked about the Government's role in the MG Rover deal.

Responding to the publication of the report into the collapse of MG Rover, he said that the inspectors "quite rightly" criticise the Phoenix Four and their Chief Executive, "who seem to have enriched themselves at a time when MG Rover workers were losing their jobs".

But, he said, "it is a pity" that the inspectors did not think that the scope of the inquiry enabled them to go more precisely into the Government’s role in the selection of the Phoenix bid.

It is also "regrettable", Clarke said, that they didn't investigate the possible misuse of taxpayers' money seeing as "Ministers put in £6.5m in the middle of an election campaign, to keep the company going beyond polling day".

"Unfortunately this report does not shed enough light on the Government’s undoubted involvement in brokering the deal in the first place and failing to realise that the project was heading for disaster", he added.

"I can understand why Peter Mandelson was so reluctant for this report to come out because it reminds us of this whole sorry episode from which Government ministers do not emerge with any credit."