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."

Ken Clarke says that increasing the inheritance tax threshold is "an aspiration", rowing back from previous party committments.

"We´re seeing the same old Tory behaviour once again" said Nigel Farage, UKIP leader. "They announce some sensible policy, like raising the inheritance tax threshold, and see their support jump. More than 11% in the polls that one got them. Then a few months or years later they row back on that promise.

"Now it´s only an aspiration as Ken Clarke told us instead of a firm promise. It´s typical, they tell us what they think we want to hear and then renege as soon as is indecently possible. With this sort of inability to keep their word, how and why could anyone trust them when they talk about the European Union?

"Whether those promises of "in Europe but not run by Europe" are promises that they won´t keep or that they can´t keep is irrelevant: what´s obvious is that they are promises that they won´t keep. Which of course is why so many Conservatives are going to be lending their votes to us in UKIP for we do keep our promises. As indeed we will do with our committment to abolishing inheritance tax altogether."