Rover report gets delayed
THE government is set to delay the publication of a report into the collapse of carmaker MG Rover in 2005, pending an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office.
The move, set to be announced by business secretary Peter Mandelson today, follows a four-year inquiry into the company’s collapse, which led to more than 6,000 job cuts.
Opposition politicians accused the government of deliberately delaying the report, which they said would show it wasted millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money propping up the car company in the run-up to the 2005 election.
“I welcome the introduction of the fraud squad into what appears to be a major corporate scandal,” the Liberal Democrat’s treasury spokesman Vince Cable said. “It must not be used as a smokescreen to hide what the public needs to know,” he added.
MG Rover, Britain’s last major independent carmaker, went into administration in April 2005 with debts of more than £1bn.
A quartet of executives known as the Phoenix Four – John Towers, Nick Stephenson, Peter Beale and John Edwards took control of the company in May 2000 after buying the company for a nominal sum of £10. MG Rover stopped production in 2005.