Birmingham Northfield Should Not Forget What Labour is Still Doing to Them

Mandelson's written parliamentary statement that the Serious Fraud Office has been called in to investigate the events surrounding the collapse of MG Rover will enable the publication of any report to be prevented further.

The MP for Birmingham Northfield, Richard Burden, whose constituency includes almost all of the former MG Rover site, last month expressed frustration at the length of time taken over the report and its cost and called for immediate publication of the results. He stated:

"Like everybody else in the area I have found it incredibly frustrating that we have had to wait so long for this report. The escalating cost of the inquiry has also been a matter of real concern to so many people, including me."

Of even more concern for workers who have had to face massive unemployment and, at best, poor quality, short term poorly paid contract work, there is also the denial of the compensation that they so desperately need in the conditions they have been placed while these macabre manoeuvres to save the Labour regime's face right back to the early 2000s go on.

The inquiry was set up under the Companies Act by then Trade and Industry secretary Alan Johnson. He said at the time that an investigation covering the two years leading up to the causes of the collapse was in the public interest.

If it was in the public interest then it is so now, even more so now when we would all like to look at New Labour's economic mismanagement in as much detail as possible. But Alan Johnson, the great white hope of post Brown Labour worthiness and guiltlessness, won't be calling for an instant publication. Having kicked the shambles at the heart of the West Midlands economy into the long grass then, why should he not keep quiet while it's kicked again into a sub judice swamp by the current faction of New Labour's unelected at the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, what Mandelson boasts of as his alternative Treasury. Perhaps the Chancellor of the Exchequer might be moved to comment on a matter that cost the taxpayer so much over so long.

UPDATE

The Birmingham Post continues the story of MG Rover. The lengthening of the delay in the publication of a report already nearly five years past the events it investigates looks worse and worse.