Ford UK (Duty of Care to Visteon Pensioners)

Debate between Charles Walker and Mike Freer

Tuesday 4th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mike Freer]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. Anyone who has gone through the documents that the Visteon pensioners have been able to secure will see that there is a clear audit trail showing that Ford knew exactly what it was doing. It gave guarantees that it is now seeking to renege on.

[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

Is it not the case that in our pursuit of this matter, along with my hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe), Ford has sent some very reasonable people to meet us, but it continues to behave in a very unreasonable way?

[Mike Freer]

My hon. Friend makes another good point. We have seen over the years that when companies are seeking to renege on their pension responsibilities, they seek to delay through the courts. I suspect that many companies hope that the pensioners will die before the case is heard, and I agree that it is time that Ford met its responsibilities.

I return to the issue of Visteon being set up to fail. The Visteon UK pension plan was created 12 months after the spin-off from Ford, with a transfer value of just £230 million. That transfer value left an immediate deficit of £49 million. That deficit was not communicated to the employees. It looks as though Ford was simply shunting off its liabilities and cleaning up its main balance sheet. It could be argued that a viable spin-off company could have traded its way out, and that it could have made employee and employer contributions to rectify the deficit. Could Visteon have traded its pension fund out of trouble? Possibly—I am not an actuary, so I cannot comment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Freer]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point, but it is worse than just that there was no engagement. All the evidence suggests that Ford Motor Company was engaged in underhand sourcing of new products from other suppliers at cheaper rates. Indeed, those new suppliers were asked—nay, forced—to sign confidentiality agreements. Therefore, although Ford knew that Visteon was not in a position to develop new products, it was actively sourcing new products from other, cheaper suppliers without telling Visteon or certainly without telling the work force of Visteon. I think that that is duplicitous. Visteon was immediately at a competitive disadvantage compared with other suppliers, not least in relation to securing new business from Ford. Of course, as it was a spin-off, one hope would have been that it would secure new business, but having inherited the overhead of the Ford system, it was unable to do so. As the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) pointed out, Visteon’s trading losses were close to $1 billion before it went into administration in March 2009. It made a loss every single year.

The key issue is this: did Ford know what it was doing? This is where I want to refer to a comment made by Tim Leuliette, the chief executive of Visteon Corporation. He was interviewed by the Detroit Free Press in November 2012. He was asked:

“Did…Visteon…have a chance”

when it was spun off? He said quite clearly:

“No…The labor cost issues, and the burden and the overhead was…so out of line with reality that it was almost comical. It just wasn’t going to work. And it didn’t work.”

If the chief executive of Visteon knew that its business plan could not recover the company, I doubt that Ford did not know that as well.

[Mr Charles Walker]

Is this not an example of Ford, a four-letter company, behaving in a four-letter way, and is it not a disgrace?

[Mike Freer]

My hon. Friend is tempting me into unparliamentary language. I will resist the temptation, but I of course do share the sentiment behind his intervention.

I think that the chief executive summed the position up in one or two sentences. I cannot believe that Ford Motor Company and the management of Visteon did not know exactly what they were doing. It was simply a dumping-of-liabilities exercise.

In April 2009, matters got worse. The Visteon UK pension fund required support from the Pension Protection Fund. Some Visteon pensioners have already seen their pensions reduced by 45%. In February 2012, the protection fund took on the responsibility for paying members of the scheme. As I have already said, it seems that Ford was simply cleaning house—shunting off a loss-making division and its pension liabilities. The new business was not viable, and it knew that the pension fund was in deficit. The full facts and the full risks were hidden from the employees. What was worse in my view was that false promises were made to encourage employees to transfer their pensions.

I used to work for one of the high street banks, in the regulated side of the bank. In fact, I sold pensions. If I had made to my customers the comments that Ford Motor Company made, I would not only have been struck off as a regulated person by the Financial Services Authority, I suspect that I would have been prosecuted for mis-selling.