Ford UK (Duty of Care to Visteon Pensioners)
Debate between David Burrowes and Stephen Metcalfe(12 years ago)
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Stephen Metcalfe
I agree with the hon. Gentleman. People were left with the impression that they had protection and that a pension was their right, whatever happened. They were also left with the impression that once they retired, at that point their pension was secured for them. Little did they know that it could be cut at some later date from a business that they might have been detached from for the best part of a decade, and suddenly they would turn round one day and find that, because of something they had virtually no involvement with, they are now seriously disadvantaged.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
Notwithstanding the point about the courts determining a contractual issue, is it not important that Parliament has united around concern about mis-selling of interest rate deals? This is a similar scandal, in terms of not only presenting a product but actively encouraging employees to take it up. Parliament has expressed a similar scale of concern about such products.
Stephen Metcalfe
I agree with my hon. Friend entirely. That aspect of the case will be tested in court, to see what promises were made and how they were communicated to the work force. What I am championing in Westminster Hall today, with other colleagues, is the case that Ford must meet its moral obligations to its former employees. However that is achieved, I believe that Ford has a moral obligation.
We have heard about other allegations of unilateral price changes, which of course Ford denies; of the pension fund being underfunded, which could be explained as a technical issue involving different valuations; and of Ford moving work away prior to the collapse of Visteon to ensure that its supply chain was not interrupted, and it is interesting to note that Ford never lost a day’s production because of the collapse of Visteon.
However, I will return to my main point one more time before I finish. I suspect that Ford did not want the hassle, the expense or the reputational damage of shutting down its expensive British parts manufacturers or other expensive plants around the world, so it spun them off knowing that ultimately it would be able to source the parts cheaper elsewhere and knowing that Visteon UK probably had no long-term future. I believe that that was known at the time that Visteon UK was spun off.