Ford and Visteon UK Ltd

Debate between Geraint Davies and Hywel Francis

Thursday 12th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Hywel Francis (Aberavon) (Lab)]

I am pleased to take part in this critical debate, because the Visteon plant in south Wales is located in my constituency, and I do so on behalf of many of my constituents, many of whom have travelled to London today from Wales. I begin by paying tribute to the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) for securing this debate. As the chair of our all-party parliamentary group on Visteon pensioners, he is leading in Parliament the campaign to get justice for Ford and Visteon UK pensioners. I also pay tribute to my neighbouring MPs, my hon. Friends the Members for Swansea East (Mrs James) and for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), who have done sterling work over many years on behalf of their constituents employed in the local Visteon plant. My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East sends her good wishes for today’s debate. She is at home, convalescing after an operation, and I am sure everyone here will join me in sending our best wishes for a speedy recovery.

I want to place on record our thanks to the Visteon pensioners action group and the trade unions for their diligent campaigning over many years. I particularly thank Rob Williams of Unite, who was originally from the village of Glyncorrwg in my constituency. His grandfather, the late Glyn Williams, a distinguished president of the South Wales miners union, would have been very proud of him and the campaigning he is undertaking on behalf of his colleagues.

The case for justice for Visteon/Ford pensioners has already been made—and comprehensively so—by the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock, so I shall not repeat the unanswerable case that he made, other than fully to endorse what he said. What I would like to do today is to emphasise, as he did, the duty of care in the context of corporate social responsibility that Ford motor company needs to discharge to its former employees and their families.

I received this simple, yet poignant message yesterday from one of my constituents, Carl Kirby of Cwmafan:

“We hold meetings once a month and over the last year we have held a minute’s silence at nearly all for workmates that have passed on. This leaves their widows with a lower income, and I know a few have had to seek work to make ends meet. These men are not here to support their families now and their voices should still be heard.”

That is why we are here today—to articulate these concerns on their behalf.

Ford came to our locality in 1964—on to the site on the edge of Swansea that was previously occupied by the Prestcold refrigeration plant and that covered an area of 2 million square feet. It spent £20 million developing and expanding the plant to make it one of the largest and most modern car component factories in the whole of Europe. It grew rapidly from 2,000 employees in 1968 to 6,500 just over a decade later in 1980. Ford was therefore a major contributor to the Welsh economy, drawing its work force not just from Swansea, but from a wide area, encompassing neighbouring towns and villages across the whole of south-west Wales, often taking on the highly skilled labour that was leaving the declining coal mining industry.

Ford’s growth paralleled that of its neighbour, BP, in the petrochemical industry, with its nearby plants at Llandarcy and Baglan Bay. Their parallel growth in the same period was followed by a parallel decline of both companies in the region. There, sadly, the similarity ends. While the closure of BP’s local plants was undertaken in an orderly way, the opposite was the case with Ford. BP followed a clear exit strategy, engaging local stakeholders, developing a range of local legacies and ensuring proper pension rights. It developed a widely admired “Aiming for a College Education” strategy with local schools, helped to sustain and improve local sports and leisure facilities, helped to develop Coed Darcy, a new village in my constituency, and, most striking of all, contributed to the establishment of an impressive science and innovation campus at Swansea university that is to be opened in 2015 on the sea front—ironically, directly opposite the old Ford/Visteon plant.

We are speaking here of two world-class global companies: the one discharging its duty of care in an ethical way to its local employees and local communities, a model of corporate social responsibility over a long period; the other, sadly, retreating almost under cover of darkness, leaving employees, their families and their communities, desolate and in despair. It is not too late, however; Ford can redeem itself.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

In the light of what my hon. Friend has said about the contrast between Ford and BP, does he think that viewers of this debate and those who read about it in the United States will be surprised, given what they are likely to think about BP after the oil spillage? In this case, it appears that BP does its best to do its best for its workers, whereas Ford clearly has not.

[Dr Francis]

My hon. Friend has made a powerful point, and I agree with him.

On behalf of all my constituents—those who are directly affected and those who are not—I urge Ford, at this late hour, to discharge its duty of care to all Ford and Visteon pensioners throughout the United Kingdom by giving them their full pension rights before any more retired employees depart this world without receiving what is theirs as of right.

Ford UK (Duty of Care to Visteon Pensioners)

Debate between Geraint Davies and Hywel Francis

Tuesday 4th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) on securing the debate. I know that you, Mr Caton, have a great knowledge and awareness of this business because some of your constituents have been directly affected. Against the backcloth of news reports about global companies having to take responsibility for tax, we are here to talk specifically about Ford and its responsibilities to its former workers and employees, whose pension funds have been asset-stripped by what is basically sleight of hand.

As you will know, Mr Caton, the background in a nutshell is that Ford set up Visteon in 2000, seemingly as part of a strategy to reduce input costs and increase profits. By creating an arm’s length company that it had control of in terms of the prices that it was giving that company, it was then able to set up a pension fund that in the first instance was underfunded by some £49 million. It controlled and pressed down the prices paid to Visteon, with the net outcome that Visteon made losses in each of the 10 years of its existence, in the order of $100 million a year. The net outcome of that was that the pension fund was further suppressed, and pensioners and workers who spent decades working for Ford in good faith now find themselves short-changed.

I am glad to be accompanied by hon. Members from both sides of the House in calling on Ford to do the right thing, as part of a wider debate to bring global companies to account where they employ people and make profits, so that they provide decent products and are also decent to their work force.

[Dr Francis]

On the point that there is broad cross-party support in relation to this issue, will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating the all-party group that was set up several years ago to ensure justice for Visteon pensioners and in congratulating our hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Mrs James) on the sterling work that she undertook in the early stages? I also thank him for the work that he has done, because although the Visteon plant is located in my constituency, the vast majority of the workers or former employees are located in Swansea. I have constituents from Baglan, Briton Ferry, Skewen and Cwmafan, but the vast majority are in his constituency and hers.

[Geraint Davies]

I am glad to have had that intervention. It is very important to remember that this issue has been bubbling for 10 years. My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Mrs James) has done an enormous amount of work, and obviously my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Dr Francis), who has just intervened, had the original factory in his backyard. As this situation has gone on so long, Ford may be under the misapprehension that the issue will go away. It has been mentioned that some of the pensioners may in fact die and nobody will take much notice of it. However, what we see here, on the foundation of the work that has been done in the past, is the coming together of a new all-party group. I pay my respects to the previous all-party group for keeping the issue moving, but we now have a new sense of energy.

The significance of this debate, of course, is that it will put it not just on the UK airwaves but on the US airwaves that Ford is not just a whiter-than-white company. It needs to take responsibility for its employees around the world, not least the British cousins of the US workers, who have worked so hard for Ford throughout their lives in good faith and now feel that they have been shoddily treated. We all know that the matter will be carefully argued in court by very rich lawyers, but what we are saying here, and what the Ford directorship in the US needs to understand, is that a cross-party group of parliamentarians in Britain will focus on it and keep it on the agenda, and ultimately that will have an impact on the brand values that Ford relies on for its profitability. We are saying not only that this is a moral obligation, but that Ford must financially do the right thing; otherwise, it will pay the price one way or another.