Ford and Visteon UK Ltd

Huw Irranca-Davies Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes that, when Visteon UK Ltd was spun off from the Ford Motor Company, employees transferred from Ford’s pension scheme into the Visteon UK pension fund on the clear understanding that their pension rights would be unaffected; further notes that, when Visteon UK subsequently went into administration, now over four years ago, former Ford employees suffered a substantial reduction in their pension rights; regrets that the resolution of any court action is still some way off; believes that Ford should recognise a duty of care to its former employees and should make good the pension losses suffered by those worst affected without the need for legal action; and calls on the Government to use the power and influence at its disposal to help ensure that Ford recognises its obligations and accepts voluntarily its duty of care to former Visteon UK pensioners.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for inviting me to open the debate. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group in support of Visteon pensioners, I thank the Backbench Business Committee for finding time in the schedule to allow us to discuss this important national issue.

I do not really want to be standing here, criticising one of Britain’s great institutions and highlighting publicly what I believe to be a scandal, but I must. I owe it to my constituents and to the thousands of former Ford employees who transferred their pensions from Ford to the new entity of Visteon to do so. An injustice has been done and it continues to be done. I therefore stand here more in sadness than in anger.

This is a truly national issue. The request for today’s debate was signed by more than 10% of Members of this House and by Members who represent all parts of the country and sit in all parts of the House. Although a good number of Members are in the Chamber, there are many others who unfortunately cannot be with us. I mention in particular my hon. Friends the Members for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) and for Enfield North (Nick de Bois), who have Public Bill Committee duties.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members for securing the debate. There are other Members, like me, who were unable to put their names to that request, but who are here and who support the motion. He is right to say that Ford is a good company. It employs 2,000 people in the neighbouring constituency of Bridgend. However, people who transferred their pensions to Visteon are at a loss in trying to explain why, when they were given categorical assurances, time after time, that their pensions would be safe and protected, they have not been. All we are asking Ford to do is to step up to the mark and comply with its moral obligations as well as its legal obligations.

[Stephen Metcalfe]

I could not agree more, and the issue transcends any legal debates that might be in a court of law. This is about trust and moral responsibility, and a fine company such as Ford has unfortunately blemished its character by not living up to the expectations of its former employees. That is the nub of the matter, and why I will address my remarks not so much to Ford in the UK, but perhaps to Ford globally. This is a global issue, and ultimately its resolution lies in Dearborn in the United States. I hope that Ford executives in the States are watching this debate, because it is they who are able to solve the issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this important debate. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) for the tremendous work that he has done as chair of the all-party parliamentary group in support of Visteon pensioners since his election to the House, and the way in which he has led his merry band of warriors in keeping this issue at the forefront of people’s minds. We are not prepared to allow it to fade away with time and be forgotten. I think that the strength of feeling and the outrage over what is basically an issue of decency and morality have been obvious in the two speeches that we have heard so far today.

I, too, do not wish to use my speech to knock an international company that provides valuable jobs, expertise and innovation in this country. However, I am baffled by the fact that that it is seemingly being led by its north American approach to business—which is infinitely hard-nosed—and is not prepared to recognise what it is doing to a group of people who, although totally innocent, are being made to suffer ruined retirements, despite the assurances that they were given back in 2000 that their pensions would be looked after and would be on a par with the pensions of those who worked for Ford.

I am surprised at Ford’s intransigence in not recognising its moral duty to act decently. I know that business can be very cynical—Bob Dylan used to say that money shouts—but one would have hoped that there was still a sense of decency, and that this company would be prepared to consider the position of a small group of people who, although they have fought magnificently, will always be the Davids in this David and Goliath battle.

Like my hon. Friend, I find it sad that nothing has moved forward since the last debate, in which I was unfortunately unable to participate because I still wore the shackles of ministerial office. It seems that if we are not careful and if Ford is not prepared to regain its sense of decency, the matter may have to be resolved in the courts, which I do not think is in anyone’s interests, especially given the time scale.

It appears from all the evidence that even if, back at the turn of the century, Ford was following what other companies were doing and removing its suppliers from its direct control by creating new companies, the hands of Visteon, a company created to be independent from Ford, were tied from the outset. I understand that Ford had a virtual monopoly over the parts coming out of Visteon, and was thus in a position to drive down prices unilaterally. There was no proper, vibrant, functioning market, and that is not in any independent company’s natural interest. I also understand that Visteon had to buy its materials from the Ford foundry in Leamington, although they could have been obtained elsewhere at a more competitive and lower price. Once again, Ford seems to have kept Visteon’s hand behind its back and thwarted any opportunity that it might have had to develop as a vibrant, successful company.

I find it incredible that when Ford was keen to create Visteon and cast it aside, in effect, from Ford itself, those who worked for Ford and were going to be employees of the new Visteon were advised that the Ford European works council agreement guarantees that

“Visteon employees transferring their past service benefits to the Visteon Fund will receive the same benefits as at Ford, both now and in the future for all their pensionable service.”

Beyond that, employees were encouraged to join the Visteon scheme and transfer their pensions with statements such as:

“Your accrued pension rights will be protected.”

To me, and probably to all those people who were about to become Visteon employees, those were cast-iron, concrete statements of fact that gave them protection.

We also have to remember that this is not some plan to change pension arrangements in the future. I accept that many private companies over the last decade—as well as Government, and including Members of this House—have been changing their pension arrangements because it has been found that the existing arrangements are too expensive in the current economic climate. They are moving to salary-average schemes, but that is always for the future. They do not start tinkering with the commitments, the payments, the arrangements and the deals that have been done in the past. These changes are for the future. That is not what has happened to the Visteon pensioners, however. Their pensions—that they took out in good faith, and that they believed were safe and secure for all their pensionable life—have now, because of what happened to Visteon in 2009, been noticeably, and in some cases severely, cut by this cynical operation to create a new company independent of Ford.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a powerful point, particularly on this issue of the assurances that were given to Visteon pensioners. He, like me, will have received the Visteon action group briefing so he is clearly familiar with this quote:

“Your accrued pension rights will be protected.”

It was also stated that “not only” would their pension be “secure” but it would be in their best interests to “transfer” their pension and their pension benefits were “guaranteed”. People were not being greedy or stupid; they were acting in the best interests of their families and themselves on the best available advice, and it is morally repugnant for a company to walk away from those assurances now, when they were either delivered by that company or were vetted by that company before being delivered.

[Mr Burns]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point because he is absolutely right. There were no weasel words. There were no cop-out clauses or any excuses that could be made that people had misunderstood what had been said to them or the commitments that had been given to them. They were, in so far as anything in life can be, cast-iron guarantees that those people, who in most cases had worked so loyally for so long for Ford, would have their pensions guaranteed. Having met a number of them, including constituents of mine, I have no doubt that they feel as though they have been kicked in the stomach because of what has happened to them and that they are having to suffer through no fault of their own.

That is why I say that Ford—and in particular Ford in the United States of America, which I believe is leading Ford in the UK on this issue—should sit down and quietly consider their conscience again. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) says, “If they’ve got one,” and I can understand why he says that because it does seem that they are without conscience. Of course companies have a responsibility to their existing work force and their shareholders to make a profit, but this is even more important: “You don’t make a profit if you don’t have a loyal, hard-working and decent work force.” If the company is prepared to see some of its work force treated like that, despite the cast-iron guarantees that it gave them, we have to wonder what kind of conscience it has.

I hope that the company will think again as a result of this debate and of the lobbying by Members on both sides of the House, by the trade unions, by the action group and by others, and that it will not consider drawing the matter out even longer, because, sadly, some of those pensioners will die during that time. I hope that the company will do the decent thing, the morally right thing, and restore those pensions to the people who should never have had them taken away from them in the first place.