Rover chiefs urged to hand over £1m

The five executives who ran MG Rover before its collapse were today urged to hand over £1million each to help those who were thrown out of work.

The call has come from Professor Carl Chinn, one of the independent trustees of the Rover Trust Fund. He accused the five - the so-called Phoenix Four of John Towers, Nick Stephenson, John Edwards and Peter Beale, along with Kevin Howe - of winning the equivalent of the National Lottery.

"Now that the report into the collapse of MG Rover has been finally published, revealing that such a huge sum of money was received by the five executives, I'm calling on them as a gesture of goodwill to each put in £1m to the trust fund in lieu of any payments that might have come into the fund later in the year."

There is currently only around £20,000 in the trust, which would have very limited benefit for Rover's 6,300 former workers.

Professor Chinn said a windfall from the former directors would have an immediate impact.

"This would mean we could immediately start to help former workers," he said.

"There would be £5million that could be shared around, and would be a huge help."

He said the other thing the report showed was that the UK was very good at long term investigations into failure, but was not as good at long-term investments into manufacturing.

"We have £16m going into a report into why MG Rover failed, but most of its conclusions have been in the public domain over the past four years."

Prof Chinn added: "Would it not have been better to have invested that money, and much more, into a sustainable strategy for manufacturing in this country?"