My hon. Friend makes a good point, and I hope that we hear some strong statements from the Minister about what the Government are going to do.
Last year, not only had Melrose sought to assure the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee of its intentions, but it provided a series of similar undertakings to Ministers. In the Business Secretary’s statement to the House on 24 April, one year to the day before this debate, he declared:
“I look to the management to honour its commitments in both the spirit and the letter, and to create a strong future for GKN, its employees, its suppliers, and the industrial sectors in which it will play a major role.”—[Official Report, 24 April 2018; Vol. 639, c. 760.]
He also said:
“Melrose has also agreed to meet my officials and me every six months to provide updates on its ownership of GKN.”—[Official Report, 24 April 2018; Vol. 639, c. 759.]
In the light of all that, one might have expected Ministers to have told the company this month that, rather than close the Kings Norton site, they expected it to honour the spirit, as well as the letter, of the undertakings it had given. Instead, in a written answer to me on 16 April, I was informed that the Secretary of State had been told that the closure plan was the result of
“an internal strategic review by GKN”
and that it was
“a commercial decision for GKN Aerospace and not in contravention of the deed of covenant agreed between BEIs and Melrose.”
If Melrose has indeed been meeting the Secretary of State’s officials every six months as promised, has anything been said in those meetings about the future of the Kings Norton plant being in doubt? If so, what alternatives to closure did BEIS urge on Melrose, and what was the company’s response? If not, what on earth is the point of these six-monthly reviews if they are not expected to cover an issue as important as the closure of a plant?
Of course, BEIS is not the only Department with which Melrose entered a deed of covenant last year. The Business Secretary told the House that the Ministry of Defence had received undertakings that would
“prevent the disposal of the…business, components of a business or assets without the consent of the Government”.—[Official Report, 24 April 2018; Vol. 639, c. 759.]