BMW dropped 'clear hints'

Production at Longbridge is being slowed

BMW dropped "numerous, very clear hints" to the UK Government that it intended to pull the plug on Rover, the company says.

Managers gave the Department of Trade and Industry clear messages about its plans although it failed to spell them out explicitly, company spokesman Axel Obermueller told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

Stephen Byers says he was misled

He said BMW "regretted" that it could not inform the government before news of the sale of the Longbridge plant in Birmingham leaked out last week.

The Prime Minister's official spokesman Alastair Campbell has rejected this, saying BMW's decision had come as a surprise "to put it mildly".

He said the government's job now was to pick up the pieces, focusing on those that were directly affected, and helping to match skills to jobs.

He would not be drawn on calls for a boycott of BMW cars, saying it was not the government's job to say where people should or should not spend their hard-earned cash, but people were free to express their anger about what had happened in different ways.

German claims

Mr Obermueller earlier insisted that the company had done all it could to alert British officials.

He said: "We had several meetings with the DTI where we informed them about the situation, about the losses, the problems that we had, and the impact of the pound."

Trade and Industry Secretary Stephen Byers had expressed his fury at being kept in the dark about the plans.

An inquiry into the affair has been announced by the House of Commons Trade and Industry Select Committee.

Options

Committee chairman Martin O'Neill told the BBC that the investigation would seek to establish a firm record of the events surrounding the sale.

It will also explore what options there are for finding an alternative buyer instead of the venture capital firm, Alchemy, which has said it will scale down production and focus on niche-market vehicles.

Mr O'Neill said he did not believe Mr Byers was "culpable" in the matter.

If people set out to act in a clandestine fashion, he did not know what Mr Byers was expected to do, he said.

Staff feel effect

The effect of the sale is starting to be felt at the Longbridge plant itself where workers' shifts are being cut from this week.

It is the start of a process which will eventually mean thousands of redundancies.

Our members want to hit BMW where it hurts

AEEU's Sir Ken Jackson

The cut in shifts will initially cost the workers about £80 a month.

Unions fear that in the coming weeks, as many as 6,000 workers will be told their jobs no longer exist.

Meanwhile, calls have also been growing for a boycott of BMW cars.

Sir Ken Jackson, leader of the engineers' AEEU union, said: "Our members want to hit BMW where it hurts - in the profits. The public is disgusted with the way BMW has treated British workers.