MPs Express Remploy Anger

Roy & Brown: 'No satisfactory answers on what happened at Remploy factories'

It's claimed Remploy's assests may have been given away with little benefit to the taxpayer or the redundant workforce.

The Cowdenbeath and Leven factories shut last year, despite the fact that marine textile orders reached £30, 000 annually.

MPs Gordon Brown and Lindsay Roy say they've yet to receive satifsfactory answers on what happened.

In a letter, the head of the National Audit Office Sir Amyas Morse admits that there was 'a lack of documentation on intellectual property rights', but he does not think this was 'the result of impropriety.' While he asserts that 'Remploy did negotiate over ownership of these rights, the buyer did agree to take on accompanying liabilities.'

Mr Brown and Mr Roy said: 

"This is unsatisfactory, we will put down further parliamentary questions.

"We doubt if the taxpayer secured any real recompense for the equipment or the property rights to the design of the life jackets produced at Leven and Cowdenbeath.

"Once again we have to remind people that we had a successful commercial product selling more than 20,000 a year into an international market, but where the benefit did not come to the workers or the owner. This investigation needs to continue."