Gordon Brown seeks more cash for Remploy factories

By KATRINE BUSSEY
Published on 13/02/2013 00:16

Former prime minister Gordon Brown will today urge the UK and Scottish governments to do more to help save two 
factories that employ disabled workers.

FORMER prime minister Gordon Brown will today urge the UK and Scottish governments to do more to help save two 
factories that employ disabled workers.

Mr Brown has been spearheading the campaign to keep open the two Remploy factories in Fife.

Today, he, fellow Labour MP Lindsay Roy and Fife councillor David Ross will make the case for the factories to receive improved transitional support at a meeting with Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith and Scottish enterprise minister Fergus Ewing.

Mr Brown, Labour MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, has already raised the plight of the factories, in Cowdenbeath and Leven, in a Commons debate.

In that debate, MPs campaigning to save the factories, where employees make lifejackets, argued the transitional relief being offered was not enough.

In a statement, Mr Brown, Mr Roy – MP for Glenrothes – and Mr Ross said the help on offer from both the Scottish and UK governments was “inadequate”.

The three politicians said they would be presenting Mr Smith with a draft business plan and the name of two would-be buyers who they said were interested in taking over the sites.

But they added: “The problem we face is that transitional government support is inadequate – and despite the fact that they have a full order book and the chance of expanding their production, they cannot move overnight from £1.6 million of losses to financial viability.

“The UK and Scottish governments are offering some help but it is inadequate.

“The planned help of £6,400 over three years per disabled employee is not enough to wipe out the current losses and both the UK government and the Scottish Government will have to do more.”