15 Remploy factories to escape axe

In a "final" proposal to the Government, the firm said it still wanted to merge 11 plants and close 17 factories, but a number have been removed from an original closure list because of savings and an assumption of more public procurement orders.

Union leaders reacted with fury to the announcement, saying it was an "absolute disgrace" that Remploy still wanted to close factories.

The firm had said it wanted to close or merge 43 of its plants with the loss of 2,500 jobs under plans to spend more money creating work in "mainstream" employment.

The Government narrowly avoided an embarrassing defeat at the Labour Party annual conference when Work and Pensions Secretary Peter Hain announced a moratorium on closures and promised that none would go ahead without ministerial approval.

Paul Kenny, general secretary of the GMB union, said: "At the Labour Party Conference, the Government agreed a new direction based on 'choice' for disabled workers, using public procurement to generate a steady workload to secure the future of the Remploy factories as allowed under EU rules. Last week, the Trade and industry Select Committee endorsed this approach.

"Yet a mere six weeks later we have the absolute disgrace of a failed response from a failed management, putting forward, in public, proposals which completely ignore what was agreed at Bournemouth that will lead to the sacking of over 2,000 disabled workers.

"The picture that emerges with these proposals is that of senior people ingrained in the school of management incompetence, beset by rigidity, completely lacking in vision and only begrudgingly being prepared to tackle the waste of money and excessive overheads that is dragging Remploy into losses.

"This is the management that said 43 factories had to go. Now they say it is 28. They know that they are jumping the gun with these proposals.

"The very idea that this failed Remploy management could put forward proposals to the Secretary of State to secure Remploy's future is just as ludicrous as the idea that a manager who failed at Hartlepool FC was the right person to manage Liverpool in the Champions League. It is a total nonsense."