For your reference, news today, verbatim
A minister enraged skilled workers who lost their jobs in the Rover collapse by telling them yesterday to go and work for Tesco.
With manufacturing industry on the verge of recession, Margaret Hodge, the work and pensions minister, said employment was being created in the service sector.
Margaret Hodge: 'crass'
Phil Hanks, a former MG Rover worker, said: "The jobs we had were highly skilled. Working at Tesco's would obviously be nothing like the same kind of work and the pay would be nowhere near what we used to earn."
Tony Woodley, the general secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union, said his union would not tolerate supermarket jobs replacing work at the Rover plant at Longbridge, Birmingham, which closed in April.
He said Mrs Hodge's remarks were "the comments of an incompetent idiot masquerading as a minister".
Sir Digby Jones, the director general of the Confederation of British Industry, welcomed flexibility in the labour market, saying: "Just because you were making cars yesterday does not mean that you can make cars tomorrow."
But he added: "Where Mrs Hodge is wrong is if she thinks that this country can afford for skilled people to be stacking shelves."
Mrs Hodge made her comments in an interview with the Wolverhampton Express & Star about employment prospects in the West Midlands.
She referred to the proposed creation of 350 jobs at a new Tesco store in the Yardley area of Birmingham and was asked whether skilled Rover workers should apply.
She said: "Well, they will work all over the place and there is a new brownfield development site in the West Midlands as well. I am saying that some of the jobs are in Tesco and they will meet the needs of some of the unemployed and people looking for work.
"There are also other jobs arising out of new industrial developments."
Mrs Hodge later denied saying that MG Rover workers should apply to Tesco but said it was one example of a range of new opportunities. A business park to be built a few miles from Longbridge was another.
She said that more than 560 manufacturing and engineering employers had contacted the Government with 5,000 vacancies. Ministers were working closely with the MG Rover task force to find training and employment opportunities.
"Already more than 1,000 former MG Rover and supply chain workers have been found work and more than 2,000 have joined training programmes," she said.
Mrs Hodge, who is close to Tony Blair, has a reputation for gaffes but is unlikely to be disciplined for her latest remarks. The Government has long advocated labour flexibility, saying that workers no longer have jobs for life and will have to retrain when industries close.
John Butler, an economist at HSBC, said that Britain had been quite successful at retraining people. In the past two years most of the jobs lost had been in manufacturing and most of the jobs created had been in the public sector.
MPs regarded Mrs Hodge's remarks as insensitive.
Julie Kirkbride, the Tory MP for Bromsgrove, who sits on the Rover task force, called the suggestion "stupid".
She said: "We do not want to lose manufacturing jobs and skills from the West Midlands. It is important for the prosperity of the area that as many Rover workers as possible find jobs using their engineering and other skills."
David Willetts, the shadow trade and industry secretary, thought Mrs Hodge had been "rather crass". He said he was a fan of Tesco but the average manufacturing job contributed £75,000 a year to the economy compared with £25,000 for a retail job.
The manufacturing sector has lost 42,000 jobs so far this year, hit by cheap imports and the strong pound.
Manufacturers have also been badly affected by the doubling of oil prices and a steep jump in the price of steel and other raw materials.
