CHAIRMAN of the All Party Motor Group, Richard Burden MP, whose constituency includes MG Rover's Longbridge plant, has said that the car makers "can have a sustainable future".

As Rover bosses, who famously bought the company from BMW in May 2000 for £10, rewarded themselves with £3.6m in their pension fund last year, the company posted its third continuous year of losses.

Mr Burden has said he is "critical of those payments and have told the company so."

Following a decrease in sales of the company's cars since the summer, the much-anticipated 2003 accounts confirmed that - in fact - Rover, Britain's last independent volume car maker, has pre-tax losses of £77m.

Remarkably, MG Rover's owner Phoenix Venture Holding's accounts also show that its unnamed highest paid director received a basic salary of £817,486 in 2003.

Despite this, Mr Burden wants people - especially his constituents and the MG Rover workers themselves - to "remember this is a company that was being written off by many experts back in 2000.

They said it would be out of business in six months.

Nearly five years on and MG Rover is still here and the losses have been dramatically reduced from what they were a few years ago."

Defending the pension-fund payment, a Phoenix Venture Holding's company spokesman agreed.

He said: "We reduced losses from £786m in 2000 to the £77m in 2003. We would not have done it if we did not think that it was entirely appropriate."

He added: "In an industry as competitive as the motor industry, nothing, of course, is guaranteed.

"But people really should be cautious before they again make the mistake of writing off this company."