Thousands of workers face up to the reality of redundancy following the collapse of ailing car manufacturer MG Rover.

Controversy over alleged accounting irregularities and a £400m, black hole has angered workers who will have to survive on statutory redundancy payouts.

The initial findings of a Government-backed inquiry into the accounts at MG Rover may be available within a fortnight.

Sir Bryan Nicholson, chairman of the Financial Reporting Council, said the initial findings will be “prompt, within the next week or two,” but he added that “you have to be very careful in these things,” the BBC News website reported.

Opposition parties have called for a full independent inquiry into the collapse of MG Rover with the loss of more than 5,000 jobs, after Chinese car manufacturer SAIC pulled out of a rescue deal.

The Financial Reporting Review Panel, a subsidiary of the FRC, will examine the accounts of the MG Rover group including the parent company, Phoenix Venture Holdings (PVH), amid questions about the alleged discrepancies of £400m.

The DTI announced a £150m aid package late on Friday, including £40m for redundancies, up to £50m for training, and £42m already announced to help suppliers to the company.

Trade and industry secretary Patricia Hewitt told the BBC’s Today programme on Saturday that in her opinion the “Phoenix Four,” who took over MG Rover with the Government’s backing in 2000, took too much money out of the company.

She added: “We know that the directors have had at least £40m, and … I hope they will make a personal contribution towards supporting the workforce now.

“I have always believed that where entrepreneurs take a big risk, put their own money up at stake, work their socks off, make a success of the company, then they, as well as the workforce, should be entitled to big rewards for big success.

“But that’s not what we’re talking about here … They did not, in fact, put huge amounts of money up in the first place, the company was effectively given to them by BMW. And the company has not, of course, been a success.

“What it needed … was big investment in new models. It didn’t happen over the last five years, the deal with the Chinese was the last possibility of getting that investment in new models.”

Hewitt said that while the directors were not legally obliged to do so, they had a moral obligation to help fund the redundancy payments.

The Telegraph reported that the 2003 accounts of PVH showed that its highest-paid directors earned more than the directors of BMW, the business’s former owner.

The FRRP inquiry will focus on the accounts of the “web of companies” that make up the group. Questions have been asked about “an apparent £400m discrepancy” in the PVH accounts in the period after the takeover of MG Rover, the Observer reported.

It quoted a “senior Treasury source” as saying the investigation should cover three issues: “Why Rover was sold to the so-called Phoenix Four in 2000; what has gone wrong since then; and, most importantly, where has all the money gone?”

PwC, the administrator, will require the directors to produce a statement of affairs, and must consider whether the Companies Act has been breached.

The Observer report continued: “A source close to SAIC said the company had received a report from Ernst & Young last month concluding that MG Rover was effectively insolvent. The fact that there was no bank debt connected to the group was ‘sinister’, said the source.

It quoted an MG Rover spokesman as saying: “Our accounts have been the subject of an annual auditor’s scrutiny, a number of due diligence processes, and the public scrutiny of the Commons Trade and Industry Select Committee. All have given them a clean bill of accounting health.”

PVH said in a statement: “There has been much media speculation surrounding so-called accounting irregularities and black holes in the accounts of PVH and MG Rover.

“The suggestion that a black hole of £400m or any other accounting irregularity could exist in a business which has been the subject of not only annual audit by Deloitte & Touche but over the past years has been examined by a Trade and Industry Select Committee … is ridiculous.”

Deloitte’s fees for audit work were “dwarfed” by payments for other services, according to the Telegraph.

But the paper quoted a Deloitte spokesman as saying: “We are comfortable that the opinions we gave relating to the financial statements of MG Rover were right.”

The FT reported today that although the FRRP has no enforcement powers, Sir Bryan Nicholson said that because regulation was “joined up,” its findings could prompt disciplinary action from other parts of the FRC, the DTI, the Financial Services Authority or the ICAEW.