The head of French carmaker PSA played down the threat to British plants as he discussed his potential takeover of GM’s European operations during a visit to London yesterday.

Carlos Tavares, chief executive of Peugeot-maker PSA, has been on a charm offensive to reassure politicians and unions that any deal to buy the Opel business would not lead to large-scale job losses.

Germany accounts for about half of Opel’s 38,000 staff, while 4,500 are in Britain where Opel operates as Vauxhall.

Tavares met the Unite union’s General Secretary Len McCluskey yesterday.

“He talked in terms of not being here to shut plants. That’s not his nature,” McCluskey, the head of the country’s biggest union, told reporters, adding the talks were “relatively positive”.

The union leader said he was pleased with some of the assurances Tavares gave, such as production commitments being met should the takeover go ahead.

But McCluskey said there remained a lot of issues to discuss, including that of pensions.

The Vauxhall pension scheme has a deficit of up to £1 billion according to a source.

In a statement, PSA said Tavares used the meeting to reaffirm “his commitment to conduct this dialogue in accordance with existing agreements and the ethical approach of the PSA Group”.

PSA said this week it would respect existing labour agreements if a deal took place.

Underlining concerns about jobs, Opel’s European works council said it had agreed to open a line of communication with its counterpart at PSA Group.