Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)

My noble friend rightly reminds us of the fantastic contribution that Lord McKenzie made to this House. I am sorry that he might be looking down and hearing these messages from us, because I know how passionate he was about his town. My noble friend makes a point about consistent policies. We have learned over many years that industry responds to consistent policies and consistent targets, and it is important that we maintain that. That is why I made it clear that we are still pursuing, and are determined to deliver, our targets for net zero and the contribution that the rollout of electric vehicles will ultimately make to that. That is an important message. We are hearing from the automotive industry, among others, that it wants those consistent policies; as my noble friend says, it does not want us to chop and change, which is not helpful to anyone. The industry makes long-term investment decisions, and we have to support it in that. On the jobs, the announcement from Stellantis has been relatively recent and we had hoped we would not have to hear that message from it, so we are still in active talks with it and are continuing to talk about the full implications of who will be affected. We will continue to work closely with it and the trade unions and the council on the next steps of its proposals. It is early days, but we are actively pursuing this issue and we take to heart the fact that we need to protect those workers and their future in whatever way we can. My noble friend mentioned funding. I think I mentioned that we already committed in the Budget to a multiyear funding commitment to the automotive sector, with long-term funding of over £2 billion of capital and R&D funding to 2030 for zero-emission vehicle manufacturers and their supply chains, so we are putting in the money to support that investment. We have a proud history in all this of being at the forefront of R&D, and it is important that we capitalise on that R&D investment. In the intermediate term, the Department for Work and Pensions is ready to support anyone affected by the decision. It has a rapid response service that is designed to support and advise both employers and their employees when faced with redundancies. Affected employees will be able to access our broad range of support, including universal credit and the new-style jobseekers’ allowance, as well as, perhaps more importantly, access to tools and support to find new jobs in the area. Our priority is to find those people new jobs in the sector.