Contribution
I thank the Minister for his statement. In his final Prime Minister’s questions, Keir Starmer spoke emotionally about how he had saved jobs at Jaguar Land Rover. Two months later, we hear news of 4,000 job losses at Britain’s biggest car manufacturer and the new Minister for Reindustrialisation is forced to make his first statement to the House on de-industrialisation. JLR workers will have spent another weekend contemplating their future, wondering about the impact on their careers, families and communities, and questioning the sustainability of the British car industry and the countless businesses in JLR’s nationwide supply chain—firms whose vital industrial capability, once lost, will be hard to replace.
JLR is still recovering from a crippling cyber-attack, of course, and the Minister has talked about the headwinds facing all car manufacturers. They include massive barriers erected by China to sell into its domestic market, while Chinese cars are aggressively sold into our own. Tech is changing the car industry from an engineering business to a component assembler and software installer. These shifts are huge and undisputed. The Business Secretary has said that JLR must become more competitive, but the question remains: what are he, the Chancellor and the new Prime Minister doing to make our country more competitive—and fast? I am not talking about tortoise-like speeches on triple helixes, sector plans, state-backed loans or union negotiations. I am talking about hard, urgent choices on tax, regulation and energy.
Let’s take the ZEV mandate, which dictates that the manufacture of petrol and diesel cars will be banned in this country in just over three years’ time, and which is seeing our firms being fined right now for customers not buying electric vehicles that they do not want. Having been manoeuvred into joint ventures and having had their designs copied by Chinese competitors, British manufacturers are now being forced to subsidise the Temu Range Rovers that are gobbling market share. It is crazy economic self-harm. The Conservatives would abolish the ZEV mandate. That is what unions want too. Can the Minister tell us: will the Government act?
Our industrial base is crippled by ruinous energy costs. We are being asked to applaud the Government’s industrial energy scheme, which does not start until next year, fails to address the underlying problem, and will not bring down prices for the whole economy. How will it position us against the competition? BICS will bring down energy costs by 25%, but given that our industrial electricity costs are four times that of the US, twice as high as France and 46% higher than the global average, our competitive disadvantage remains.
The Conservatives have a cheap power plan to slash energy costs for the entire economy. It involves hard-nosed choices: repealing the Climate Change Act 2008, axing the emissions trading scheme, scrapping wind and solar subsidies, investing in nuclear and getting the North sea drilling again. Will this Government be similarly tough, or will they continue to pretend that British industry is not having its legs cut off by net zero?
The Chancellor talked ploddingly this week about reducing the burdens on business, but the truth is that, through regulation and tax, the unemployment Act and the national insurance hike, Labour has made it riskier and more expensive to employ people. That is bad for business, because it adds another cost pressure, and it is bad for sales; 20% of JLR’s vehicles are for the domestic market, and right now too many Brits are too worried about tax bills, inflation and jobs to buy premium cars. How does this new iteration of Labour intend to untangle the mess of these past two years?
JLR sells nearly a third of its cars to America. US tariffs on them are four times higher than when Labour came in, but it is because we are outside the EU that we at least got a better tariff deal than member states—and it is the same with the India deal. As this new Prime Minister ingratiates himself with Brussels, can we be assured that he will not negotiate away our competitive advantages?
We know, too, that tariff and quota deals can change. The Foreign Secretary’s performative pronouncements on Israel and the Prime Minister’s ongoing failure to set out a defence plan risk antagonising the Americans and throwing us into another round of tariff negotiations that could cripple our car and life science industries. What will the Minister do to make sure that his colleagues are not jeopardising JLR jobs with dubious diplomacy, and are any trade measures being considered when it comes to China?
Britain is de-industrialising before our eyes. In the west midlands and beyond, there will be pain in every postcode. More Whitehall schemes and an army of mayors are not going to stop the rot. The Government cannot solve all of JLR’s problems, but it is the job of Ministers to create conditions in which it and countless other businesses can manufacture competitively in Britain. Are Ministers going to accept that this involves tough choices and then act with the urgency that this crisis demands?