Stellantis Luton

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, the SMMT says that EV sales overall fell by 30% last month compared with October 2023. This is clearly a critical time in the industry. My noble friend has explained many of the problems facing the UK auto industry, most of them a direct result of the previous Government’s dysfunctional policies, but the Statement emphasises the amount of work that has been going on, which makes the point that the Government were fully aware of the critical condition of the automotive industry. I am therefore concerned that the Government are announcing yet another consultation. They have emphasised how closely they are working with the industry, so they know the problems. They have identified the problems with current policy, and it is essential that action takes place now. Why are we having another time-wasting consultation when the Government tell us they know all the problems?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

As the noble Baroness has said, the problems at Stellantis are due to a variety of factors that have impacted its business across the whole of Europe, not just to do with electric vehicles.

On consultation, the Government’s intention is not to have what we would see as a normal, traditional consultation; this is going to be a quickfire consultation to get everyone around the table quickly to understand what needs to be done. I reassure the noble Baroness that we are not pushing this into a long-term period of time. I anticipate that it will be in the form of round tables and quickly getting all the issues on to the table so that we can begin to address them.

We will look at some of the wider problems that are affecting the industry but also at the impact that the zero-emission vehicle mandate is having. If there are adjustments that we need to make, we can look at them in the rollout of that mandate, but we need to be clear, as I said earlier, that the endpoint is that we need to have clean transport in the future.