Plant Oxford Site

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

May I ask my noble friend to pay tribute to BMW? These are very difficult times, with global headwinds making it extremely difficult for the automotive industry. BMW is an excellent employer, and I hope that there will not be redundancies, but should there, be I hope that the Government would do everything they could to safeguard jobs in Oxford. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to BMW for the work that it does in the community—it believes in enhancing the lives and opportunities of people who live in the environs of the factory.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I concur with my noble friend’s point. BMW often describes Oxford as the home of the Mini and sees that investment as crucial. I hope that my noble friend and other noble Lords will welcome our new announcement for the Oxford-Cambridge corridor and the high-potential sectors within that, in which the automotive sector could well play a part. My noble friend Lord Vallance will be the Oxford-Cambridge growth corridor champion; it will ensure new investment into the sector and, I hope, provide further encouragement for BMW to carry on investing in the Mini lines.

Tata Steel: Port Talbot

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving me an opportunity to repeat myself, because I thought that I was quite clear that I am not able, at the Dispatch Box, to make industrial commitments on that scale—and he would not expect me to. We still have one steel mill in Scunthorpe operating with blast furnaces that can produce virgin steel. I am not a technical expert, but I hope that noble Lords will bear with me when I say that the processes are now close enough to being able to produce the steel almost to the quality that we need for all the uses that we require it for. We are not quite there yet, but we expect to be, and work is being undertaken to ensure that we can do that in the future.

What we have been able to do is make us more resilient. The noble Lord talked of national security, but I never felt that we were particularly nationally secure by having to import, in effect, all our ore in order to make the steel that we then roll. So here we have the opportunity, at last, to be secure, to take advantage of the circular economy and to use the scrap currently going abroad—totally bizarrely, in my view—to mill it in this country. That will allow us to have the circular economy that will give us far more security than a necessity to produce virgin steel on our own simply through imported ore.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend asked for confirmation of the number of job losses. I think that the number of 3,000 was mentioned, but it would be helpful for your Lordships to have confirmation.

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

Again, I appreciate very much the questions on this extremely sensitive and complex area. It is not the Government who run Port Talbot steelworks or Tata Steel, so I am not able to give a specific figure. We are projecting that at least 5,000 jobs have been saved through this move, and we think that tens of thousands of other jobs will be created through the release of land and the transformation of Port Talbot and the freeport area. I hope that that gives the noble Baroness some security.