Vauxhall at Ellesmere Port and Battery Manufacturing Strategy Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Alun Cairns
Main Page: Alun Cairns (Conservative - Vale of Glamorgan)Department Debates - View all Alun Cairns's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Vauxhall at Ellesmere Port and Battery Manufacturing Strategy
Alun Cairns Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Kwasi Kwarteng
I really appreciate those words of support and help. This is a cross-national issue and a cross-party issue, and I would be very happy to engage with the hon. Gentleman. He knows that I have already made a commitment to visit the HyNet industrial cluster near his constituency. I am very much committed, as previous Secretaries of State have been, to doing all I can to make sure that we get the right investment and the right result.
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con) [V]
The Secretary of State will be familiar with my long-standing ambition to see a battery valley—or a battery vale—established in Wales, so I was delighted when Britishvolt prioritised St Athan in the Vale of Glamorgan, my constituency, as its preferred site for its gigafactory, although I was later disappointed when it decided to shift its priority elsewhere, possibly because of the lack of capacity or expertise within the Welsh Government in order to serve its needs in bringing such a large, major investment project to Wales. Does my right hon. Friend agree that his Department needs to play an active role in co-ordinating such large, complicated investment projects for the UK, wherever they may be in any nation within the UK, so that my constituency will not necessarily lose out as it has now?
Kwasi Kwarteng
There are huge opportunities in Wales for the siting of gigafactories, and also, particularly, in terms of the net zero challenge. I spoke to Ken Skates of the Welsh Government only this morning. There is a huge appetite in Wales to drive the net zero agenda. I would be very happy, as my right hon. Friend knows, to have a conversation with him on how best we can work together to do that.