Jaguar Land Rover: Redundancies

Ashley Fox Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Blair McDougall]

My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point, as she always does, on behalf of her constituents who work in automotive. Many of those workers, because they are very highly skilled and because Jaguar Land Rover is such a prestigious organisation to have worked in, will find themselves in work again very quickly, but that is almost not the point. This will be like mourning for them, because they will be leaving a company with which they are deeply connected emotionally. We are investing £4 billion in the automotive industry—it is the biggest investment in the automotive sector in post-war Britain, as I said earlier—precisely to ensure that the high-quality jobs that her constituents rely on, not just in the big automotive primes but all across the supply chain, are there for her constituents for generations to come. I will continue to work with her on that.

[Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)]

Jaguar Land Rover is Britain’s largest car manufacturer, so it is deeply concerning for workers and the whole supply chain, including Agratas in my constituency, to learn of 4,000 job losses there. JLR is at a competitive disadvantage, given the excessive energy costs in Britain. Does the Minister agree that the key to protecting Britain’s manufacturing is to provide lower electricity costs to all businesses in Britain?

[Blair McDougall]

I would absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman, which is precisely why we are taking action, not just through the British industrial competitiveness scheme, but through the supercharger. This is an incredibly important issue, not only for automotive and advanced manufacturing, but for the entire economy, given the impact on our growth, and that is precisely why we are acting on it. In addition to tackling energy costs, investing in innovation is incredibly important, because that is what we will compete on in this global market—not on low costs, but on better ideas and products.