Stellantis Luton

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

As I said, we will provide whatever support we can to the people affected. We are talking to Stellantis about how we can identify these individuals and what support they need, and we stand ready with the Department for Work and Pensions to provide accelerated support and help to them. I challenge the noble Baroness’s concern that we should step back from our progress on rolling out electric vehicles, which is part of our net-zero ambitions. I think everybody understands the need for us to meet our net-zero ambitions, which are very important for this country and our climate but also for delivering green jobs for the future.

As we set out in the manifesto, we will support the transition to electric vehicles by accelerating the rollout of, for example, charge points. That ambition was supported in the Budget and was confirmed with £200 million for an accelerated charge point rollout next year. We are working closely with industry stakeholders to promote positive messages around electric vehicles and improve consumer confidence in the public charging network, so there is a lot that we can do to carry on promoting the use of electric vehicles.

Those who have electric vehicles respond with a very positive view of their ownership, so they are popular when people purchase them; we just have to persuade people to make that transition when they purchase new vehicles. As I say, that is important for our climate change ambitions and for jobs in the future. We believe there will be more jobs in future based on the rollout of electric vehicles.

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend the Minister for the Statement. This must go down as one of the more difficult jobs that any Minister has to do in any circumstances, so I thank her for the clarity of her replies so far.

My sympathies go to the families of the direct and indirect workers, the shopkeepers and all those members of the community who are always affected by these closures or proposed closures. As I come from a family where most of them worked in manufacturing, we have had that experience. That was in the Midlands, not Luton.

This all brought to mind my noble friend the late Lord McKenzie of Luton, the amount of work that he did to improve the prosperity of Luton and how he would be feeling today and fighting for that community. Can my noble friend the Minister say a little more about the efforts to find jobs and improve the prospects of transfer for those workers who are directly affected?

We know this is a global issue; there is no point in pretending otherwise. When some of us who were members of the EU Internal Market Sub-Committee and then the EU Services Sub-Committee visited various research plants, they showed us the exciting developments that were taking place in car manufacturing. If only we were a bit quicker at developing research into practical production. That is a failure that this country has experienced for a long time. The work and the knowledge are there, and the Minister has indicated that we are further supporting that research. Will she confirm that? There was an implication by the Opposition Front Bench spokesperson that Stellantis was abandoning production. Can she confirm that Stellantis is developing production at Ellesmere Port and that it has not abandoned manufacturing in this country?

One issue where politics and government come in is in the provision of consistency. One of the difficulties that manufacturing has had over the years is that Governments do not provide consistency and long-term objectives. Can my noble friend the Minister assure the House that there will be consistent government policies rather than chopping and changing, so that industry and manufacturers know where they stand for years to come?

[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.