Nissan in Sunderland

Baroness Kramer Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

Things have changed. It is not solely to do with that. As other noble Lords have said, the whole car industry is going through a rather turbulent time. We only have to look at what has been happening in, for example, sales of diesels. For that reason, Nissan has to make difficult decisions. It has decided that it will go ahead with the X-Trail but will build it in Japan, no doubt for markets over there. Nissan is still committed to Sunderland. There are still 7,000 jobs there. There are still 35,000 more jobs in the supply chain. Things are not as bad as the noble Lord is trying to suggest.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, as a Minister in the coalition, I had the privilege of visiting the Nissan plant in Sunderland, and I also visited most of the major Japanese car companies’ headquarters in Tokyo. As a consequence, I am very aware that British plants won the right to produce cars for these various companies by only the tiniest hair’s breadth, as a competition is run across the globe, and certainly across Europe, for each new piece of investment and for each new major production line. Does the Minister recognise that if he cannot give an assurance that there will be absolutely no increase in friction and non-tariff barriers, by definition those plants have no possibility of winning such competitions in future?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, decisions on where to invest are very difficult. The noble Baroness is quite right to say they are made by a hair’s breadth. One of the reasons companies come to the UK is because they know that we have the right people in the right places. That is why they go to Sunderland and why we got that investment in the right place. We should be proud of that. We will continue to seek other companies to come to invest in this country, like the companies I mentioned earlier have done. The noble Lord opposite suggested that BMW and Honda made competitive decisions that went against the UK. I am advised that that is not the case and no competitive decisions have gone against the UK in recent years.