Jaguar Land Rover: Redundancies
Debate between Blair McDougall and Warinder Juss(2Â weeks, 4Â days ago)
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Blair McDougall
I am glad that my hon. Friend has had that reassurance for her constituents, but she will know that they will be affected by this, in the sense that they feel that they are part of the JLR family; it has such a strong identity as a company. As I said, we are working carefully with representatives of the industry on the issue of Chinese imports. It is worth saying that the industry is nervous about the issue. It is worried about the impact of the increased number of Chinese EVs coming into our market, but it also wants to be able to access the Chinese market, and does not want to get into a retaliatory situation, so we do not rule anything out, but we are being very careful as we work with the industry on that issue.
Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his statement, and for keeping Members of this House informed on the situation in JLR. Although we have had reassurances that production jobs will not be affected, when the cyber-attack happened, a lot of the supply chain companies and their employees were adversely affected. Can the Minister give some reassurance that they will not be affected by this latest round of redundancies? Can he also please give the reassurance that he will continue to work with the trade unions and other partners?
Blair McDougall
I can certainly give that reassurance. The Prime Minister, the Secretary of State and I have been in contact with the unions in recent days about this issue.
On a day when so many people are worried about job losses, it is difficult to strike a positive note, but in everything that JLR has been saying, including about protecting blue-collar production workers—it recognises that it does not want to eat into its future as a company—is a reassurance that the investment pipeline will continue. Beyond this difficult period, the company and the supply chain will have a really bright future in this country.