UK Bus Manufacturing

Brian Leishman Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Brian Leishman (Alloa and Grangemouth) (Lab)]

Good morning, Dr Murrison; I am delighted to serve under your chairship. I bring attention to my membership of Unite, and I record my appreciation for the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) and for my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk (Euan Stainbank), for securing this vital debate.

My hon. Friend and I both have Alexander Dennis sites in our constituencies, and we have campaigned together, representing the interests of the AD workers from Larbert in my constituency and Falkirk in his. Of course, being MPs from central Scotland, we are sadly no strangers to big industrial issues. Scotland’s only oil refinery operated in Grangemouth for a century until last year, when it was closed by its owners—a combination of a multinational company owned by a billionaire and a company controlled by the Chinese Government.

Eight miles along the M9 from Grangemouth is Larbert, which is my Alexander Dennis site. It is a huge local employer, and it is feeling the adverse effects of Chinese influence.

It is a well-known fact that Chinese buses and batteries currently have a substantial share of the market. Alexander Dennis workers and trade unionists have laid out the realities and issues that British bus manufacturers are facing. As is the case in many different industries, China is now able to overpower more established economies, and the position of European nations in a global trade context has dramatically changed.

Let us be clear: as a Government, we are not without power. Things can be done to help British business. The Government must be willing to intervene, impact and change the circumstances for British industry. It can be done. It was done, in December last year, when the Labour Government stepped in and saved the British chemical industry at Grangemouth. Our intervention saved 500 skilled and well-paid jobs on site, reversed the town’s industrial decline and boosted the local and national economy. That is the good that Government intervention does for British industry, British workers and British working-class communities.

I say to the Minister that, sadly, Labour Governments do not come around all that often, so it is up to us to be assertive and to create, at the very least, a level playing field. In fact, why not make it more advantageous for British companies to do business? Where things are made matters, and “Buy British” and Britain being “Britain’s best customer” have to be more than political slogans.

Things must be changed to make it easier for our companies to be competitive, and we know that the SNP will not do it. It is easy for them to duck responsibility and point the finger at Conservative Governments of the past who treated working-class Scots and Scottish industry with utter contempt. But we have had 20 years of SNP Government with zero industrial strategy. Equally bad has been their public procurement policy. If it is not buses ordered from China, it is ferries built in Turkey or Poland; it is NHS Scotland contracts going to France; it is Scottish Government cyber-security services being outsourced to the United States. Over £7.7 billion of Scottish Government expenditure—public money—has gone to foreign companies. Stronger for Scotland? The treatment of Scottish workers, including the bus industry, which we are talking about today, is a national scandal.

In finishing, I say to the Minister: go back to the Department and be bold, be transformative and put our workers, our communities and our businesses at the heart of everything that we do.