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.

Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill

Brian Leishman Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 15th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Olly Glover]

My hon. Friend makes a good point about what the Climate Change Committee has said. That is why I hope the Government will consider these Liberal Democrat amendments, which are intended to strengthen the Bill, so that its provisions become reality this time, and contrast with the many missed targets in the past on sustainable aviation fuel.

Making aviation genuinely sustainable will require the Government to go beyond securing investment in SAF, and to ensure that in the longer term, the SAF measures complement, rather than detract from, investment in zero-carbon flight technology. I hope that the House will support our amendments, so that our country makes a bigger and more rapid contribution to decarbonising aviation.

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

This year, Petroineos—that is, Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos and PetroChina from the Chinese state—closed the Grangemouth oil refinery. Closure was not about some passionate quest for net zero. Closure happened because private capital and a foreign Government owned vital energy infrastructure, and because corporate profits are more important than community good to the billionaire Jim Ratcliffes of this world. There were 435 jobs lost at the refinery, and hundreds more lost in the shared services that are housed on site; 2,822 jobs were lost in the wider supply chain. That is mass de-industrialisation.

But closure is not just about job losses. The exodus of talented, skilled workers is awful, but closure also means that the site is no longer a positive destination for many local young people leaving school. We have seen an end to a generational employer in my community. The economic consequences are also absolutely enormous for local Grangemouth businesses, which relied on the custom of refinery workers and their families. Once again, I want to give credit to all the small local businesses that have kept town centres going in recent years. The pressure of running a small business when austerity and the cost of living crisis have hammered people’s disposable incomes can be all-consuming and incredibly stressful. I should know; I tried it for some years.

The economic turmoil of stopping refining is also a national issue, because the refinery was worth more than £400 million per annum to the Scottish economy. Politicians often talk about black holes. Well, that is a sizeable, industrial-shaped black hole to fill. I do not doubt that the Government understand the magnitude of how important it is to re-industrialise communities like mine in Grangemouth. The other day, I read my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane), who has done so much work to bring this Bill to the House, describing in Hansard the situation that he grew up in on the east side of Manchester, which lost its chemical and mining industries. He said:

“We are still getting over that in my great city.”––[Official Report, Sustainable Aviation Fuel Public Bill Committee, 17 July 2025; c. 108.]

He undoubtedly understands the social consequences of industry finishing up. No community can afford this continued spiral of industrial decline.

To go back to my original point, we have for decades been an economy controlled by private capital, multinational corporations and foreign Governments whose policy has been to make things elsewhere, and to sell here. Have the last four decades not shown that the country’s complete reliance on private capital means profits over people? We must adopt a new industrial strategy that meets the needs of working people and their communities by securing at least some form of public ownership of the new industries that we will need—that is a mainstream political view.

The Government must learn lessons to stop history repeating itself, and to prevent workers and communities having every last ounce of work extracted from them before they are discarded on a corporate whim. For the Government to create and benefit economically from the necessary green industrial revolution, which we need for our economy and for the planet, some form of Government ownership of future industries is necessary. Surely, that view should be at the heart of any Labour Government.

If the Government want to put their faith in private capital to mould Britain’s new industrial future, I urge them to think again. They need to be more active in the process of creating Grangemouth’s industrial future. They need to seize the initiative and invest in workers, communities industry and Scottish manufacturing. Producing sustainable aviation fuel is an enormous objective—one that we have committed to—and sites like Grangemouth are ideally placed for it. The infrastructure needs some degree of conversion and upgrade, of course, but it is there. The workforce and expertise are there. My local community needs to be re-industrialised. The Labour Government have ambitious SAF targets to meet, but, more importantly, they also have obligations to communities in our forgotten industrial heartlands.

[Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)]

New clause 2, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover), would require the Government to publish a report within six months of securing the supply of bioethanol for sustainable aviation fuel production. The Government have repeatedly cited the increased use of SAF as the answer to questions about how the UK will meet our net zero targets while expanding multiple airports in London. It was wishful thinking nine months ago, but that argument has now dissolved almost into impossibility. Not only did the summer proposal submitted by Heathrow Airport Holdings for a third runway include a request to add nearly 300,000 flights to our airspace each year, but the concerns regarding the production of SAF have become more prominent. That concern has grown following China’s implementation of its own SAF mandate, which will result in it using more of its production domestically. That will undoubtedly cause a challenge for the UK given that over 90% of our current SAF is imported from China.

The challenges to the UK’s ability to produce and import SAF were underscored by the Climate Change Committee’s recent report, which estimated that only 17% of the UK’s aviation industry will be using SAF by 2040. That is 5% lower than the Government’s own mandated targets, and 8% below the EU’s target. The estimate does not even take into account the additional flights that would come in and out of the UK as a result of the proposed airport expansions. In fact, in 2024 only 10% of bioethanol certified as renewable and consumed in the UK was produced domestically. That was down from 17% in 2023 and 15% in 2022—a concerning trend and one that the Government must report back on.

In addition, the UK-US trade deal presents a threat to the UK’s domestic bioethanol production, as the agreement removed tariffs on US ethanol and replaced it with a zero-tariff quota of 1.4 billion litres. The US bioethanol industry is heavily subsidised and its companies will be able to undercut UK bioethanol industries. Vivergo Fuels’ plant in Hull, which had the largest capacity of any UK bioethanol producer, has already closed, with the managing director citing the US-UK trade deal as a significant factor that contributed to the site’s closure.

Oral Answers to Questions

Brian Leishman Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mike Kane]

Public service obligations are vital for connecting the UK economy, and I think we currently have three. I would be more than happy to meet the hon. Member to discuss the one affecting his constituency.

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

8. Whether she has had recent discussions with Alexander Dennis Ltd on the potential impact of the proposed closure of its Falkirk and Larbert bus manufacturing sites on her targets for public transport decarbonisation.

[Euan Stainbank (Falkirk) (Lab)]

16. What steps she is taking to support the bus manufacturing sector.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Simon Lightwood)]

I understand that this will be a deeply concerning time for workers at Alexander Dennis and their families. It is important that the Government, at all levels, support British manufacturers, which is why I was proud to chair the launch meeting of this Government’s new UK bus manufacturing expert panel on 13 March. The panel aims to explore ways to ensure that the UK remains a leader in bus manufacturing. My officials and I have been in close contact with Alexander Dennis, and I remain committed to working with it and relevant Government Departments to find a way forward.

[Brian Leishman]

I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, which details my membership of Unite the union.

Once upon a time, Scotland was an industrial powerhouse—we made things—but last week, Alexander Dennis started a 45-day consultation with employees. As it stands, hundreds of jobs will be lost from my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk (Euan Stainbank). Unite and the GMB have called for both the Scottish Government and the UK Government, the company and the unions to come together to find a solution to save those jobs and Scottish bus manufacturing. There are changes to policy and legislation that could achieve this. My constituents, the Alexander Dennis workers, want and need to know whether the UK Government are willing to do what it takes.

[Simon Lightwood]

The £15.6 billion for regional transport projects over five years that we announced earlier this month will help to create a pipeline of investment for the zero emission bus market in the UK, while improving local transport for some of our largest regions. As I said, we are in close contact with all relevant parties to consider how we can support Alexander Dennis.

Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill

Brian Leishman Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 11th June 2025 Commons Chamber

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

My contribution comes from a slightly different angle compared with that of other hon. Members, but from the outset let me be clear: I welcome the Government’s plan for sustainable aviation fuel, and I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for his generous time discussing the matter. We can, however, hold different feelings at the same time, and while I approve of the plans, I feel a lot of anger and frustration at what has happened to my constituency. A joint venture of private capital through Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s INEOS and the Chinese state, called Petroineos, has closed the Grangemouth refinery. Hundreds of workers on site, and thousands in the wider supply chain, are to lose their jobs. Scotland no longer refines our oil and fuel, and national security has been weakened as a result.

Everyone is aware that the previous Conservative Government did not want to know about that issue, and the current SNP Government tried their very best to conceal their knowledge of the closure years ago. So while my Government have committed £200 million from the national wealth fund for new industries to come at some point down the line, that frankly is not enough. At Grangemouth we have seen another unjust transition. Four decades ago, it was the miners who were cast aside; now it is refinery workers. I understand why oil and gas workers in the north-east of Scotland are anxious, and they have every right to be.

The last four decades of privatisation have also highlighted the danger of private capital and foreign Government ownership of our vital industry. At Grangemouth, conversion from a traditional oil refinery to a plant that would create sustainable aviation fuel was a viable alternative to closure and would have meant a truly just transition for workers and my local community. It would also have helped the Government meet our ambitious SAF mandates and supported the UK aviation industry. Yet conversion was not deemed profitable enough for Petroineos, and the Scottish and UK Governments both meekly accepted the company calling the shots, with minimal pushback, in an example of working-class communities being let down by the collective political class.

Only yesterday, in questions to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, I asked what ownership stake the Government would take in future industries at Grangemouth. I am still waiting on a coherent answer. Let me be clear: if there is no Government ownership stake taken and we surrender all the new, greener industries, such as SAF, to private capital, the Government will have learned no lessons at all from the past four decades and we will never free ourselves from being at the mercy of those who put corporate profit ahead of our country’s needs.

Earlier today, the Chancellor said that she and the Secretary of State for Business and Trade were not ready to let a working-class community in Scunthorpe go to the wall. That is why they intervened to save steel there and that was absolutely the correct decision. However, the Chancellor and the Secretary of State should have treated the refinery workers of Grangemouth in the same way as they did the steelworkers of Scunthorpe. I urge the Government to take responsibility and to take ownership of vital industry in our national interest.