Electric Vehicle Battery Production Debate

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Electric Vehicle Battery Production

Darren Jones Excerpts
Wednesday 18th January 2023

(1 year, 4 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.

Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.

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Lindsay Hoyle Portrait Mr Speaker
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I call the Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee.

Darren Jones Portrait Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)
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The Americans have announced significant subsidies for industry under the Inflation Reduction Act, and the European Union is responding by streamlining state aid rules and announcing its own subsidies for industry in the European Union. Surely the Minister must recognise that businesses are being attracted to the US and the EU, away from the UK. What is he going to do about it?

Graham Stuart Portrait Graham Stuart
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The hon. Gentleman, who is himself a distinguished Chair of a Select Committee, is right to highlight some of the pressures from IRA in the United States and the response from the EU. We have to ensure that we have policies in place and I look forward—[Interruption.] In the coming weeks, we will be coming forward with our green finance strategy and our response to the Climate Change Committee. In hydrogen, carbon capture and so many of these industries, the UK is world leading. We are determined to ensure through a raft of different policies—I know his Select Committee will be scrutinising them—that we retain that position, which has transformed the UK from where it was in 2010, when there was higher unemployment and so little progress on net zero.