Covid-19: Aviation

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Gavin Newlands, the Scottish National party spokesperson, who has 1 minute.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

Back in March, the Chancellor said he was working on a specific package of help for airports and airlines. We are still waiting for that support. Will the Minister press the Chancellor at least to follow the Scottish Government’s lead in giving the industry 100% business rates relief for a year? Will she also echo what the Chair of the Transport Committee said about the despicable behaviour of Willie Walsh and IAG? In the short term, we all understand and accept that the industry needs to reduce in size, but the manner in which Mr Walsh is choosing to do this should be illegal, if it is not already.

This affects the supply chain too. Sadly Rolls-Royce has today confirmed it intends to cut 700 jobs at Inchinnan in my constituency. The company is looking to offshore yet more work, despite having taken UK Government research and development money and job retention scheme money. The UK, but particularly Inchinnan, is being disproportionately affected. Are the Government engaged with, or have they offered any support to, Rolls-Royce to mitigate job losses? Finally, will the Minister join me in urging Rolls-Royce to engage meaningfully with the Scottish Government on supporting jobs at Inchinnan?

[Kelly Tolhurst]

The hon. Gentleman has raised several of these points with me previously, and I have tried to articulate to him before the support being offered to the aviation sector. Once it has looked at all the Government schemes and exhausted all other possibilities, such as going to shareholders to see whether they can support their businesses, businesses in the sector can come to the Government to discuss bespoke support. As he would imagine, those discussions are ongoing.

On business rates, which the hon. Gentleman has, rightly, mentioned before, the Chancellor was clear about where those business rate alleviations would happen and that is obviously a matter for the Treasury. On the impact of the reduction in aviation on the wider jobs market in the aerospace industry, and particularly on Rolls-Royce, as I have outlined, the furlough scheme was not introduced in order for businesses to put people on notice of redundancy while they were on furlough. As hon. Members would expect, we will work across Government, including with colleagues in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, to assess the significant impact that will be felt across the economy, and particularly in the wider aerospace sector. We will do whatever we can to ensure that we engage with those businesses and protect as many jobs as possible.