Industry (Government Support)

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

I cannot negotiate across the debating Chamber on the basis of announcements that are being made outside this place. It would be ridiculous to ask me to do so. I am, however, happy to keep in close contact with that project and with the people involved. It is clearly an important one, and we have confirmed today that we were willing to support the continuation of the loan. That is all I can say, but I am happy to talk to the hon. Gentleman and others about how we can take this forward constructively.

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Vince Cable]

I have taken an enormous number of interventions; I will take one from the hon. Gentleman later.

Before I leave the car industry, I must point out that these projects were part of an assistance scheme for the industry, and I think that the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman would acknowledge that they were time limited. Other projects have already made applications, which are being properly considered, but we cannot have a situation in which the car industry, or any other, assumes that it can come to the Government for money, just because it has an interesting project.

It is worth underlining the point that, in large parts of the British car industry, brilliant companies have got through the recession without Government support. My first visit as a Minister was to the Bentley factory in Crewe—[Laughter.] Hon. Members might laugh, but that factory provides thousands of highly skilled jobs and a high-quality product. It is a subsidiary of BMW. It was very badly hit by the recession—it lost half its output—but it kept going. The management took a big pay cut, and the workers joined them, accepting that they had joint responsibility for the company. The company survived; it is now flourishing—it has some of the most sophisticated technology in Britain—and it did all that without a Government guarantee.