Oral Answers to Questions

Jane Stevenson Excerpts

Tuesday 21st July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

What support he plans to provide to the aerospace sector.

[Jane Stevenson (Wolverhampton North East) (Con)]

What support his Department is providing to the aerospace sector during the covid-19 outbreak.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Nadhim Zahawi)]

This is the last Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy questions before recess and I want to place on record my thanks to you, Mr Speaker, and your staff for the incredible way that they have managed proceedings in the House.

It is Farnborough week and the Government are providing the aerospace industry and its aviation customers with more than £8.5 billion of support, including through UK Export Finance, the covid corporate financing facility, research grants and the job retention scheme. We are discussing further help with the sector.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for his question and for his comments about our engagement with the sector. We are supporting the aviation and aerospace sector with £8.5 billion and rising. If he looks at support from other countries, which we do, he will see that we will also consider further support as we progress, as the Chancellor has said, through the recovery.

[Jane Stevenson]

Wolverhampton North East is home to aerospace companies that have seen an unprecedented and sudden collapse of demand. Collins Aerospace is now sadly considering mass redundancies. What further support can the Government offer to limit job losses in Wolverhampton?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

We work with the whole aerospace industry. I am the co-chair of the Aerospace Growth Partnership. As well as access to the furlough scheme and the corporate finance scheme, the Secretary of State announced yesterday £400 million in further funding for research and development support for the sector to get to that Jet Zero flight. The Future Flight Challenge is already investing £300 million. We continue to work with the sector to make sure that those skill sets, that ecosystem that has been so brilliant at delivering an incredible industry in the UK, are maintained for the next three to five years, which is the timeline by which the sector looks to recover.