Honda in Swindon

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Tuesday 19th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

There are indeed. The context of technological change is common to the motor industry around the world, but as I hope I have made clear, we have the opportunity to be a beneficiary of that change. We cannot be complacent about how competitive the sector is around the world, which means we must do everything we can to give confidence to investors, and that certainly involves agreeing a deal over the next few days that can unleash the optimism that comes from investment up and down the country—investment that I know in many instances is not taking place while people contemplate what our future trading relationship will be.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

My thoughts are with the workers whose excellent work I saw for myself on a visit to the Swindon plant with the Industry and Parliament Trust last year, and with those at Bridgend and elsewhere—my first job after graduation was as a foreman at Ford in Bridgend. We must not have no deal. Honda’s relationship with the UK car industry goes back much further than the car plant at Swindon to the tie-up with British Leyland and the Rover Group when it was still nationalised. I urge my right hon. Friend to remember that history and to engage with Honda to see in what other innovative ways we can engage with it to the benefit of workers at Swindon and elsewhere, just as the then Government did with Michael Edwardes and British Leyland in the days of the new Rover models.