Electric Vehicle Battery Production

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Callanan) (Con)]

No, is the short answer to the noble Lord’s question. Of course, before we make any government money available, we do the appropriate due diligence. As a result of this work, the funding was designed so that agreed milestones had to be achieved for the company to draw down substantial amounts of taxpayers’ funds. In the event, it was not able to meet those milestones, so the money was not handed over. I am sure the Opposition would like us to be careful with public money. If the alternative had happened and we had handed over the funds and the company had still gone into administration, I am sure the noble Lord would have been on his feet demanding an inquiry into why we had been so careless with public funds.

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, given that, as I am sure my noble friend agrees, gigafactories are a vital part of our industrial infrastructure going forward, is there not a case for publicly stating that they must be home grown and for calling together successful UK companies such as Rolls-Royce and BP, and entrepreneurs such as Sir James Dyson, to try to find a structure that will take this forward? Unless something like that happens, is it not a fact that it will result in imports from China?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The Government stand willing to talk to any manufacturers that want to establish such facilities. There have already been a number of excellent investments in the UK, supported by the automotive transformation fund. The site in Cambois that was going to be developed by Britishvolt remains available. Subject to the decisions of the administrators and the local authority, we very much hope that a project can be taken forward there.