Manufacturing Post Brexit

Lord Patel Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I know that the noble Lord is passionate in his views on this, but I am afraid that I just do not agree with him that nationalising the car industry is the way forward. The noble Lord will have been around in the 1970s when we saw the decimation of the UK car industry under state control. The future is not state control; the future is what we are doing, which is incentivising manufacturers to move to the UK. The case of Britishvolt is very disappointing, but the money that we had available remains on the table. We very much hope that other companies will show interest in the excellent site in Cambois, near Blyth, and we continue to do all that we can to encourage investment in the UK.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister mentioned the Government’s support for life sciences, and I applaud the Government for their strong support. But recent reports, particularly from big pharma in the United States, suggest that despite the £1 billion investment we had last year, it is now slowing down compared with investment in Europe and the USA. What other encouragement can the Government give to have inward investment from overseas?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I know that the noble Lord is very expert in this area, and we have discussed it before. We need to do all that we can to encourage life science investment; the UK has one of the most successful life science sectors in the world. We need to make sure that investment continues to flow into this country, and we want to use all the policy levers open to us to make sure that that success story continues.