New Cars: Sales

Lord Watts Excerpts

Monday 4th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I entirely agree that we must work across many departments and get much advice on this. At the end of May, we published our clean air strategy, which aims to cut all forms of air pollution, not just transport emissions. It set out a wide range of actions that the Government are taking. We are working with the organisations the noble Lord mentioned.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, what discussions have taken place with, and what assessment has been made of the likely impact on jobs in, the car industry?

[Baroness Sugg]

The noble Lord is quite right to point to the number of jobs in the UK car industry: there are nearly 190,000 direct jobs, and we absolutely do need to protect them. We are working very closely with the industry on this. As I said before, we want to make sure that we set these targets and that they are reached, but also that the transition is done in a managed way, so that our very successful car industry can continue.