Nissan: Sunderland

Lord Wrigglesworth Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

The noble Lord is right to express his concerns with passion. You can see that we have already made some important totemic advances. The Nissan statement is one and the other is the Chancellor’s statement about financing the Horizon 2020 investments, which we will ensure are guaranteed. We are working hard in a complex negotiation, moving forward with ambition and a determination to ensure that exports continue both ways. I perhaps have a more optimistic view of matters than the noble Lord does.

[Lord Wrigglesworth (LD)]

My Lords, I have had a long association with Nissan. I was chairman of the Port of Tyne until fairly recently, from which virtually all Nissan’s cars were exported to Europe and the rest of the United Kingdom. I was also a director of the Northern Development Company, which did such sterling work in bringing it to the United Kingdom 30 years ago. I have followed its prospects and ups and downs over the years. This is not the end of the matter for Nissan. It is very good news in the short term, but we have had this before in the north-east: will the model come or not? The great advantage with the Qashqai is that it has been the most successful model that Nissan has ever made there. It has been made there for the last few years, so it was obvious to carry on making it there and a much easier decision for Nissan to take than if it were bringing a completely new model to the plant. Therefore, the Government have to face up to the fact that, unless this is a complete blank cheque, the future of the plant is still going to be in question when a new model has to be built there. Has a blank cheque been given to Nissan? Is it going to be compensated for any tariffs that are put on goods coming out of the factory in the future? As other Members have said, what about Komatsu and Hitachi and all the pharmaceutical industries in the north-east and other parts of the country that are also going to be affected if we are not in the single market?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

I have already made it clear that there is no compensation package. Indeed, Nissan has itself said that there is no special deal and nothing for it that the rest of the industry would not be able to have access to. I commend the noble Lord for the work that he has done in the north-east. It is very important that we continue to invest in these areas with things like the Sunderland and South Tyneside City Deal for new advanced manufacturing. The noble Lord asked about other companies: it is important to bear in mind that the nature of the deal is available to other companies as well, because we are investing in competitiveness right across the board. I already said in my opening remarks that we have invested £400 million since 2010. Companies can apply for support but, rightly, those applications have to underpinned by strong business cases. They have to be approved by the independent industrial advisory body. While we are in the EU, they have to respect state aid rules and even if we ended up in a WTO situation—which I am not forecasting—they would have to respect the rules there. All that is very important.