Jaguar Land Rover: Redundancies

Richard Tice Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Blair McDougall]

My hon. Friend nails so many of the challenges. He mentions Chinese exports. The flip side of that is our manufacturers’ ability to access the Chinese market, and particularly the incredible difficulty of competing in China against highly subsidised Chinese-made cars. On technology, part of the reason why we are investing so heavily in, for example, software-defined vehicles and autonomous vehicles is that we want to be ahead of the curve. We want to be the country that leads on this. Just a few days ago, we saw the beginning of autonomous vehicles on the road in this city. I was in the midlands a few days ago with Aurrigo, an incredible company making autonomous vehicles that take freight and luggage around airports. We have so many companies who have the ability to turn what he rightly identifies as a potential threat into a competitive advantage for us in the world, and that is why we are investing so heavily in this.

[Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)]

This House needs to wake up urgently, because the truth is that these 4,000 JLR jobs are being sacrificed on the altar of net stupid zero, which was introduced in 2019, since when JLR production has collapsed from almost 400,000 vehicles to under 200,000. Energy prices have doubled, and the previous Conservative Government introduced the ridiculous zero emission vehicle mandate. Meanwhile, Chinese imports have increased from a few thousand vehicles to almost 300,000—some 15% of the market. The whole of the UK market will be destroyed in the next five to seven years unless this Government take urgent action. Will the Government do the right thing, scrap the ZEV mandate, and do what the US has done: introduce 100% tariffs on all Chinese EV imports?

[Blair McDougall]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s question. He knows that we are reviewing the ZEV mandate. The destination of electric remains, but the question of how quickly we go there is under review. He stands there as the supposed defender of Jaguar Land Rover, but I simply remind him that when we stepped in with £1.5 billion to protect Jaguar Land Rover, his party leader said:

“I predict Jaguar will now go bust. And you know what? They deserve to”.

The hon. Gentleman should apologise for that.