Electric Vehicle Battery Production

Wera Hobhouse Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stuart]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. Britishvolt is in the best position to judge what happened with its investors. We set milestones, as I have said, for our funding, and we were prepared to put in significant British Government support, but it was dependent on Britishvolt fulfilling its business plan, with its offer to investors that it would bring forward, and then we were going to co-invest with them. That was the plan, and it is not for me as a Government Minister to second-guess the work of that company, or indeed others.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

The collapse of Britishvolt is a huge blow by any measure. Owning and running an electric vehicle will continue to be financially out of reach for many or most UK households, and the lack of enough EV charging infrastructure compounds the problem. I welcome the Minister’s commitment to the mandatory phasing out of petrol and diesel cars, but how can that successfully happen without having a good charging infrastructure, which currently is woefully inadequate?

[Graham Stuart]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. The Government have prioritised securing investment in battery cell gigafactories. As Members have been right to say, this is key in anchoring the mass manufacture of electric vehicles in the UK, safeguarding jobs and driving emissions to net zero by 2050. On 1 July 2021, Envision AESC announced investment in its gigafactory in Sunderland. On 18 July last year, Johnson Matthey confirmed investment in the construction of a factory for PEM—proton exchange membrane—fuel cell components for use in hydrogen vehicles to be located at its existing site in Royston, Hertfordshire. We have to keep on going with that and, as she says, build that investment and make sure we have the policies in place to bring that investment here.