Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what steps her Department is taking to promote the development of a domestic battery industry.

We continue to work with industry via the Automotive Transformation Fund to support the creation of an internationally competitive electric vehicle supply chain in the UK, including gigafactories. With Government support, completion of AESC’s second Sunderland gigafactory and Tata-Agratas' £4bn gigafactory announcement will increase the UK’s committed battery capacity to over half of estimated 2030 demand.

We are also investing record sums in battery R&D through the Faraday Battery Challenge, to establish the UK as a battery science superpower, with £610m committed since 2017.

In November 2023, the Advanced Manufacturing Plan announced over £2bn of capital and R&D funding over five years to 2030, unlocking investment in zero emission vehicles, batteries and the wider supply chain. Alongside the AMP, we published a UK Battery Strategy, which outlined the Government’s vision for the UK to achieve a globally competitive battery supply chain by 2030 that supports economic prosperity and the net zero transition.