Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he is taking to support the manufacturing sector in the North Wales Mersey Dee region.

The Department continues to engage with industry and suppliers to ensure that we can support our?manufacturing sectors?during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Ministers have been leading a series of roundtables, bringing together businesses, business representative groups, and leading academics, including representatives from the Welsh Government, to consider the measures needed to support the UK’s economic recovery.

The Government’s support for the manufacturing sector includes £147 million towards the Made Smarter programme to support digitalisation in UK manufacturing, £1 billion for the Automotive Transformation Fund, and £1.9 billion committed to the Aerospace Technology Institute programme.

In addition, the UK Government is investing £120 million in the North Wales Growth Deal, which includes support for manufacturing. The manufacturing project that the Growth Deal is funding is run by Glyndwr University.