Richard Burden MP: Fighting for a fair deal for everyone in Birmingham Northfield

27 January 2009

Supporting our motor industry -

Today's announcement of Government support for the automotive industry is a welcome building block to a greener car industry. The announcement (read more here) is important to enable the automotive industry both to face the immediate challenges of the recession and to invest for the future so that it can be as competitive as possible when the upturn comes.

Anyone representing a constituency in the West Midlands knows the importance of the automotive industry to our region. It is the glue that binds our regional economy together, that maintains its skill base and supports many thousands of jobs. It is not just major manufacturers like Jaguar Land Rover but also hundreds of components firms that supply the big manufacturers. And then there are even more second and third tier suppliers which depend on those components firms. The cluster of firms that make up the Midlands automotive industry is the cradle for much of the world class innovation that finds its way not just into road cars and trucks, but also into motorsport and performance engineering; into aerospace and into the low carbon technologies of the future.

In other words this is not just another industry. It is the base from which we can build the future of manufacturing in the West Midlands. It is important to all of us. 

Motor manufacturers have been arguing for some time now that they need loan and other credit guarantees to unlock the finance necessary to both meet immediate costs and invest in future research and development. Along with other Labour MPs I have been pressing these points in the frequent meetings I have had with Treasury and Business Ministers over the last three months – and also directly with the Prime Minister. I am pleased that the Government has responded positively with further support to unlock finance from the European Investment Bank and to invest in green technologies.

The key thing now is to get these initiatives in place quickly, with a minimum of bureaucracy and with clarity about the details. I raised this point in the House of Commons during today’s debate (read the debate online here).

The Government has also asked the new Trade and Investment Minister, Mervyn Davies, to bring forward plans to provide credit that will stimulate demand for new cars. This is also good news but, again, it is vital that any actions agreed are put into practice quickly – whether they are credit guarantees for the car finance arms of motor manufacturers or the introduction of a scrappage scheme which gives motorists an incentive to replace older, more polluting vehicles with new and greener ones. This needs thinking through so that it helps green car production here in the UK – rather than simply sucking in imports of foreign cars – but I think there are ways we can do it.

Finally, we need to remember that the automotive industry includes trucks and other commercial vehicles as well as cars – and that we need to boost the demand from companies for fleet cars. There are probably further changes we could make to the tax system which could help and the purchasing policies of public agencies at local and national levels could make a real difference. In France or Germany you rarely see a government vehicle or a police car that has been built in any other country. There are certainly things that our public agencies, local authorities and police forces can learn from that.