Tens of thousands of jobs under threat, warns Jaguar boss

JAGUAR Land Rover may be forced to stop building cars in Britain if Theresa May fails to strike the ‘right’ Brexit deal, the company’s boss warned yesterday.

In a hard-hitting speech addressed directly to the Prime Minister, Ralf Speth claimed tens of thousands of jobs could be lost across the car industry.

Earlier this summer the car giant outlined plans to invest hundreds of millions of pounds in upgrading its plants in Solihull in the West Midlands and Halewood in Merseyside to build the next versions of hybrid and electric Range Rover models.

Dr Speth said ‘unfettered access’ to the EU’s single market was as crucial to its business as ‘wheels are to our cars’.

Without it, he said production in Britain could grind to a halt, putting many of JLR’s 44,000 employees at risk.

Speaking at an industry summit in Birmingham as Mrs May prepared to take the stage, Dr Speth said: ‘Brexit is due to happen on the 29th of March next year. Currently, I do not even know if any of our manufacturing facilities in the UK will be able to function on the 30th.

‘Like many British companies our supply chains reach deep into Europe. Bluntly, we will not be able to build cars, if the motorway to and from Dover becomes a car park, where the vehicle carrying parts – vital to our processes – is stationary.’

JLR is already in the process of opening a new £1billion plant in Nitra, Slovakia, where its new Land Rover Discovery is being built. The decision to shift production from Birmingham – putting hundreds of jobs at risk – was announced in June.

But Dr Speth hinted that this could be just the start because it is ‘thousands of pounds cheaper to produce vehicles in Slovakia than Solihull’ due to higher costs and the UK’s ‘poor productivity rates’.

The Prime Minister’s spokesman said her Chequers Brexit plan included proposals to protect jobs in areas that rely on ‘justin-time’ supply chains.