Japanese firms ‘to suspend UK operations’ in event of no-deal Brexit

A TOKYO official last night warned that Japanese companies could ‘suspend’ operations in the UK if Britain exits the EU without a deal – even though the country’s firms have collected millions of pounds in UK state aid.

Analysis of European Commission records shows Nissan has been awarded £22 million since Britain voted to leave the EU. This was on top of the £61 million state aid revealed last week.

Toyota received £20.7 million in Business Department state aid grants last year and Hitachi was handed £9.5 million by Government departments in 2016 and 2017. Nissan last week announced it had abandoned plans to build its new X-Trail SUV at its European headquarters in Sunderland.

Shinichi Iida, a minister at London’s Japanese embassy, told The Mail on Sunday that if the UK leaves the EU without a deal, manufacturing firms ‘would be forced to suspend their operations, adjust to the environment and shift the balance of their productions’.

He added: ‘Under such dire circumstances, they would be forced to readjust and rebalance their manufacturing.’

The Government has now told Nissan it needs to reapply for most of the promised £61 million. Official records show Nissan got an additional £16.3 million in October 2016 from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy and then £6.1 million from Innovate UK in 2017.

A BEIS spokesman said: ‘Since 2010, these grants, typically matched by industry, have been available to all firms to apply for funding to develop skills, workforce training and innovation with the aim of bringing economic benefits.’

Nissan said it had invested £4 billion in the Sunderland area and added that government grants are available to a ‘wide number of other businesses in the UK’.