JLR was given £11m in state aid
EU website reveals Government payments in wake of Brexit uncertainty
THE British government has awarded Jaguar Land Rover more than £11 million in state aid since the UK decided to leave the European Union.
Business Secretary Greg Clark denied claims he was “desperately having to throw money” at worried carmakers to stay in the UK because of Brexit.
It comes after Mr Clark confirmed the Government had offered Japanese carmaker Nissan £61 million on condition that it built its X-Trail model at a plant in Nissan.
The firm has been told it must reapply for the money, after announcing the vehicles will not be built in the UK after all.
Indian-owned Jaguar Land Rover employs just under 39,000 workers at sites including Castle Bromwich, Solihull and Wolverhampton in the West Midlands, and Halewood on Merseyside.
It announced in January that is to cut 4,500 jobs globally under plans to make £2.5 billion of cost savings.
Details of state aid awarded by EU member states was published on a European Commission website. It also showed that Aston Martin, based in Gaydon, Warwickshire, received £5.8 million via the Welsh government in August 2017. The firm is building a factory in south Wales.
Aston Martin also received £1.2 million to support research and development in the West Midlands, in March 2017.
Other firms to receive support include Toyota, Ford and BMW. JAGUAR Land Rover has scrapped plans to build a luxury SUV in the Midlands.
JLR’s super deluxe £250,000 Range Rover was originally due to be made in Coventry.
Announced in January last year, JLR had said the luxury SUV would be created at the car giant’s Special Vehicle Operations division in Ryton-on-Dunsmore.
The supercharged 5.0-litre V8 SV Coupé would have been the fastest ever full-size Range Rover, with a 0 to 60mph acceleration time of just five seconds and a top speed of to 165mph.
A spokesman for Jaguar Land Rover said: “We have taken the difficult decision to inform our customers that the Range Rover SV Coupé will not proceed into production. Instead, Land Rover is focusing its resources and investment on the next generation of world-class products.”
Mr Clark was questioned about the funding as he gave evidence to a House of Commons inquiry.
Labour MP Anna Turley said the funding had effectively been hidden because it was listed on a website where it could only be found by people who already knew what they were looking for.
She asked the Business Secretary: “Is this the tip of the iceberg? And is this a Brexit bill that we just haven’t been discussing publicly? Because it’s just been published on European Commission websites and not actively discussed as vital support to an industry that otherwise is looking at fleeing the country.”
She said: “Isn’t this acknowledgement that you are disparately having to throw money at these compa-
an nies to stay in the UK because Brexit is threatening their long term stability here?”
Mr Clark said the Government had always been open about its policy of supporting the automotive industry, and insisted he had been open with MPs when he made a statement to the House of Commons in 2016 about reports that Nissan had been offered funding.
He said: “It’s clearly what I said in my statement to the House at the time.
“I talked about our successful and longstanding programme for support for competitiveness of the automotive sector including Nissan.
“The support is available to firms for skills and training the local workforce, for R&D and innovation in line with EU and
UK rules.”