Government criticised by Northumberland MP at PMQs over Britishvolt going into administration

Wansbeck MP Ian Lavery asked a question following the announcement by the electric car battery start-up firm, which had planned to build a £3.8bn gigafactory at a site in Cambois.

It had been hoped that the gigafactory would create 3,000 onsite jobs and another 5,000 in the supply chain, bringing a huge boost to the local economy.

However, Northumberland County Council leader Glen Sanderson has since offered a glimmer of hope that a new company might come in to build on the site.

Mr Lavery’s question was as follows: “It is almost a year to the day since the then Business Secretary, the right hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng), in a visit to the Britishvolt site in my constituency, promised the company £100million and proudly boasted to the national media that he could not think of a project that better demonstrated levelling up. Yesterday, the company entered administration having received not a penny in financial support from the Government.

“Does the Prime Minister agree with me that there is not a single project in the country that better demonstrates the Government’s lack of industrial strategy, failure of levelling up and abandonment of the North East?”

In response, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: “First of all, let me say that my thoughts are with the company’s employees and families at this time, and we stand ready to support those impacted.

“Let me just outline to the hon. Gentleman what exactly has happened. We did offer significant support to Britishvolt through the automotive transformation fund – a considerable amount of funding – but entirely reasonably, and this is not something I expect the Labour party to understand, that support was conditional on the company receiving private investment as well, which is a sensible protection for taxpayers. Unfortunately, that did not materialise.

“It is completely wrong to take from that what else is happening in the North East. There is new investment in the new N-Vision and Nissan plant in electric vehicle manufacturing. That is a £1billion investment in the North East. Look at what is happening in Teesside on clean energy.

“This Government is committed to the North East and we will deliver more jobs and opportunity under this Conservative administration.”