Part of 3. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 3:09 pm on 20 February 2019.
Thank you. In fact, there are 18 Wales-based companies in the Honda supply chain. For the majority, Honda accounts for less than 10 per cent of their total business, but there are three companies—all of which are Japanese-owned—where Honda accounts for 80 per cent of their business. There is one other company, also Japanese-owned, where Honda accounts for nearly 50 per cent of their business. Of course, this announcement will not come into play for three years, which does give us some time to work with the companies to find alternative markets. In the meantime, the companies are still expected to meet their contractual requirements to Honda to work at capacity. So, we're not expecting any immediate redundancies, and we do have three years to assess the options available to us. And it's encouraging that Honda are inviting the companies to bid into their new model. There is a range of dialogues going on with the companies and with the UK Government. Officials were part of conversations yesterday in London with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Again, they're there today taking part in a summit—the inaugural Honda taskforce, chaired by Greg Clark—so we're in full dialogue with the UK Government in working out how we can respond to this.
Were it to come to the pass where redundancies will happen, of course, we have the ReAct programme where we are now, sadly, well used to putting in place a package of measures, including Careers Wales and Jobcentre Plus, and support in place to help companies adapt and for workers to retrain, but we're not there yet.
In terms of the broader picture, the Member is right—there is, of course, a confluence of factors at play here. Brexit is undoubtedly a factor, as the cost of exporting to Europe could well increase significantly after the end of next month, but it's not the only factor. This is a factory that has not been operating at capacity for some time. There's a drop in global demand for cars. There's a move away from the standard engine towards electric vehicles. There are environmental concerns and, of course, there is the dropping of the tariff, making it cheaper for Japanese companies to export from Japan into the rest of the world. So, there are a whole range of interventions.
In terms of the specific question on Brexit, we did have a meeting of the Cabinet sub-committee on Brexit preparedness this morning, which I can tell Members was a fairly sobering affair. There are, of course, dialogues going on of how we can help each individual industry. We would encourage all manufacturing companies to take advantage of the Brexit portal, which is the central source of all advice for how to adapt. We are concerned that, certainly amongst small and medium enterprises, too few are engaging. Having taken part in a round table with business groups last week, there is a feeling amongst small businesses, in particular, that Brexit will be sorted out in some way, something will turn up, and they needn't worry too much about it. There are a number of organisations who are engaged and have accessed our Brexit preparedness fund, which has been maxed out, and we have now released extra resource to make sure that there is further support available for businesses.