Ford's Bridgend Engine Plant

Part of Emergency Question – in the Senedd at 1:45 pm on 11 June 2019.

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Photo of Suzy Davies Suzy Davies Conservative 1:45, 11 June 2019

Thank you for the question today, Carwyn Jones, and your response, Minister. Can I just begin by saying, though, that I think if we overplay the Brexit hand in any conversations of this nature, we're going to reach a point where we're blaming everything on Brexit and not really being able to evaluate the effect of Brexit? So, while I'm prepared to accept that there may be an element of this, I'm glad that Bethan Sayed made the point that this is not the main reason for the move today. The fact is it's £600 cheaper to produce this engine in Mexico than it is in Bridgend, and there should be questions here—and perhaps you could deal with this, Minister—about why the conversations between the Welsh Government and the UK Government—I ask the question of both—didn't foresee this happening a little bit sooner. Because one of the things that has definitely emerged from the sorry tale that we've heard over the last few weeks is that Ford were very much behind the curve on identifying the tastes that were changing within the European market and over-focusing, perhaps, on very different tastes within the American market. Why wasn't that presented as a form of challenge to Ford much earlier in the process, bearing in mind that we've heard from you and we've heard from BEIS as well that conversations have been happening with Ford for many a year?

I wonder if you could also tell us a little bit more about the money that Welsh Government has given Ford over the years. I accept what you say, that you won't be allowing them to draw down any more, and I think you mentioned that about £11 million is available to be clawed back—although the Deputy Minister today, in the cross-party group, mentioned that the ability to claim back any money would be just modest. So, I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about how much money may be written off in the course of this for Welsh Government, but, for any money that you do manage to recover or not give to Ford in the first place, how that money will be used. Will it all be dedicated to the work of the taskforce, or will you be looking to spend it in other ways? Because one of the things we haven't heard anything about at the moment is that Bridgend is within the Cardiff capital region footprint, but it's pretty close to the Swansea bay city deal footprint as well, and I would be looking to both those boards to see whether they can be of assistance, to see whether, actually, the skills of this workforce can be used within the project plans for both those boards. And in particular, as you know, Cardiff is still in the running for being a Heathrow hub; I would have thought that the ability to present the talents within this workforce as a plus for that Heathrow hub might be something that might just nudge it on its way towards Cardiff. 

And then, finally, it was just this question of communication, I think. We heard from you back in February that Ford was hoping to hear in about a month's time about the new engine for the Grenadier 4x4; I had to find out from the pages of Auto Trader that that job had gone to BMW. I think it might have been useful if this Chamber had been told that, as we're all clearly very, very interested in that. I'm not going to steal all the questions today, but there is still a question to be answered about where INEOS will fit into our picture looking forward on this and whether you're speaking to other companies about how to resolve Ford's failure to notice that green transport is the way forward. Because we are looking at that—not just electric cars, but we're talking about hydrogen cars and also new forms of public transport, the new vehicles we're going to need in twenty-first century green public transport. Have we left that a bit late to involve this particular workforce, this expertise, which Ford itself recognises as superlative? Have we lost the opportunity to capture them for the new-look public transport in particular that Wales so desperately needs? Thank you.