No more government aid for the UK car industry

The British automotive industry cannot expect any further Government handouts, new Business Secretary Vince Cable has advised.

Instead assistance will be provided in the form of “a stable business environment”, Vince Cable said.

“I don’t see the future in terms of large-scale Government support for individual (car) companies,” he said.

“We have just emerged out of a period of very heavy Government investment (in the motor industry). We are now in a different era. We are not in that world. We have moved on.

“I am trying to spell out the world which the Government is in.”

The challenge for politicians was how to back the industry in a way that was “genuinely affordable”, Mr Cable said, warning that “too many governments had supported excessive capacity”.

He ruled out the prospect of another Government backed scrappage scheme, saying: “In a crude way, it did work but it was a very expensive form of support. I don’t want to rubbish it but it’s past, it’s finished.”

Mr Cable added that a commitment by the last government to subsidising, from 2011, the buyers of electric cars for a quarter of the purchase price was “still actively under consideration”.

He was speaking at an international automotive summit in London organised by the UK’s Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).