Jaguar cars at Halewood
He believes that even if the Government sat on its hands JLR would probably survive, but on a much smaller scale: “We would have to adjust our investment and employment plans.
“We will just lose our competitive strength if we don’t support the industry at this time.”
A key question for Halewood amid the current upheaval is the future of the Jaguar X Type, which JLR builds alongside Freelander 2 at the Merseyside plant.
Mr Smith said that no decision had yet been taken on whether the X Type will continue in production.
“We refreshed X Type last year and put a new diesel engine in it. It actually sold better than we expected and we will continue to develop that.
“There will be a model change later this year, but we haven’t taken a final decision yet.”
Mr Cameron said the Government’s recapitalisation of the banks had not worked and the national loan guarantee scheme that Jaguar Land Rover can access was needed.
“It’s not just the big business, but businesses large, medium, and small,” he told local radio station CityTalk 105.9.
“I had my constituents saying to me at Christmas time ‘look, my credit line has been withdrawn, my overdraft facility has been taken away, even though I have never breached any of the rules that my bank has set.
“‘They are charging me extra interest and special fees and have taken away the money I ought to be able to borrow’.
“And this is the real tragedy for businesses up and down the country, and the way out is not to cut VAT and waste all the money as the Prime Minister has done.
“The way out of it is a national loan guarantee scheme. It’s quite simple, you basically say to the banks ‘look, if you lend money to businesses you charge a small premium over the normal interest rate as an insurance scheme in case any of the loans go wrong’.
“But the Government will stand behind them. This would encourage the banks to get money in to the businesses and help businesses as you say, big ones, as well as small ones. It desperately needs to be done.”
