Paul Jolly: Give makers a break

With a £93 billion turnover employing over one million workers, you might expect this Government to be looking after the motor manufacturing business and associated retail motor trade. 

Increasing National insurance contributions for employers may not technically be a tax increase on the workers but has an obvious knock-on effect. Less investment, reduced workforce and cuts for those remaining workers.

Making new vehicle road tax so exorbitantly idiotic that it has a direct effect on sales will not help manufacturers one bit. All new Land Rover products fall into the premium road tax category with an additional £410pa added to the first five years road tax. Some top models will therefore incur £5900 for their first year.

Being obsessed with net zero targets for 2050 also directly affects manufacturers.

Unless Ford, Vauxhall, Land Rover and others achieve 22 per cent EV sales out of total production this year, there is a £15,000 fine per vehicle missed! Just who gets this fine is an interesting question.

But it gets worse. Instead of recognising that the buying public are not ready to go fully EV yet and who can blame them with high purchase costs and a lack of charging infrastructure, you might have thought the Government would have yielded to the manufacturer’s desperate pleas to have the targets lowered for now. Even electric vans have a 10 per cent target but self-employed traders are just not interested in them.

However, manufacturers can ‘buy’ missed target credits from other manufacturers who have reached their target. And who might they be? The Chinese EV manufacturers who are flooding our continent with their cars, that’s who.

So, our factories are forced by our Government to pay the Chinese a levy to avoid the Government fine. Therefore, subsidising the foreign competition, which just happens to have one of the worst global emissions on planet Earth with more than 1,000 operating coal fired power stations. 

You couldn’t make it up.

No wonder Ford and Vauxhall are considering an overseas move

If you still want the donkey to pull the cart, take your foot off its neck and let it get up!