Influential MP visits Vauxhall in Ellesmere Port and Airbus in Deeside and says Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s autumn Budget will be the most important since the Second World War. Tony McDonough reports

Both Vauxhall in Ellesmere Port and Airbus in Deeside need urgent Government support if they are to survive the fallout from the COVID-19 crisis.

That’s the view of an influential MP who, after visiting both factories in the past few days, said Chancellor Rishi Sunak must offer a lifeline to the automotive and aerospace sector in his autumn Budget in the coming weeks.

Bristol Labour MP Darren Jones chairs the House of Commons Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee. On a visit to both factories he met with workers, union representatives and managers of both plans.

At the Vauxhall factory, where around 900 workers produce the Astra model, post-lockdown production resumed in July with strict safety measures in place. Production had shut down on March 27 at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

There has already been an air of uncertainty hanging over the future of the Ellesmere Port Vauxhall site for a couple of years. Vauxhall’s French parent PSA Group has previously said that the UK’s exit from the European Union puts the plant in a perilous position.

Even before COVID-19 the company was already suffering falling sales across all its brands, which also include Peugeot, Citroen, DS and Opel. Ellesmere Port is hoping to secure the next generation Astra but this remains in the balance.

Planemaker Airbus employs more than 6,000 people producing wings at Broughton in Deeside. But COVID-19 has hit the aviation sector hard and, in early July, Airbus said it was cutting 15,000 jobs across its global workforce with chief executive Guillaume Faury saying the company was facing “the gravest crisis this industry has ever experienced”.

It is cutting 1,730 jobs from its two UK plants at Broughton and Bristol but the bulk of those – 1,435 – will be cut from the Deeside site. Airbus hopes the majority will come via voluntary redundancies or staff retiring early but has not ruled out compulsory losses.

But the impact of downturn in the aerospace sector reverberates far beyond Airbus. There are more than 200 aerospace companies across the North West turning over more than £7bn a year. During his visit Mr Jones said the autumn Budget would be “the most important since the war”. He added: “The scale of our economic decline – the worst in the G20 – must be met by the scale of our ambition.

“British manufacturing is the bedrock of the British economy but we’ve already seen over 10,000 redundancies. More will follow unless the Government provides sector specific support this autumn.”

Calling for Government investment into green technology for both the automotive and aerospace sectors, he added: “It means bringing forward investment into British manufactured car batteries and composite wings – the greener, profitable technologies of the future.

“It means urgently making more progress in our Free Trade Agreement with the EU before it’s too late. This isn’t just about protecting jobs now, it’s about investing in our future growth. Building back better must mean building back British.”