Bim Afolami MP, Member of Parliament for Hitchin & Harpenden and Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Renewable & Sustainable Energy, appeared in Parliament on Wednesday 18th January to question the Minister for Climate, Graham Stuart MP, over the collapse of BritishVolt.
BritishVolt, an electric vehicle battery manufacturer, went into administration last week and MPs convened an urgent question to grill the Minister about the company’s collapse. Mr Afolami’s question to the Minister focussed on the role that the failure to attract private sector investment played – asking the Minister to set out the “missing ingredients” that stopped private investors from investing more in both BritishVolt and the wider supply chain.
Bim Afolami MP said,
“Delivering electric vehicle battery manufacturing capacity and securing the supply chain is vitally important for our plans to reach net zero. It is important that we take lessons from the collapse of BritishVolt to improve the resilience of the supply chain and ensure that we don’t have a repeat of this.
“I will continue to use my positions in Parliament as Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Renewable and Sustainable Energy and a member of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Select Committee to work with Ministers and deliver a strong supply chain to help support our transition to net zero.”
NOTE TO EDITORS
A transcript of Bim’s question and the Minister’s answer can be found below:
Bim Afolami MP
The Minister has been clear today, and indeed the Prime Minister was clear at Prime Minister’s questions earlier, about the need for private sector investment in Britishvolt being supported by public sector and Government investment. From the Minister and his Department’s discussions with potential private sector investors, could he set out what appear to be the missing ingredients that stop them investing more in this company and in the broader supply chain, and what is being done by him and his Department to help fill in and provide those missing ingredients so that we can improve the resilience of the EV supply chain as a whole?
Graham Stuart MP
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. Britishvolt is in the best position to judge what happened with its investors. We set milestones, as I have said, for our funding, and we were prepared to put in significant British Government support, but it was dependent on Britishvolt fulfilling its business plan, with its offer to investors that it would bring forward, and then we were going to co-invest with them. That was the plan, and it is not for me as a Government Minister to second-guess the work of that company, or indeed others.
