Jaguar Land Rover may need more than £1.5bn government loan guarantee, MP says

After the government announced it wasbacking a £1, more government help for Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and its massive supply chain could not be ruled out, a local MP said. 5bn loan for the car maker. JLR's plants in the United Kingdom have been suspended for nearly a month, and there have been growing fears that some of JLR’s supplies would deplete within a week due to the continuing shutdown. Liam Byrne, a West Midlands MP and Chair of the Commons Business and Trade Select Committee, said could well be that additional help was needed beyond the loan. He also warned that unless a greater government and company involvement, these cyber-attacks will become more popular.

I don't think we should rule out further involvement,

Byrne, who is Birmingham's Hodge Hill and Solihull North MP, said.

It could be that other instruments are needed for some suppliers, such as a Covid-style loan,

says some suppliers. However, we've got to make sure this first big loan package is put to work first. " Production is not expected to resume at JLR's Solihull and Wolverhampton plants in the West Midlands and Halewood area in Merseyside until October 1st, one month after production was suspended in reaction to the cyberattack.

Around 30,000 people are directly employed at the company's UK plants, and around 100,000 work for supply chain companies. Some of these companies only supply JLR parts, while others sell parts to other carmakers as well. According to Business Secretary Peter Kyle, the government had decided to guarantee a loan to JLR from a commercial bank to help protect jobs at the company's UK factories, but also to protect jobs in companies that provide JLR.

We are offering a £1. JLR is a 5 billion credit facility.

It's in the clear intention that this will help the supply chain as well,

the JLR chief said. Byrne, who appeared on BBC's radio 4 on Sunday, said that there will be

a lot of small print attached to these loan termsto ensure suppliers are aided.I think there are going to be a lot of contractual terms within the loan that would effectively force JLR to pump money through the supply chain," he said. However, Byrne said that it is uncertain how the suppliers' companies that supply the products would be supported.

Cyber-attack 'wake-up call'

JLR is one of many UK businesses to be affected by a string of cyberattacks this year, including attacks on M&Sand Co-op. The committee is now sounding the warning that the UK's economic security system is no longer fit for purpose, according to Byrne, chairing the Commons Business and Trade Select Committee.

You've got a lot of companies now that just don't have the kind of defenses they need given the danger of this new world in which we live,

he said.

We'll be vulnerable to the kind of threats that have struck down JLR and M&S much more often in the future if you rewrite the way the government and the private sector work together to keep our economic infrastructure secure.

This should be a complete wakeup call to British businesses, according to David Bailey, Professor of Business Economics at the University of Birmingham.

The truth is that this is affecting real people's lives and it's causing a lot of anxiety,

he said on BBC Radio 4.

'A real concern'

Although the loan will benefit, Johnathan Dudley, the company's head of manufacturing in Crowe, told the BBC that JLR had enough challenges to deal with without having to figure out how to get money to the right areas of its supply chain.

So that they could concentrate on getting up and running,

he said.

I'm really worried that they don't know who all their supply chain and the ancillary service companies are.

Since the money isn't out there, some businesses that were on the verge of failure at the end of last week remained on the brink,he warned.There are bills to pay at the end of this month,

Mr Dudley said. The Black Country Chamber of Commerce's Jan Jennings expressed worry about the chamber's

significant reservationsfor the smaller companies in the supply chain.They have taken a big beating in the last few weeks, but we are confident that they are on the government's agenda," she said.