DRIVERS will be given as much as £6,000 to swap out their old petrol or diesel cars for electric ones under the PM’s plans to relaunch the economy after the coronavirus shutdown.
Boris Johnson is expected to make a major speech next month as he prepares a new economic programme to bolster the UK and provide a boost for car manufacturing.
Mr Johnson is understood to be preparing for a speech on Monday, July 6 to lay out new plans to get the British economy back in business, according to The Telegraph.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak is expected to make a statement after the PM’s address.
One of the new policies expected to be laid out in the speech is a car scrappage scheme to spur British drivers to swap their old diesel and petrol cars out for electric by promising cash incentives.
The UK car industry has been hit hard by the coronavirus shutdown, as Brits’ purse strings tightened and businesses across the country closed up shop.
Sales collapsed by 97.3 per cent and only 197 vehicles came off UK car production lines in April – the industry’s worst month since 1946.
The Government is desperate to keep the doors open at the factories of Britain’s three biggest car makers – Nissan, Jaguar Land Rover and BMW.
All three have electric vehicles at the heart of their manufacturing strategies.
Nissan, which manufactures more than 500,000 cars in their Sunderland factory including the Leaf electric vehicle, is critical to the economy of the entire north east.
The Japanese car giant has had to axe thousands of jobs world-wide already, but has so far spared the Sunderland factory from the worst of the cuts.
The Government hopes the scheme will help boost new car sales after showrooms reopened earlier this month.
Electric new world
The scheme, called “cash for clunkers” within Government, would also fit within the commitment to ban the sale of all new petrol, diesel or hybrid cars by 2035.
It would go hand in hand with a £1billion investment for electric charging points across the country
Business Secretary Alok Sharma has also announced the creation of five new-business focusses groups to “unleash Britain’s growth potential and create jobs” as part of the plans to stimulate the economy.
The Prime Minister has said repeatedly he is determined to push ahead with the party’s election commitments to “level up” the country with massive infrastructure projects such as HS2 and 40 new hospitals.
When asked if the massive debt the nation has already wracked up as a result of schemes to help those hardest hit by coronavirus would mean the Government would resort to austerity-era spending cuts, the PM said he had “never liked” the word austerity and would make good of the Conservatives manifesto pledges.
From next week, Mr Sharma will chair the first of the new “recovery roundtables” with businesses, business representatives and leading academics.
The meetings will aim to find measures to help the UK economy “bounce back” as it recovers from the shock of the shutdown and put the UK at the forefront of new and emerging industries.
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