Business secretary warns of job losses at Toyota if customs partnership is not adopted

The business secretary Greg Clark has warned of massive job losses at Toyota’s plant in Burnaston, Derbyshire if a customs partnership with the EU is not finalised to replace single market membership.

Clark said that he had met with executives from Toyota and expressed concern over whether future investment should be concentrated in the UK or on the continent.

“I was talking this week to the global president of Toyota Motors,” Clark said while on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show. “They are making a big decision as to where the next motor plant should be in Europe.”

He continued: “It is absolutely right that we should be leaving the Customs Union, but what we replace it with is of huge importance.”

Toyota has already committed to using its two UK sites to build the new Auris. Named Corolla in some markets, it’s one of the brand’s most popular models worldwide and will be built at the Burnaston plant, with engines coming from the firm’s site at Deeside in North Wales.

“We’d like to continue building in the UK,” said the Auris’ chief engineer at the car’s reveal earlier this year. “Auris is a core segment in Europe, it’s big business, and we’d like to keep the business in the UK.”

High-profile Eurosceptics have hit out at Clark, accusing the cabinet of resurrecting ‘Project Fear’ to force the country back into the EU’s single market. Jacob Rees-Mogg, MP and chairman of the European Research Group said: “The issue with the customs partnership is that to be effective it would have to keep us in the single market as well.”

“The customs partnership is, in a sense, mis-named because it means single market as well as customs union. Therefore we would not in effect be leaving the European Union.”