In the light of some industry analysts speculating that Vauxhall's Ellesmere Port plant on Merseyside could be at risk, there is now talk of a potential UK government bail out for car makers in the UK.

Bailing out individual GM plants might look like a good idea in the short term, but there is an over supply of new vehicles driven by an unsustainable level of personal credit. Some of these plants will have to go to the wall.

If the government decides to offer an incentive to take older cars off the road, as they are doing in Germany right now they could also be damaging an employment base in the UK far larger than one car plant. The number of jobs in the car aftermarket economy far exceeds those in one production plant; ranging from the thousands of service garages to exhaust and catalytic converter manufacturers such as Klarius that employs over 1,100 people, most of whom are in UK manufacturing jobs.

Contrary to popular belief, taking large numbers of older vehicles off the road might also damage the environment. The waste created by disposing of thousands of older cars, and the resources and pollution caused by manufacturing all those thousands of unsold cars is considerably higher than cleaning up some of the older ones still on the road.

It would preserve more UK jobs if all the government did was change legislation to come into line with European law on type approval for exhausts and catalytic converters for example, at the moment it is legal to fit poor quality badly functioning catalytic converters and exhausts, we could cut waste, reduce UK car emissions by nearly 40% and keep people employed if this was done.

Tony Wilson – Chairman, Klarius