Fate of Rolls-Royce exposes the Government’s woeful industrial policy
Three-quarters of its annual turnover is tied to the fortunes of the airline industry. Another lockdown would mean further restrictions on air travel and could leave Rolls scrabbling around for cash again.
Ministers need to take a serious look in the mirror too. If the Treasury is loath to take a direct stake in Rolls through its rights issue then there is plenty more it can do to help on the policy front by stimulating demand.
Where is the steel for HS2 coming from for example? Why aren’t the mini-nukes that Rolls excels in being made a cornerstone of energy policy so that we can abandon the geopolitical nightmare of building old-fashioned nuclear plants with Chinese money and Beijing’s untested technology?
As it happens, shareholder opposition means sovereign wealth funds won’t be taking part in the capital-raising, but it was the government’s own disinterest in a company in which it has a golden share no less that prompted Rolls to pass around the begging bowl among wealthy foreign states such as Kuwait and Singapore. Yet, we can cough up £400m to save OneWeb, a failing satellite broadband start-up.
Joined-up thinking? At this point, we’d settle for any thinking at all about this country’s industrial future.
