Mandelson positive over industry

Lord Mandelson was speaking at the CBI's annual manufacturing dinner

Business Secretary Lord Mandelson says everyone needs to start thinking more positively about the car industry.

Lord Mandelson was speaking at the CBI's annual manufacturing dinner at Birmingham Metropol Hotel on Thursday.

He outlined a package of government support for the UK car industry last month potentially worth up to �2.3bn.

Lord Mandelson said he dismissed a suggestion in a BBC interview that he was in "the lions' den" at the dinner in Birmingham.

'Industrial consequences'

He told the audience: "I gave an interview to the BBC before coming into this room and the interviewer said 'what does it feel like to be walking into the lions' den?'

"I said to him 'I do not regard you, this dinner, the CBI, as the lions' den'."

David Smith, Jaguar Land Rover chief executive, said: "It really would be a tragedy... if the aid packages that have been announced are not delivered in time to avert some of the industrial consequences of another quarter like the one that we are in at the moment."

Last month Jaguar Land Rover said it would cut 450 jobs in the UK because of the slump in car sales.

Based in Gaydon, Warwickshire, the company employs workers in Castle Bromwich, Coventry and Solihull in the West Midlands and Halewood, Merseyside.