An influential committee of MPs is seeking COVID-19-style financial support for Jaguar Land Rover as it tries to recover from a cyberattack.
After a week of plant closures, the Committee for Business and Trade has written to the chancellor, asking her what is being offered to the carmaker “to mitigate the risk of significant, long-term commercial damage to affected firms”.
The 34,000 UK workers of Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) are to remain at home until at least next week after a cyberattack discovered last week halted operations.
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Staff are still being paid from JLR sites in Halewood, Merseyside, and Solihull and Wolverhampton in the West Midlands, but the entire economy around the West Midlands is affected.
JLR suppliers Evtec, WHS Plastics, SurTec and OPmobility have had to temporarily lay off roughly 6,000 staff.
Operations could be disrupted for “most of September” or worse, according to a report from The Sunday Times.
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On Thursday, Business and Trade Committee chair Liam Byrne wrote to Chancellor Rachel Reeves, saying: “Firms across the supply chain are now warning the committee of disruption to both upstream and downstream businesses.
“This disruption, we are told, may imminently pose very significant risks to cashflow.”
Intervention, akin to the emergency steps taken to secure British Steel production, is suggested by Mr Byrne to “protect sovereign areas of strength in the UK’s industrial, scientific and technological base”.
A group of English-speaking hackers claimed responsibility for the JLR attack via a Telegram platform called Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters, an amalgamation of the names of hacking groups Scattered Spider, Lapsus$ and ShinyHunters.
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Scattered Spider, a loose group of relatively young hackers, were behind the Co-Op, Harrods and M&S attacks.
Four people were arrested for their suspected involvement in the April attacks and have been bailed.
