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Terms of Reference for the New Automotive Innovation Growth Team (NAIGT)

Vision

The New Automotive Innovation and Growth Team (NAIGT) will be established as a high level stakeholder group to develop strategies for the future competitiveness of the automotive industry in the UK over the next 15 years. It will take account of outcomes from the original AIGT, as well as looking at ongoing developments in the automotive industry nationally and globally. It will aim to identify new measures for industry and/or government to safeguard and promote continuing high added value investments and improved productivity and competitiveness in the UK.

Outcomes and Success Factors

The two key Departmental Public Service Agreement (PSA) targets which underpin this IGT are:

• Raise the productivity of the UK economy (PSA1); and  
• Deliver the conditions for business success (PSA6)

Objective

To achieve these targets the objective of the NAIGT is, through engagement of key stakeholders from industry (and through a separate parallel Communications Group involving other Government Department’s), produce a comprehensive report that contains a series of recommendations and an action plan aimed at ensuring an automotive industry that:

• continues to develop in the UK and adopts world class innovation; protects jobs; promotes growth; and encourages overall prosperity in the UK; 
• anticipates, develops, adopts and embraces technological changes in response to a range of societal, technological, environmental, economic, political and infrastructural drivers, so as to inform and influence policy making in the future; and
• retains its international competitiveness by attracting internationally mobile investment; and that global issues such as low cost sourcing and new market opportunities are fully taken into account in development of the UK national strategy.

Terms of Reference

• identify key performance indicators and success factors in support of the NAIGT.
• investigate the barriers and challenges posed by existing EU and national legislation to ensure the UK has the right regulatory framework to encourage the competitiveness of a world class industry to continue to develop in the UK;
• assess the evidence of the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for each of the different sectors that make up the automotive industry together with identification of market trends (gaps and hotspots) using an evidence based approach;
• review the impact of the previous AIGT and its legacy programmes and government interventions in support of the sector;
• take account of the evidence and the implications of the King Review on low carbon cars; and the departmental report on the Business Environment for Japanese Automotive Supply Companies in the United Kingdom (September 2007)
• produce a report that makes recommendations to government that are capable of being taken into account in policy making, and to produce an action plan for industry.

Scope

The NAIGT’s remit will cover the UK automotive manufacturing sector in its fullest sense, from research and development, to design engineering, to components, systems, niche and volume vehicle manufacture, including construction equipment. It will additionally consider the challenges and opportunities presented by development of transport and other areas affected by Government policies and the impacts positively and negatively which they can have on the competitiveness of the automotive sector, and identify areas for improved and informed decision making.

It will include consideration of developments in both the motor sport and automotive retail sectors and seek to maximise synergies, though it is not intended that the Group’s eventual recommendations should specifically target those sectors. In addition the Review will consider the scope for technology transfer between the automotive and other sectors.

The NAIGT will report to the Secretary of State for the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform.