Returning from a day of talks in Northern Ireland with Union leaders, management and politicians about the Bombardier/Boeing tariff crisis, Barry Gardiner MP, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for International Trade, said:

“The government must wake up to the fact that this is a major crisis for Northern Ireland. Bombardier represents 40 per cent of all the GDP produced by the private sector in Northern Ireland; these 4,000 jobs are the economic bedrock for so many families and communities. Yet the company is now facing a calculated and cynical attempt from Boeing to eliminate a competitor.

“Today it was made abundantly clear that for months civil servants and politicians in Northern Ireland were explaining their case to Tory ministers too pre-occupied with a post Brexit U.S. trade deal to listen, and who chose to swallow the American line that Bombardier were at fault and that Boeing were willing to negotiate when they clearly were not.

"Theresa May’s government must now summon Boeing’s Global Chief, Dennis Muilenburg, to an urgent summit and seek a meeting with the US government to get sensible negotiations back on track and this vicious and baseless case taken off the table.”