There are “no discussions around taxpayers’ money” to prop up Jaguar Land Rover’s (JLR) suppliers, according to the prime minister’s official spokesman, as the carmaker grapples a lengthening production shutdown following last month’s cyber attack.

JLR factories fell silent more than two weeks ago. While it is damaging for the company, it represents a perilous loss of business for the supply chain which has also been forced to send workers home.

Some have already lost their jobs.

Unions and the business and trade committee of MPs were among those to request the possibility of aid to prevent job losses and employers going bust as the disruption drags on.

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What happened?

It was revealed on 1 September that global production at JLR had been stopped following a cyber attack.

IT systems were taken offline by the company under efforts to limit penetration and damage.

The company appeared confident initially that manufacturing could resume but restart dates have been consistently put back.

What damage was done?

Jaguar Land Rover has said very little about the extent of the attack.

But it admitted last week that some data had been accessed. It gave no further details.

Who is to blame?

A criminal investigation is continuing.

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.

Scattered Spider, a loose group of relatively young hackers, were behind the Co-Op, Harrods and M&S attacks earlier in the year.

It is widely believed that M&S paid a sum to regain control of its systems after it was targeted with ransomware though it has refused to confirm if this was the case.

How is this affecting JLR as a business?

JLR typically produces about 1,000 vehicles a day.

Production staff are being paid but kept away from plants at Halewood on Merseyside, Solihull in the West Midlands, and its engine factory in Wolverhampton. It is the same story for workers at sites in Slovakia, China and India.

JLR revealed on Tuesday that production lines would now remain shut until at least 24 September.

David Bailey, professor of business economics at the Birmingham Business School, told the PA news agency: “The value of cars usually made at the sites means that around £1.7bn worth of vehicles will not have been produced, and I’d estimate that would have an initial impact of around £120m on profits.”

JLR achieved a pre-tax profit of £2.5bn for the financial year ending 31 March 2025, so should be able to absorb such a hit.

Sales and service operations continue as normal at its retail partners but the longer the disruption goes on, so do the risks to its inventories and bottom line.

Why does its supply chain need help?

This is the part of the operation that was always bound to suffer most in the event of a global JLR production shutdown.

No manufacturing means no need for parts.

The company usually depends on a ‘just in time’ supply chain to feed its factories and keep production lines running smoothly.

The Unite union has appealed for a COVID-style furlough scheme to prevent job losses and the risk of affected companies, often small or medium-sized firms, being forced out of business.

JLR’s operations are understood to directly support more than 100,000 jobs in the UK though that sum doubles through indirect roles.

The loss of any major supplier would risk further production delays once JLR’s IT systems are back online.

It is currently understood that the vast majority of directly affected workers remain in their jobs but have either been sent home or are on restricted tasks.

JLR suppliers Evtec, WHS Plastics, SurTec and OPmobility have had to temporarily lay off roughly 6,000 staff while a growing number of other firms are cutting workers, with temporary or contracted workers most likely to be affected.

What has the government said?

In addition to the remarks by the PM’s official spokesman, minister for industry Chris McDonald told Sky News: “We know this is a worrying time for those affected by this incident and our cyber experts are supporting JLR to help them resolve this issue as quickly as possible.

“I met the company today to discuss their plans to resolve this issue and get production started again, and we continue to discuss the impact on the supply chain.”

The NHS will increase the amount it spends on medicines in response to criticism from pharmaceutical companies that the UK is becoming uncompetitive, science minister Lord Vallance has told MPs.

Investments worth close to £2bn have been paused or cancelled this year by three of the world’s largest companies, Merck, AstraZeneca and Eli Lilly, amid a fraught negotiation between the industry and government over medicines pricing.

Addressing an emergency session of the science, technology and innovation select committee, Lord Vallance acknowledged that low prices historically paid by the NHS, and pressure from US President Donald Trump to cut prices for US consumers, had made the UK less attractive to industry.

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He said: “I’m deeply concerned that there’s been a 10-year decrease in the investment in support for a vital industry; vital for the economy, vital for patients and vital for the NHS at a time when medicines are making a bigger contribution than ever.

“I think the NHS will spend a larger percentage of its budget on medicines. These things are all about trade-offs, and the trade-off that has been made for the last decade has been [to spend] a lower percentage on medicines.

“We are now reaping the consequences of that in a very urgent way, and that is what we need now to address.”

Lord Vallance’s comments came after industry executives warned MPs the UK’s commitment to the life sciences faces a “credibility challenge”, and was losing out on investment to competitors including Germany, Ireland and Singapore.

Ben Lucas, the UK managing director of drugs giant Merck, which last week cancelled a £1bn research investment in London, said the decision was made in part because of the “end-to-end” difficulty of doing business in the UK.

He said: “This is a credibility challenge. The reality is we have been having, with successive governments, this continued conversation about the potential of the UK. But from a US-based executive team looking in, I hear; ‘We have heard this plan before, but it hasn’t necessarily been delivered’.”

Tom Keith-Roach, the UK president of AstraZeneca, which has paused or cancelled $650m of investment in recent months, said: “The UK is an increasingly challenging place to bring forward that innovation, to get through the front door… of the NHS, to deliver to patients and improve patient lives.

“What we are seeing globally is that discretionary investment in R&D is flowing into countries that are seen to value innovation and pull that through to patients. It is increasingly challenging to bring that investment into an environment that is apparently not.”

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The industry wants the threshold for allowing new drugs into the NHS increased from the current £20,000-£30,000, unchanged since 1999, and to increase an overall medicines budget that has fallen in real terms by 11% in a decade.

It also wants a reduction in the complex “clawback” arrangements governing drug pricing, which this year will see the industry return 23% of total revenues to the NHS, around four times comparable schemes in Europe.

Lord Vallance said discussions with industry over reforming the clawback arrangements continued, despite formal negotiations ending without agreement earlier this year.

The state pension is likely to rise by 4.7% in April, after the latest official figures showed this was the pace of wage growth.

The pension is determined by the triple lock, which means it will rise every year by whichever is highest: inflation in September, average weekly earnings from May to July or 2.5%.

Inflation in September is expected to be 4% by the Bank of England, meaning wage data, released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on Tuesday, is set to be the highest figure.

Government retains control of pension increases and, despite commitments, could decide not to abide by the triple lock.

The new pension sum will start being paid in April, and if increased by 4.7% would reach £12,534.60, above £12,000 for the first time.

A political challenge

Despite the significant cost implications for the state, Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden said the government was committed to the triple lock.

“The OBR estimates that will mean a rise in the state pension of around £1,900 a year over the course of the Parliament… that’s something that we said we will do in the election and something that we will keep to.”

It’s likely to be a headache for Chancellor Rachel Reeves as she struggles to stick within her self-imposed fiscal rules to reduce government debt and balance the budget.

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While the average weekly earnings measure of wage growth rose, up from 4.5% a month earlier, another form slowed. Earnings excluding bonuses dropped from 5% to 4.8% across the month.

It means pay is still rising faster than inflation, which was 3.8% at the latest reading, and wage growth is high by historical standards.

A tough job market

The data was not so positive for those looking for a job. There are fewer vacant roles and fewer people on payrolls, the ONS said.

Compared to a year earlier, there were 127,000 fewer payrolled employees in August, provisional estimates show.

There were estimated to be 10,000 fewer vacancies from June to August 2025, marking the 38th consecutive period of vacancy drops.

The drops have decreased from previous months, suggesting the worst of the industry reaction to increased employers’ national insurance contributions and minimum wage rises.

Vacancies decreased in nine of the 18 industry sectors. Statistics also released on Tuesday showed a record 2.07 million people are working for the NHS.

The unemployment rate, however, remained at 4.7%.

The ONS continued to advise caution when interpreting changes in the monthly unemployment rate due to concerns over the figures’ reliability. The exact number of unemployed people is unknown, due to low survey response rates.