14/02/2017 Look East (West)

2,000 Vauxhall workers await their fate

as the Luton plant could be taken over by French owners.

Council tax is going up in Cambridgeshire

so more can be spent on adult social care.

2,000 workers at the Vauxhall car plant in Luton face uncertainty

tonight as it could be taken over by the French company Peugeot.

Staff have been here before, in 2009.

Vauxhall's parent company General Motors considered selling

But production of the Vivaro van remained in Luton.

has long since rolled off the production line.

At a van factory for a while on life support, on its knees,

60,000 vans were built here last year.

But after good times, once again, tonight,

The problem is, Vivaro is a joint venture

The potential new owners, PSA, own Peugeot and Citroen.

The question is, could those French giants of the motor industry

No, so long as the company's improving,

I don't see what difference it makes.

Union members at the factory telling us they only found out today.

This has come out of the blue and it is a concern, but the most

important thing and the biggest message is that we want an urgent

meeting with General Motors and with Peugeot because one thing

is clear, we've got no intentions of allowing our plants,

both in Ellesmere Port and in Luton, to close as a result...

or to be under threat of closure as a result of what's happening.

Vauxhall and Opel's parent company GM already involved

Now talk of further cooperation, including, the company say,

a potential acquisition of Opel Vauxhall by PSA,

adding there can be no assurance that an agreement will be reached.

The van contract here lasts until 2025.

Now, on Valentine's Day, a flirtation with a new partner.

Mike's here now. How likely is this deal?

The talks are still in their infancy so very difficult to say but what is

significant is the working relationship that GM and Peugeot

already have. They are already building a sports utility vehicle,

they are making that in Spain, they are planning a larger version of

that, that will be built in France. But if this deal goes ahead, it will

create a car giant. Would this car giant take its jobs to France? That

is what unions are worried about. The French government only

significant jump of Peugeot and today they welcomed the potential

takeover. The unions feel the French government will be backing French

jobs rather than UK jobs and with new European bosses and post Brexit,

if there are any job losses, that's wide plants like Luton look more

vulnerable than on the continent. Cambridgeshire County Council

has tonight voted to increase But that money is ring-fenced

for adult social care. Elsewhere, it needs to make

?29 million worth of savings. In a lengthy six-hour debate

earlier, councillors wrangled over

where the axe would fall. Hannah Olsen has been

looking at the issues. Libraries are one of the so-called

statutory services But Cambridgeshire County Council

is proposing to cut ?325,000 from the money it spends on buying

new books this year. One of the problems with cutting out

the books for a year is that this can affect footfall,

as they call it, in the libraries. That people will not come

because the latest books are not there so they are deprived

of the latest books and also it has got an impact that if people

aren't coming to the library, then that's an excuse to say,

libraries don't count, they don't matter any more,

everybody's going online. More than a thousand people

have signed a petition, but with less money coming

from government, the council says

they have to make difficult choices. All the easy cuts have been made

across the county council now so we are looking at the more

difficult things across-the-board and all of these things

add up together to make the very challenging figures

that we have to make. It is significant for the library

and there's really no where else that we can go at the moment

to make savings. It's not just libraries

in Cambridgeshire Our council must save

?29 million this year. Of course, one way of putting

more money into the pot is to ask us to pay

more council tax. But the political parties

on the council have different views The Conservatives want our council

tax bills to go up by 2% with the money ring-fenced

for adult social care. The Lib Dems are proposing

a 4% rise, believing councils can be

leaner and more efficient. the maximum that's allowed

without a referendum. It may be Valentine's Day

but with no party holding a majority, there won't be

any love lost in deciding Given the choice,

would you pay more? I probably would be happy to pay

a bit more if services were better but I don't think everybody

would be like that because not everybody is in the same

fortunate position as I am. I would pay a bit more money

if it keeps services running, yes. If they can quantify

what they are giving us that was more and they could show

us, perhaps we would pay more. In the end it was the Conservative

proposal that won the day but even with a 2% rise

the council admits it's going to be difficult to

balance the books in coming years. A jury's heard that the medical

condition suffered by the man accused of murdering author

Helen Bailey would not stop him

carrying out physical activities. Ian Stewart denies killing

the Hertfordshire author by drugging her and placing her body

in a cesspit under the garage Two neighbours also told the court

that they believe they saw Helen Bailey

after she went missing but their descriptions

of the author did not match. Cambridge is still on track

to become Britain's capital of life sciences,

bringing thousands of jobs and billions of pounds of investment

to the region. That's the view of those developing

the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, where pharmaceutical giant

Astra Zeneca and the new Papworth Hospital

will be based. A sure sign of a booming economy -

cranes filling the sky. is at the heart of Cambridge's

bio-medical campus. it's already rapidly growing

on the Adenbrook's site. There are 431 life

science companies. They are working on medical devices

or working on drugs, both here and around us

in a ten-mile radius. So, it's already pretty big but

it's already growing pretty fast. So last year, for example,

the life sciences industry in and around Cambridge

grew by one-third. It'll grow by more

in the next year we record that. So it's already an

accelerating environment. The question is just

how far can we take it? The development area here is huge,

the buildings are going up on a 70-acre site but there

is another area yet to be developed, the size of up

to 14 Wembley stadiums. One of the new buildings

under construction is the new

state-of-the-art facility for an already world-leading

heart and lung hospital. Patients are getting older

and they need all the facilities around that is on this campus,

but also, more importantly, perhaps, is the fact

that we are in the middle of this huge development where there

are fantastic opportunities So alongside that building,

there is going to be a heart, lung and research

education institute which will be built

as soon as we get the funds. But as the country prepares

to leave the EU, is there a fear that it might put

a halt to the growth? Are companies ringing up

and saying, we were thinking of coming

and now we are not? The answer to that is no,

we are not getting that. The answer is no, people

are still making enquiries. So, I guess we are optimists

in this business anyway, but we are optimists on the basis

of the evidence here and I think we'll remain optimistic

that we'll continue to be attractive With AstraZeneca and

Papworth Hospital it's hoped they'll attract more big

names from the world of science. and almost all our teams

in action tonight. In League One, MK Dons were held

to a goalless draw away at Bury. Northampton won 2-1

at home against Swindon. And in League Two, Luton

beat Hartlepool 3-0. A 2-1 win for Stevenage

against Cheltenham. And Cambridge drew

1-1 at Yeovil Town. The forecast this week

is going to be much milder, but we have just cleared

the earlier rain. As we go through the night

it could turn misty in places but temperatures are expected

to stay well above freezing We start the day

on a relatively mild note. We have got this weather system

coming in from the south-west. Uncertainty about the track

of it but for most of us A little bit misty to start

with but brighter spells developing. As we go through the day

it will cloud over and eventually this rain

will start to move through. Temperatures into double

figures quite comfortably The wind increasing from the south

but as this wind moves through, it could be heavy and have

the odd rumble of thunder. The national weather is coming up

but here is the outlook. It stays mild for

the rest of the week. High pressure brings some fine

weather on Thursday and Friday fog around to watch out for. Jon

Hammond with the national forecast now.

Good evening. There is some rain in the forecast but