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The boss of Range Rover-owner JLR has called for the UK government to delay tax cuts and hire more police to tackle a spate of vehicle thefts.
Adrian Mardell told investors on Friday that the carmaker was having to pour its own funds into police operations at ports to stop criminal gangs exporting stolen cars.
“I would rather [government] funds be put towards this rather than tax cuts next year,” he said. “This is important to so many people, it goes to the fabric of the society we’re in.”
Insurance prices have soared to as much as £30,000 a year for drivers of JLR’s cars — which start from £33,000 for the Jaguar XE and go up to £160,000 for Range Rovers — prompting the company to offer its own insurance cover in an attempt to prevent cancelled orders.
The business has been plagued by thefts of its luxury vehicles, especially models without the latest security features that prevent criminals from “cloning” a remote car key and unlocking the vehicle.
It had so far spent £15mn updating older vehicles with new security software, as well as funding police analysts, the company said. Of the 12,800 models of the latest Range Rover sold, only 11 have been stolen, and none using the “keyless” entry method that affected the older models.
Thefts of Range Rovers fell 20 per cent last year compared with 2022, but the issue has still deterred buyers and dented the company’s reputation in the competitive luxury vehicle market.
“Should companies have to finance police authorities and security authorities?” asked Mardell. “Look, I think we need a national conversation about that [and] an industry based and a government-based discussion around the reasons for this, the organised crime [and] what we can do to stop it.”
On Friday, the company said it made a record pre-tax profit of £627mn in the three months to the end of December, almost three times higher than a year earlier, after sales of the latest Range Rover drove revenues to a high of £7.3bn.
The company will launch an electric Range Rover this year, part of a £15bn investment into electric vehicles in the coming years. The group expected to miss its electric vehicle sales targets in the UK this year, but comply with the UK’s electric vehicle quota scheme and avoid fines through higher sales of hybrid cars in the future, Mardell said.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is expected to offer some tax cuts in his spring Budget, as a pre-election giveaway amid a cost of living crisis in the country that has been fuelled by inflation of food and fuel prices.
Additional reporting by Ian Smith in London
