Government pledges 80 million pounds to Nissan

The UK has pledged in 2016 £ 80 million worth of support to the Japanese auto giant Nissan for it to remain in the UK after the vote on Brexit, says a revealed letter.

But the commitment depended on the continued production of the Qashqai and X-Trail models at the automaker's Sunderland plant, the Financial Times reported.

The report comes one day after Nissan announced that it would instead make the X-Trail in Japan.

At the same time, a minister said that Nissan would still get its money.

Business and Industry Minister Richard Harrington told BBC Newcastle that the 60 million pounds already paid to Nissan by the government would not have to be repaid.

He added that the money was not related to X-Trail cars, but was related to alternative technologies – developing electric cars and ensuring that the next generation of Qashqai cars could be electric.

In October 2016, Nissan announced that it would build both the new Qashqai and the X-Trail SUV in its Sunderland plant, as a result of the government's "support and badurances".

The nature of these badurances has not been made public, despite requests for access to information from the BBC and others.

However, the FT said it had obtained a copy of the letter that the secretary of business, Greg Clark, had sent to Carlos Ghosn, then president of Nissan.

According to the newspaper, the letter contained comments from Mr. Clark that this would be "a key priority for our [Brexit] negotiations to support British automakers ".

But on Sunday, when Nissan announced its decision to transfer production of X-Trail out of the UK, the company's European president, Gianluca de Ficchy, said that "the lingering uncertainty surrounding the future relations of the Kingdom United with the EU does not help companies plan for the future ".

Nissan said the leaked letter was "no longer commercially sensitive because it does not contain anything that has not been publicly disclosed before."