The £2 million which will be raised by Swindon Borough Council's sale of the County Ground should be used to help fight the closure of Honda, says the leader of the Labour group.

Coun Jim Grant has pledged that if Labour wins the upcoming local elections then the money banked from Swindon Town FC's purchase of the ground will go to the fund set up to try and keep Honda in the town, or to find another manufacturing business to take over at the plant.

The sum would represent a 10-fold increase on the £200,000 put into the fund by a resolution of the council at its last meeting, just a few days after the announced closure set for 2021.

Coun Grant said: “Labour is fully behind the campaign to persuade Honda to maintain its plant in Swindon. We are hopeful that the plan is successful and will do all we can to support it.

"We must look to cover every eventuality and thus today are announcing that a £2m contingency fund which will both support trying to attract alternative manufacturing companies to the town and help the Honda workforce and the workers in the supply chain seek alternative employment.

“I hope we won’t have to use any of the fund and hope that the plans being put in place by the government’s task force, the council, Unite and others will succeed in replacing the potential jobs losses with similarly high-skilled jobs.

“There is no guarantee of that and any prudent council would seek to protect its local economy from any adverse fall out of the potential closure by setting aside funding for this purpose.”

The announcement comes as Coun Grant and senior councillors from the Conservative administration and union representatives meet today, (Thursday) with the government’s business secretary Greg Clark MP as part of the national Honda taskforce.

Unite’s Wiltshire representative Alan Tomala said: “Any support is welcome as far as we are concerned, and it’s a significant increase of funding. But we wouldn’t want to see it used for things like job clubs and CV-writing course. It’s important to keep Honda here in Swindon and keep the plant open and working.

But Conservative council leader Coun David Renard, who like Coun Grant is standing for re-election in May, said: “This is a pre-election gimmick.

We are working together to try and keep Honda here, and we don’t know how that will pan out yet. We will allocates resources as needed when needed rather than arbitrarily move money from one place to another.

“When the time comes we will make a decision in the best interests of the people of Swindon.”

The local election will be held on May 2. The Conservatives hold a one seat majority, with 29 councillors to Labour’s 24, with two Lib Dems and two independents