The fight to protect jobs in Britain’s car industry was stepped up on Thursday when Lord Mandelson held talks in Berlin with Canada’s Magna International, the frontrunner for a stake in General Motors’ European operations.

As the business secretary pressed the case for protecting jobs at GM’s two UK plants in a meeting with Siegfried Wolf, Magna’s co-chief executive, it emerged that Germany was still open to other bidders for Opel/Vauxhall.