British Steel

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, as far as I am aware, British Steel is not producing steel in large quantities for the defence industry. Having said that, I take the point that the noble Lord made. It is obviously very important to our defence industry and, more importantly, to the defence of the realm to make sure that we can produce steel of an appropriate sort. My right honourable friend is fully aware of that, and that is why he has encouraged all departments to look to their procurement of steel and why, where possible, certain adjustments have been made to allow them to take other factors into account in procurement. The noble Lord, Lord Fox, was rather dismissive of the tables we have produced to encourage other departments to buy British steel, but they are important. I can assure the noble Lord that, wherever possible within the rules, we will certainly use British steel for defence projects, but not necessarily steel produced by this company, if it does not produce the right sort of steel.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, the Minister mentioned Scunthorpe and also Teesside, which was the cradle of the Industrial Revolution. Have the Government worked out the implications for our much-heralded industrial strategy, given that we have taken quite a knock with a number of manufacturing jobs going, Nissan’s announcement about its production and Honda closing its production in 2021? The good news story is Hitachi in County Durham building the Azuma trains that will be required for HS3 as well as HS2. Will the Government look favourably on retraining any workers who in the long term lose their jobs with British Steel, so that they can participate in other manufacturing roles in the north?