Steel Industry

Lord Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jones (Lab)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn’s approach to the steel industry. He has put a coherent and positive challenge to the Government in a most committed manner. For Britain to retain her national greatness, we will always need a steel industry. A great nation must have the capability to defend itself in a time of war. The summation of that is the “defence of the realm”. It is hard to envisage a Britain without a steel industry being capable of defending itself from a hostile nation or nations.

I see that steel is a foundation industry. It is the basic industry and all else flows from steel, even in a digital age of global influences. For our armaments, our manufacturing and our services, steel must always be there. Last year, there was a serious question mark over the British steel industry’s future. Port Talbot, a mighty and productive steel plant, was at risk. Port Talbot has had a great steel record in modern times. It has met every challenge concerning productivity, including the challenges of demanning. Today, Port Talbot is a manufacturing linchpin in Wales, and it must remain so. It is a British manufacturing priority and it deserves to remain a respected steel producer worldwide for its workforce to have secure employment and decent pensions.

I pay tribute to my noble and learned friend Lord Morris of Aberavon, who has been a most successful, long-standing advocate for Port Talbot steel, and I see that my noble friend Lord Brookman is in his place. I humbly say that he was a fine leader of the steel workers’ union for many years. Indeed, he was the lion of the Ebbw Vale steel plant, and at the steel plant in north-east Wales he was highly regarded when a general secretary. He faced up to massive changes in Britain’s steel industry and to many tens of thousands of steel redundancies—a great cascade, almost all at once. He faced up to it, like the workforce he led, in a most noble way.

Britain has four nuclear-armed submarines at the heart of our defence strategy. The Ministry of Defence is currently considering the next nuclear-armed submarine defence strategy. For the life of me, I cannot see Britain backing this core defence strategy without a viable, confident, productive steel industry. Surely Her Majesty’s Government will confirm their commitment to a long-term British steel future, especially emphasising the centrality of Port Talbot in British and Welsh steel production. This is surely a strategic requirement.

In the time remaining, I must praise the north-east Wales steel plant of Shotton, which is my homeland. It is a hugely efficient and most profitable plant. The Shotton team is collaborative and co-operative and always delivers on time. It has won recent significant investment, even at a time of great insecurity for steel both in Wales and globally. It deserves its recent vote of confidence. As a finishing plant employing hundreds, it is, of its kind, the jewel in the British steel crown. Whatever the challenge, the Shotton steel team never falters. We remember when in a previous era it employed some 13,000 steel-workers. Historically, ours has been an industrial steel culture.

I see that the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Prior of Brampton, is in his place. In another place, quite some time ago, I recollect a Cabinet Minister bearing the same name. The then Secretary of State James Prior was a good Minister in the early 1980s. I faced him across the Dispatch Box, and in those days he was facing the challenge of retraining and employing tens of thousands of redundant steelworkers. He did his best, always, but surely a viable steel industry is now a matter of national security and a priority.