Steel Industry (Nationalisation) Bill

Lord Wigley Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 8th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Redwood (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Fox, for reminding us of the importance of contingent liabilities and the need for the Government to complete due diligence before any acquisition. He rightly says that in a hypothetical case—not British Steel Scunthorpe—it might be necessary to move quickly, and then there will have to be some trade-offs. But if we are talking about British Steel Scunthorpe, there is obviously no need to move quickly. The Government moved very quickly many months ago, and there can still be proper analysis. I would hope, indeed, that as Ministers and their chosen executives are now responsible for British Steel, while they do not own the assets, they would have done a lot of this very important preparatory work on discovering the contingent liabilities.

Where in Amendment 11, the contingent liabilities are mentioned by category, there is an omission which could be extremely important: liabilities to employees for past problems with safety and health, and—God forbid that this does not happen—for any liabilities that might follow now that the business is under the operation or control of Ministers and their chosen executives, if some safety or other health problem arose. Where people are running these very large, industrial businesses, with the obvious threats of a very powerful fire in the furnace and the dangers of extremely hot liquid steel being moved around, it is crucial that Ministers and their chosen executives have taken all the right decisions on making sure people have the right protective clothing, there are the right protocols, and there is an absolute segregation for the employees from the risks. There also needs to be an understanding of whether there have been any longer-term health risks from the atmosphere around the blast furnace or the intense heat of some working conditions.

If Ministers have not already done so, they need to take this very seriously. Whenever I was responsible for a big plant, my main nightmare was that something would go wrong on safety, and that would be unforgivable. I am not expecting the Government to give ground on these amendments, but it would reassure the House and the wider public if the Minister could tell us more about where they have got to, at least in general terms, with exposing the contingent liabilities on pensions, safety and employee health, as well as with the other financial matters mentioned clearly in these amendments.

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, I am delighted to support the amendment put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Fox, and I agree with his earlier analysis. As it happens, I agree with a lot of what the noble Lord, Lord Redwood, said on this as well. Whereas there may be certain safeguards in Scunthorpe, there is considerable worry in somewhere like Port Talbot arising from some of the experiences we have had, which I referred to in Committee. I hope the Minister will be able to give some assurances on this.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 15 and 16 in my name, but first I speak in support of Amendments 12 and 13 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Sharpe and Lord Hunt, which I have co-signed. Importantly, these would add necessary additional parliamentary control over continuity obligations and property transfer regulations. We moved similar amendments in the Commons that failed to attract sufficient support there.

Regarding Amendment 10, the Minister has convinced me that the need to quickly transfer property rights transcends the necessity of moving to an affirmative form of approval from a negative regulation. That is why I have not co-signed Amendment 10.

I tabled Amendments 15 and 16 as it is important that Parliament must be kept informed once any nationalisation is effected. Amendment 15 would create a new clause causing there to be a report on principal transfer powers from the point at which those powers are exercised under the Act. It says that the Secretary of State must

“make a written statement to each House of Parliament setting out … the progress, and the operational and financial performance, of the steel undertaking in respect of which a transfer power has been exercised, and … the impact of this Act, including (so far as it is possible to assess) its effects on the steel industry in the United Kingdom, on employment and on the public finances”,

and that this duty

“continues until no steel undertaking remains in public ownership”.

I hope the Minister has something positive to say on this, which includes reflecting on how the communities and skills requirements are being met in whichever part of the UK is affected by any nationalisation and subsequent changes.

It is a shame that the noble Lord, Lord Empey, was not with us in Committee, because he would have participated in a debate on an amendment that was very similar to Amendment 15, which covers not only the territory of Northern Ireland but the whole of the United Kingdom. I feel that the noble Lord’s point is important, but if it is important for Northern Ireland then it is important for the rest of the UK. I think he will see that Amendment 15 seeks to bring that across our entire country.

Amendment 16 seeks to create a stakeholder advisory committee. I will not repeat my speech from Committee, but its aim is to have stronger input into the steel strategy from steel users. The Minister responded with news that the steel council may be augmented by additional new members. I hope he can elaborate some more on how the voice of steel users is reflected more effectively in order for the Government to avoid such issues as those that have been created by the steel tariffs.

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, I draw attention to a part of Amendment 16. I am delighted to see that the noble Lord, Lord Fox, has included the words

“industries that rely on the supply of steel, including the defence sector”.

That is one of the themes that is running, perhaps in the undergrowth, behind much of the thinking on the Bill. We must have a steel industry that is capable of responding, and quickly, in an emergency to the needs of the defence industry. The model has to be developed with that in hand. That is why I very much welcome the fact that that is written in the amendment.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, my Amendment 45 arises from an exchange in the other place last week with the Minister, Sir Chris Bryant. Members will be aware that Northern Ireland’s situation is different in so far as, for goods, it is covered by the Windsor Framework. Therefore, EU quotas on steel obviously apply. The issue is that we have the preposterous situation of having quotas of steel flowing from one part of the United Kingdom to the other. These two regimes are clashing.

The Minister in the other place indicated that HMRC is

“taking steps to confirm the arrangements with industry”.

Bearing in mind that this was happening with about 36 hours’ notice, it was a huge challenge for businesses and so on to get their heads around it. He went on to say:

“The Government will continue to provide guidance and support to traders moving goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland through the trader support service”.—[Official Report, Commons, 30/6/26; col. 764.]


That is another example of why we do not have a free internal market within the United Kingdom. Can the Minister confirm whether both these matters have taken place: has HMRC taken the steps to confirm arrangements with industry, and is the Trader Support Service providing that guidance? It was not available last week, which is why I tabled this amendment.

The other issue arising is speciality steels, because of the United Kingdom’s current limited ability to produce them and because some firms which intend to produce them are not actually doing so. I will give the Minister an example of our concerns. If a European company has a branch in our jurisdiction in Northern Ireland—for instance, Harland & Wolff—and has access under its quota arrangements to speciality steel for, say, the defence sector, which the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, mentioned and which is a particular issue in my mind, and it bids for defence work that will require a significant amount of speciality steels, those steels may not be able to be sourced within the United Kingdom. Our anxiety, therefore, is that competitiveness, price and other things could create difficulties.

I fully understand the rationale for having quotas, because there is huge surplus capacity throughout the rest of the world. We understand that that has to be managed but, given that we cannot necessarily get the steels from within the United Kingdom, can the Minister give an assurance that those steels will be available, that the quotas are adequate—whatever we say about having them in the first place—and that there is sufficient headroom to ensure that companies’ competitiveness will not be significantly damaged by the unavailability of those products within the United Kingdom?