UK Steel Industry
Debate between Stephen Kinnock and Nicholas Dakin(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that, to ensure that UK steel is in a position to gain such contracts in the future, it is important that skills and new technologies are in place? There is a role for Government in that, too.
Stephen Kinnock
I agree entirely. There are two elements to this crisis. One is the short-term perfect storm that we are facing. The lack of Government support for building the industry’s resilience is a major contributing factor to that. The other element is equally worrying in many ways: the complete absence of a long-term strategy—nothing on research and development and innovation, nothing on investment, nothing on building our skills base and nothing on the long-term sustainability of such a foundation industry. As long as that long-term strategy is missing, short-term action will simply be treading water and running to stand still. We are in desperate need of a Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills who is prepared to use the words “industrial strategy” and then to do something about it. The issue of market economy status for China is a chance for the Government to stand up for British jobs, for British industry and for Britain.
Finally, all those failures clearly come together into a single issue, to which my hon. Friend referred: the absence of a long-term industrial strategy for the steel industry, with a commitment to strategic investment in skills, infrastructure, energy, and R and D. Why have the Minister and her Department still not produced such a strategy—a strategy to save British steel, to save British jobs and to save communities such as mine? In the first half of 2015, the Minister almost never appeared in public without talking about her Government’s “long-term economic plan”. She now has the chance to show that that was not all hot air. Now is the time for the Government to produce a long-term plan for steel.
Back in October I said it was 10 to midnight for the British steel industry. I finish by asking the Minister what time she thinks it is now.