Steel Industry (Nationalisation) Bill

Debate between Toby Perkins and Jamie Stone

Committee of the whole House
Tuesday 9th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Perkins]

Yes, I do. I should say to the hon. Gentleman that I had the opportunity last night to predict that he would be the leader of Reform by the time we went into the general election, and I stand by that. We would normally expect to see a party leader in the House of Commons. We never see the Reform leader, the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), in the House of Commons, which is why I predicted that it would be the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice)—but I am getting distracted and will return to his question.

I am absolutely committed to doing everything we can to decarbonise, but in certain sectors doing so would be to deindustrialise. There is no sense in allowing blast furnaces only for imported products and not looking after that ourselves. I welcome the Government’s drive and direction, but I absolutely want to see that future for Scunthorpe. We should look at ways that we can use greener gases rather than pursue anything against that.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

Nuclear is going to play a role in cheaper energy for households, and I welcome the Government’s announcement there will be an array of small modular reactors that will have to be made out of British steel. Equally, I regret the fact that offshore wind turbines are being built not in this country; they should be built here, out of British steel.

When I worked in the oil fabrication industry, we had thousands of trained welders. Today, we do not have so many people who could actually work with British steel. Does the hon. Member agree that, in parallel with doing the good work in the Bill, we should be thinking about keeping these skills, which are crucial to the future? If we do not have them, we will not use British steel.

[Mr Perkins]

I agree 100% about the importance of protecting skills, which has been a huge priority of mine throughout my time in this House. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that skills have been lost from the sector, as we tragically and foolishly allowed the steel industry to be stripped away, as he rightly pointed out, by the Conservative party. That has been tremendously damaging to our national security, our economy, our industry and, as he rightly says, the skills base in this country.

I am very supportive of what the Government are doing in this Bill. I would like to take the opportunity to speak, as I did a moment ago, to a question raised with me that is somewhat parallel to the narrow terms of the Bill, but is relevant to amendment 6 and to amendment 5, which has not been selected. We are—absolutely sensibly—taking measures on the tariffs to prevent the dominance of the Chinese steel industry, which sells steel at ludicrously cheap prices and is attempting to get all other countries to lose their steel industries so that we will then all be dependent on China. However, we have to be careful that we do not cause unintended consequences for British manufacturers that use steel and for our international competitiveness. We do not want to end up in the position of, for example, rolled bar, where we do not have reliable and strong provision of that here in the UK. We need to tread carefully with this. I know the Minister is on this, but I take this opportunity to come back to that point.

I have already written to the Secretary of State about a manufacturer in my constituency that makes transport ramps out of steel, and three other companies in the constituency are more directly involved in steel stockholding and have products manufactured out of steel, and they are all deeply concerned about where we currently are on this.

I know we have the current plan for 1 July—that is not far away at all. If we do not get this right, the consequences could be extraordinarily serious. I know that is on the Minister’s list and that it is prominent in his mind, but I add my call to all those others who say that we need to tread extremely carefully. With that, it remains only to say well done to the Minister and the Government for their continued backing of steel, and I look forward to seeing this—