Steel Industry (Special Measures) Bill: Business of the House

Alex Burghart Excerpts

Saturday 12th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

I associate this side of the House with the remarks that the right hon. Lady has made about staff coming in today. We are incredibly grateful to them.

I am sure we are going to hear a lot today about urgency, moving at pace and the rest of it, but the truth is that the Government have made a total pig’s breakfast of this whole arrangement. The fact is that anyone who has been paying any attention to this story over the past few months has known that this was coming down the track. The House was sitting—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We have come back on a Saturday; that does not mean it is “Crackerjack” day. We are going to listen.

[Alex Burghart]

The House was sitting on Monday and on Tuesday, and on those days my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers) raised these issues. The fact is that the Government make bad deals for Britain when negotiating, and, as ever, they are making a bad deal. It is a huge discourtesy to the House that we saw this Bill only 90 minutes before the start of the sitting. Far-reaching powers are being given to the Government—powers not seen in legislation, really, in the past 40 years. I very much hope that the Government will apologise for the way that they have done things, for having taken their eye off the ball yet again, and for having negotiated badly for the British people.

Question put and agreed to.