Andy McDonald
Main Page: Andy McDonald (Labour - Middlesbrough and Thornaby East)Department Debates - View all Andy McDonald's debates with the Wales Office
(8 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberMy hon. Friend comes up with yet another example of the lack at the heart of this Government. They do not seem to believe we should have an industrial strategy. Therefore, as these contracts come up, they seem to be living from hand to mouth without actually having a coherent and proper strategic approach to use the power of government procurement to try to preserve UK jobs.
Does my hon. Friend agree that there can be absolutely no doubt that the Conservative party does not believe in an industrial strategy? The Secretary of State for Business said in an article in the Financial Times not four weeks ago that he does not like industrial strategy. Does she not agree that that is an absolutely disgraceful statement for a Secretary of State to make?
I speak as somebody from Middlesbrough, and at the last time of counting, 33% of the workforce at Redcar hailed from my constituency. I have no reason to believe that the figures are much different today.
We need an inquiry into the collapse of SSI. I echo the demand from my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Anna Turley), who has done a sterling job in her fight for her constituents. We also need an inquiry into whether the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is fit for purpose. I think it has been sadly lacking in many respects. The bottom line is that this Government could have acted in Redcar and they did not. The coke business was viable and it is an outrage that PWC was not directed to ensure that that business was sustained. That coke could have been made. There was a ready-made market for it. That would have put electricity into the national grid. It was a viable business, and people on Teesside cannot understand why the Government sat back and allowed it to fail. It is a very Conservative failure, and death by neglect—they sat back and did nothing at all. We have heard a lot of blether today about what the Government cannot do. What we want to hear is what the Government can do and what they will get on with.
My hon. Friend will be aware that for the sake of £17 million, the third grade required in the three grades for sellable foundry coke could have made that business viable. The often-quoted £2 million cost was actually about South Bank coke ovens, which was already designated for mothballing in April 2016. Redcar coke ovens was profitable and viable, which is why SSI tried to re-form itself as a new company, and Kirby Adams, a former CEO of Tata Europe, tried himself to set it up as a business.
My hon. Friend and neighbour makes a very good point. We have heard throughout that the coal in situ was not suitable for purposes other than the blast furnace. Other coal could have been brought in. Hargreaves was able and available for that and was not embraced. Any sensible Government would have grabbed that opportunity with both hands, but they did not do so.
A lot of the conversation has been about the price of steel as the reason why SSI went under. We are talking about coke and, as my hon. Friend said, there were companies in Germany willing to buy all the foundry coke that we could make in those coke ovens. It was selling at over £500 a tonne, compared with the £100 a tonne cost for making it. That was a profitable business which could have kept the coke ovens going, it could have funded a proper mothballing of the blast furnace, and we could still have steelmaking on Teesside.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That would have been the basis for keeping that coke oven going and mothballing that blast furnace. It is no good the Minister coming to me after the event and telling me in hushed tones that she wishes she had mothballed the site. That will not do at all.
We hear about bringing forward compensation packages. When the Prime Minister was at the Dispatch Box today, it seemed to be a revelation to him that suddenly we were talking about bringing forward a compensation package. We have been talking about it in the Chamber for months. It is as if the scales have been removed from his eyes. The hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller), who is no longer in his place, hit the point exactly when he spoke about the role of Chinese steel and the fact that it is produced at less than cost. We have now heard from the Prime Minister that he discussed it with the President of China. We want to know what action is going to flow from that discussion. There is no point just bringing it up. We want to know what is going to happen. If 94% of the steel coming to Europe is dumped on these shores, it is up to this Government to take action about it and not sit on their hands.
I went to Italy last Friday to speak to the representatives of FIOM from the Ilva plant in Taranto in southern Italy. What a difference from a Government who not only identify the strategic importance of the industry, but are prepared and have the political will to do something about it. They recognise the social impact of thousands of people losing their jobs and they will do anything to stop that happening. That is what we want to see in this country. In Italy there are solidarity laws so that people are not laid off. The bankruptcy laws were changed. In Teesside we saw creditors go to the wall—Hargreaves was struggling, as were personnel agencies, engineers, hairdressers and so on. In Italy, bankruptcy laws were changed so that such firms got tax relief on future businesses. That is what I call an active policy.
For the Minister to say that the Government could not embrace state aid is utter nonsense, and she knows it. Regional aid and environmental aid could have been embraced with no difficulty; that was done for carbon capture and storage at the Florange plant in France. We on Teesside are sitting on a wonderful opportunity that this Government are letting slip through their hands. We need an active industrial strategy. We need a Government who will access the European globalisation adjustment fund—they have not even made an application to it. We need a BIS Department that is scouring the world in advance, not saying, “We were caught out at the last minute”. The Minister responsible for the northern powerhouse openly admits that he had known for ages about the problems. The Department should have been getting on with it, scouring the world, making sure it had the capacity in financial and engineering terms to respond properly.
It feels tragic to speak in this debate on the future of the steel industry because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) said in her introductory comments, our steel industry has gone—175 years of proud history and heritage that built the world, from bridges to stadiums to buildings of great note, has gone. That future is no more. That is the tragedy of which all hon. Members are aware.
The human tragedy remains. We have 3,000 people out of work and expect another 3,000 in the supply chain to go. I want to bring attention to that so that, first, it can be prevented from happening in any other constituency. I want to talk about the scale of what we are trying to deal with, the implications and the outstanding issues, and about the despair, anger and chaos that reigns in Redcar and Teesside.
As I have said, the coke ovens and the blast furnace are gone. John, who works there at the moment—he is one of the skeleton staff who are there to try to wind it down—tells me that the coke ovens are cooling rapidly, and that the brickwork is warping beyond good use ever again. He tells me that steel and coke making are at an end for ever.
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is an absolutely criminal act of industrial vandalism to let those coke ovens collapse when that was entirely and utterly avoidable?
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. The blast furnace and the coke ovens are national assets. They are part of British industry and manufacturing, and they are strategically important to our economy. They could and should have been preserved.
I want to talk briefly about two outstanding issues that are causing a great deal of concern in my constituency. The first is the training that has not arrived. We were promised £80 million, but it turns out to be £50 million when we take out redundancy and the statutory entitlement that the workforce should have had. That training is not coming through. We were told that a local taskforce would have control—I was pleased to be invited to sit on it—but the reality is that decisions are being made by officials. I understand that we are waiting for a decision from the Secretary of State to clear that money and send it.
No, I am not giving way. He was one of the first people that I met after my appointment, because I knew how much he knew about the British steel industry. It wants a level playing field, and it is right to do so. That is what this Government are doing.
Let me make it absolutely clear—
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. We hear from the Minister that no people were coming forward to discuss projects to take over at SSI. She needs to correct that position, because there were consortiums of—
Order. That is not a point of order, but a point of debate. I understand that emotions are running very high.
As I said, nobody came forward with an offer, and the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) knows that I held a meeting with someone who had said they were interested, but the harsh awful reality was that nobody came forward with an offer.
No, I will not take any more interventions from the hon. Gentleman. I will talk to him as I always do but I do not have time for interventions.
Let me explain the actions that the Government have taken. On energy costs, we have already paid out £50 million in compensation to the steel industry. In relation to the “unfair trade”, as we put it—in simple and sharp terms “dumping”—one of the first things we did when we were elected was to take a decision and cast our vote to protect our steel industry. That had never happened before, and it was done specifically on the direction of myself and the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills. Then we turn to rebar—the investigation was started on behalf of this Government and on behalf of the steel industry after it came to us and presented us with the evidence.
Now let us look at procurement. Opposition Members, and indeed Government Members—I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove) who fights as hard as he always does for his steel workforce—quite properly talk about a difficulty over procurement. Again, let us look at the evidence. The evidence is absolutely clear. We have already changed the rules for the benefit, not just of the British steel industry but for the whole of British industry, because we put into the score card of the public sector the fact that social and environmental considerations could be taken into account. That was the first time that had happened, so I am not taking any lessons from Labour Members, who had an opportunity to do that for 13 years and failed to do so. That is the sort of direct action that we have taken. We are taking this further. We have three working groups, one of which is looking specifically at how we can extend those rules further—and not just in the public sector.