Post-SSI Support Package: Redcar

Andy McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)]

As has been well documented in this House and in the national media, my constituency has been through one of the toughest times in its existence. I could debate all day with the Minister about what more I believe the Government could have done to save the Redcar coke ovens and blast furnace. I also have many outstanding questions on the future of the site and who will be paying for it. But I want to make the people who have borne the brunt of the tragedy the topic of this debate.

Some 2,200 men and women lost their jobs directly when SSI went into liquidation. Twenty-six supply chain businesses were also affected, with a further 954 redundancies. As is the case after such a calamitous economic shock, numbers continue to increase as local businesses, shops, childminders, decorators, hairdressers and many others are affected by the money being taken out of the local economy. Each of these is a tragedy. Each of these is a life that needs to be picked up, a mortgage that needs to be paid, a Christmas that had to be got through. Redcar and Cleveland Mind has had a 91% increase in mental health referrals in the past year, and we know that January and February are hard at the best of times. I therefore thought it important to stop at this point and to take stock of where we are and what is happening.

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the collapse of SSI has had massive ramifications right across Teesside, so any response that the Government may give, including Lord Heseltine’s review, has to deliver immediate and targeted support to ensure that all our constituents who are so affected have the employment opportunities that they, and our communities, deserve?

[Anna Turley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The scale of this has been absolutely devastating, not just for those who were directly employed, but, as I said, in the knock-on repercussions for our community.

This debate is about trying to learn lessons from the support package that has been put in place—lessons at local level and, indeed, national level. It aims to look at how the £50 million support package from the Government is being applied, what is working and what is not, and what lessons can be learned, particularly as we see other steelmaking areas in the country now facing the same tragedy as us.

Out of the tragedy has come some positive learning. The steel taskforce has been an important creation to enable multi-agency co-operation from the start. Weekly meetings have allowed local partners from the Department for Work and Pensions, the local authority, BIS, the unions, the local enterprise partnership, the local media, elected politicians and others to clarify communications processes and to get to the root of the issues and concerns. I believe that every region should consider putting together a committee of this kind that could be called on in the event of a catastrophe similar to that which we saw last year. Indeed, areas with similar high levels of unemployment may want to consider organising such partnerships as a standard procedure to tackle the challenges they face in employment and skills.

It has also been encouraging that national and local agencies have worked together in a way that departmental silos and local versus national boundaries all too often prevent. The National Careers Service has provided guidance and advice. The Skills Funding Agency has acted to remove barriers and increase the flexible use of its funding for SSI workers. Jobcentre Plus has worked closely alongside the DWP and BIS, allowing rapid response processes to be put in place and creating an efficient system for passing on referrals. FE Plus, a group of colleges in Teesside, has forged a close working relationship with private training providers, allowing referrals to be passed from public sector providers to private sector education providers with specialist provision.

This experience has highlighted the complex and bureaucratic nature of skills funding and provision, but it has also clearly indicated that after an initial period of shock, enabling agencies to work together at regional level has allowed many of the usual barriers to be overcome, helped particularly by the benefit of a clear decision-making body in the form of the taskforce.