UK Steel Industry

Anna Turley Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Walker. It is a privilege to speak in this debate—yet another one on steel in this House. I apologise that I will have to leave part way through the debate for a meeting elsewhere about steel in Scunthorpe. The hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) is coming as well, so we give our apologies.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) on securing the debate and on his good opening speech. As he said, the campaign for the steel industry has been going on for a long while—the challenges facing the industry are not new at all. We have known about them since I was elected in 2010. Even since the steel summit in October—to give credit to the Minister, she was largely responsible for taking the energy from both Government and Opposition Members and moving the summit forward—the situation has become much worse. At the end of the summit we learned about the loss of jobs at Long Products, including in Scunthorpe. Since then we have had job losses in Rotherham and at Caparo Merchant Bar, and this week in south Wales and at Forgemasters in Sheffield. Things are getting significantly worse, not better, so the Government need to step up even more to the plate than they have done so far.

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

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) on securing this important and timely debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) referred to the steel summit in October. Does he agree that there were five very specific asks on that day that the Government could have implemented on the next Monday morning? Instead, they set up working groups, which appear to be little more than talking shops. Concrete action has been extremely limited.

[Nic Dakin]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One of the pressures for the steel summit was the awful news of what happened in Redcar, which really focused minds.

To be fair to the Government, in many ways we have a good Minister. She puts her shoulder to the wheel and tries to move things forward. I am sure that the situation is as tough for her inside Government as it is for us outside, but one of the Opposition’s jobs is to push even harder from outside—that is our responsibility.

Let us look at the five asks. Things have been delivered on energy costs, although the Government promised delivery of the mitigations three years ago, so it took them three years. That is not a track record of fast delivery; on the other hand, it is welcome that that delivery has taken place. There is still more to do. The funding from the energy mitigation is still not immediately getting to the people it needs to reach, so that one has still not been forced through completely, although it is welcome and the Government’s movement on that should be recognised.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker, for what seems the umpteenth time. My mother sends her regards again—private joke.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) on securing this important debate. The situation in his constituency at Port Talbot is grave, with devastating consequences for the community he represents, the prosperity of his local economy and the entire Welsh economy. It is also another body blow for the UK steel industry, which has suffered punch after punch in recent months. Since August last year, the industry has seen 5,000 job losses. One in six of all jobs in British steel have been lost in less than six months and there have been major site closures. We have seen redundancies and reductions in capacity in Redcar, Scunthorpe and Lanarkshire, as well as further job losses this week at Port Talbot, Corby, Sheffield Forgemasters, and in my constituency at the Tata Steel pipe mill.

In response to the acute crisis facing the steel industry, in autumn 2015, the Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills conducted an inquiry into the Government’s response. We published our report just before Christmas, saying that at the time of publication, and as a result of site closures and job losses, the steel industry was on the verge of terminal decline. The announcements this week make a serious matter even worse and run the risk of pushing British steel over the edge and facing a truly existential threat in a matter of weeks or months.

The Committee found that although the Government identified the steel industry as being of vital importance—a point that the Minister established and reiterated during her evidence—they were not alert to the many warning systems being raised by the industry and issues that had been raised for years. We found a lack of action at EU level and a failure by UK Governments to push for a co-ordinated EU approach. Other countries have safeguarded their steel industries against the onslaught of cheap Chinese imports in recognition of the strategic importance of their domestic steel making capability. The UK has not done that, leaving this country and its steel industry particularly exposed.

[Anna Turley]

My hon. Friend is making some extremely important points about the role of the EU in this crisis. As the situation was unfolding in Redcar, the Government made great play of saying they could do nothing to intervene because of state aid rules. My hon. Friend will share my concern that we have had agreement from the European Commission that research and development, developing innovation, supporting training and, crucially, employment, and protecting and enhancing the environment are all grounds on which our Government could have intervened. The Government have done too little, too late for Redcar, but I hope that for other areas they will step up and use those opportunities to get through the state aid rules they hid behind in Redcar.

[Mr Wright]

My hon. Friend has been a fantastic champion of the steel industry generally, and particularly in fighting for SSI and for it to be retained. She will know that EU state aid rules are often a smokescreen for lack of political will. An excellent programme on BBC 1 this week, “Inside Out North East and Cumbria”, looked at the plant closures here and compared them with how the Italian Government could keep steel plants open. There is a lack of political will, because that could have been done. SSI could have been at least mothballed.