Former Steelworks Site in Redcar

Debate between Anna Turley and Robert Goodwill

Wednesday 14th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Anna Turley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have had some really positive cross-party discussions about a free port in Teesport. The potential to create jobs, attract investment and elevate the area on the global stage is huge. We have got to ensure we get it right, but there is massive potential there, Brexit or no Brexit.

I want to talk a bit about the opportunities on the SSI site. We are building on a strong foundation of public and private sector talent and on Teesside’s determination. We have the same ambitions for the steel site and a strong local team of business leaders, local authority officers and cross-party politicians, who are all working hard to deliver on those ambitions. There are many innovative projects with an interest in the site—from energy generation and materials processing to rail and renewables—and lots to get excited about. Much of the detail is protected for commercial reasons, but some of the details have been reported in the local media. Metal production could be coming back to the site, with proposals for an aluminium cast-house facility. A £5 billion energy plant focused on clean gas is also in the pipeline, and will potentially create thousands of jobs.

I secured this debate not simply to congratulate everyone and say that everything is marvellous. I am afraid it is not. I am already aware of two big investments that will now go elsewhere, attracted by better support. The first is by the chemicals company INEOS, which was looking to Teesside as the location for its new 4x4 manufacturing plant for Projekt Grenadier. That £600 million investment could have created more than 1,000 new jobs. The South Tees site and a location in Germany were shortlisted, but it was announced just over a week ago that the company may now look to Wales instead. That is a big lost opportunity for the regeneration of the development corporation site and for jobs on Teesside. The car industry is one of our region’s key strengths—the supply chain is well developed and we have a great skilled workforce.

The other lost investment I am aware of is by a major steel company with significant UK operations, which was looking to develop an electric arc furnace on Teesside, building on the excellent research into electric steelmaking by the Materials Processing Institute in South Bank. That would have returned primary steelmaking to Teesside, continuing our long and proud history of doing that. Instead, the company is now looking at a more attractive offer from the devolved Government in Scotland.

We must ask why those companies made those decisions. I believe the Government could have given them more certainty and financial support. I highlight those incidents not to spread doom and gloom—I know how important it is to talk up the area—but we need to recognise what is at stake if we cannot secure the confidence of those who are looking to invest.

[Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right that it is disappointing that the Land Rover Defender plant will not come to Teesside, but does she recognise that the site that has been allocated is an existing Ford automotive plant where there are a lot of skills? No doubt it was that, rather than the fact that the Government were not prepared to support Teesside, that tipped the balance.

[Anna Turley]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but that just demonstrates the urgency of the need to sort the site out and get it ready. We just cannot compete with other sites if we still do not own the site and it needs huge investment to get it ready. That is why this debate is so urgent.

Brilliant companies are investing in our area. I have mentioned Sirius’s $4.2 billion project. At full production, that will have the ability to increase the size of the Tees valley economy by 18%, and some 800 people are already working on the site. However, to reach its full potential, that project, like others I have mentioned, will require a Treasury guarantee to match commercially raised funds.

I sincerely hope that the Government back up our local ambitions with the finance necessary to support that project and others, and that they avoid their natural inclination to be risk averse when it comes to backing such major projects. I urge them to believe in us in the Tees valley and in the companies that want to invest in great projects there. I am raising a warning flag. The Government must pull their weight and put the required money behind those bids, or we will continue to lose out to devolved or other nations.

The biggest barrier to realising our ambitions is the ownership of the charge on the former SSI land, which remains with the Thai banks. That is holding back progress. Negotiations with those banks are ongoing following the signature of a memorandum of understanding between the banks and the development corporation in May. That was due to expire at the end of October, but I understand it has been extended until early next year, although no press release was issued to acknowledge that. The local team is working hard, supported by funding from the local councils, to conclude a deal for the SSI land and for land owned by others, such as Tata. It is hindered in those efforts by premature announcements of multi-million pound investments that are some way off. Such announcements put at risk the chance of securing an affordable, locally negotiated deal, and risk raising local expectations. Of course, we have compulsory purchase as a backstop should those efforts fail. That process has started—landowners know they will receive nothing for the land should a deal fail.

As a first step, we need the Government to do everything in their power to support ongoing negotiations and ensure that they result in a successful agreement at the earliest opportunity. If that involves providing funding to seal the deal, that option must be on the table. Failure to gain ownership of the land and assets is holding everything back, and Ministers need to go beyond ad hoc funding commitments to provide confidence that long-term support will be forthcoming.

That brings me to funding. Before the Budget, the development corporation had just £5 million to progress regeneration work, which is not enough to get the land ready. Given the complexity of the industrial assets involved and the huge amount of work that needs to be done to clean up the site, that will cost an awful lot of money—£5 million will not stretch far. Although the management funding of £118 million in last year’s Budget was welcome, it was just keep-safe money that the Government had a legal duty to provide to protect the public from industrial hazards. It was the absolute minimum required to keep the site safe and protect the lives of those who work there and of the local community. It was also aimed at reducing the Government’s management costs.

In this year’s Budget, three years on, the Government announced that the site is to become a special economic zone. It is not yet clear what that actually means. At this stage, the extra powers the area will be granted for being such a zone are limited to being able to retain 100% of business rates growth. There is little difference between such a zone and existing enterprise zones, of which we already have plenty around the Tees valley, and that power is already granted to local authorities. Business rates retention will increase to 75% in 2020-21 and to 100% for the pilot schemes that are already under way in 20 local authority areas.

I was concerned that that change would mean taking money that would otherwise have been received by Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council, placing the cost on local people and public services. However, answers to written questions I tabled following the Budget reassure me that that will not be the case. All business rates growth over and above the current baseline will be retained locally and shared between the development corporation and the borough council according to a formula that is still to be agreed.

Although it makes sense that the private sector should help to fund the ongoing development of the site, I am concerned that progress will be extremely slow if that is the main source of funding for regeneration. That mechanism will begin to pay off only when new industries are established, and as we do not yet own the land, that is some time away. We would like reassurance from Ministers that that will not be the limit of central Government’s contribution to the clean-up of the site, not including their long-term legal responsibility to keep the site safe.

I recognise that the Budget also included £14 million to support short-term measures to help unlock two projects on the most shovel-ready land, which is currently owned by Tata. That is obviously welcome, but in the grand scheme of things it is a very limited measure when compared with the many millions that will be needed not only to prepare land but to provide crucial infrastructure.

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[Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

If the Minister takes nothing else from today’s debate, it should be the commitment of all parties and all players in the Teesside area to ensuring that the site, which sadly no longer produces steel, is seen as a big opportunity, as the hon. Member for Redcar (Anna Turley) said at the start of her speech. With the Mayor of Tees Valley, Ben Houchen, leading on that, we are in a good position to mobilise everyone to make sure that it happens.

The Labour party has learned some harsh lessons about that. I was the candidate in Redcar in 1992, standing against Marjorie Mowlam. I do not think that Marjorie would have stood by in the way that her successor did, and not fought tooth and nail to keep that site. Labour learned that harsh lesson at the ballot box when a large Labour majority was swept away by a Liberal Democrat who did fight for the site.

[Anna Turley]

Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that the steps taken by the Labour Government at that time mothballed the site and kept it open for another investor to come along and bring it back to life? The problem was that in 2015 this Government just turned off the switch and closed it, when they could have invested and kept it open like the Labour Government did.

[Mr Goodwill]

I would leave that to the people of Redcar, who took that judgment in 2010 and did not feel that their Member of Parliament at the time had the commitment. I would not lay the same charge at the hon. Lady’s door. She has fought tooth and nail for that site, and has possibly learned some of the lessons of the past. People do understand whether a Member really is committed to the local people and industry, rather than seeing a constituency as a convenient place to get elected and then pursuing their career nationally.

As candidate, I visited the site on a number of occasions. At the time the blast furnace was operating at full bore, having recently been refurbished. I was shown two concrete bases on the South Gare site for the second and third blast furnaces that were due to be installed there. Indeed, we visited the basic oxygen steelmaking plant—the BOS plant—which at the time was colouring everything in the area with red dust, so some people in the area might not rue the passing of that big concrete building, which was where the crucibles of iron were blasted with oxygen and turned into steel.