Scunthorpe Steelworks

Chris Vince Excerpts

Thursday 27th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

Madam Deputy Speaker, you will recognise the conversations that we are having from your experience as Minister of State in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. The Opposition seem to have a new-found enthusiasm for virgin steelmaking that in government they did not have at all. We will make sure that we are doing the right thing. [Interruption.] I do not have time to go into this conversation at this point, but I will be very happy to have it with the right hon. Gentleman. There are some important points to note, including that we make a lot of our steel for defence not from primary steel but in electric arc furnaces. It is about getting the right mix. That is what we will make sure we do.

[Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)]

Last week, I visited British Offsite, whose chief executive officer hails from my constituency of Harlow, about the innovative house building that it is doing using techniques that require a lot of steel, although I have to say that it uses it efficiently. What meetings has the Minister had with house builders, as well as with the defence sector, as she rightly said, as part of the Government’s steel strategy?

[Sarah Jones]

I meet house builders regularly; I have some meetings with them today. The production and recycling of steel is important to construction, as are some of the off-takes from steel that can be used to make cement; there is recycling that can be done on that front as well. We need a lot of steel to build the 1.5 million homes that the Government want to build, so we need to make sure that the steel industry is strong.