Steel Industry (Special Measures) Bill

Ellie Chowns Excerpts

2nd reading
Saturday 12th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

Steel is strategically vital for the UK and the foundation of our industry. We could and should be producing much more of it domestically. Steel is also integral to the green industrial transformation that is essential for our future. Wind turbines, trains, rail tracks and electric vehicles are key elements of the sustainable future for our economy.

The Green party believes that public ownership is the best solution in this case, because only public ownership would give us the control that we need to ensure a proper strategic, long-term plan for the renewal of the steel industry not just in Scunthorpe but nationally. None the less, we will be supporting the Bill.

We do, however, need to think long term. We have an opportunity to reprocess far more of our waste steel to feed our industry, instead of exporting it. We have an opportunity to use the skills of the communities in places such as Scunthorpe to drive that green industrial transformation. Moreover, the Government have an opportunity, a need and a duty to use not just this Bill but the other levers that are available to them to support this crucial strategic industry.

As the Secretary of State has just acknowledged, electricity prices, because they are locked to gas prices, are kept too high. We need to decouple electricity from gas. As the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) mentioned, we should be introducing the carbon border adjustment mechanism at the same time as the EU—a year earlier than currently planned—to protect our steel industry. We should be making use of anti-dumping mechanisms to prevent the dumping of steel that is sold on the global market at below cost price. We should be using industrial and innovation policies to support the development of innovations—which were referred to by the hon. Member for Stockton North (Chris McDonald), who clearly knows a great deal about the industry—that will be the future of the steel industry. We cannot just patch up our old technology. We should be looking to the future and considering what innovations we need to produce clean, green steel as the foundation for that green industrial transformation?