Protecting Britain’s Steel Industry

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab) [V]]

Steel is a vital industry—vital to our economy, our national security, and the prosperity of communities outside London and the south-east. If the Government implement the Trade Remedies Authority’s recommendations to scrap nine of the 19 safeguard tariffs on steel, it will pave the way for cheap imports that will undermine our domestic steel industry at the worst possible time.

Current trade policy is failing the UK’s regions. Despite the protestations of Government Members, time and again the Conservatives have failed to back British steel, opting instead to rely on imported steel in Government procurement contracts. Ministers and the TRA are undermining an industry that, as we have heard, directly employs nearly 34,000 people in relatively well paid and highly skilled jobs and supports a further 42,000 jobs in the supply chain. Labour has pledged to build in Britain to create UK manufacturing jobs in the low-carbon infrastructure of the future. We cannot allow the Government to offshore this vital industry. British steel should be at the heart of every major UK defence and infrastructure project. We need to see investment in decarbonisation and in hydrogen technology that will enable our steel industry to lead the way towards achieving the UK’s net zero target and safeguard good, well-paid green jobs in the process.

We need a trade policy that empowers workers. Labour warned that the lack of representation for both industry and unions on the Trade Remedies Authority would be detrimental and lead to the kind of recommendations that this motion seeks to reject today. My union, Unite, which represents thousands of members in all areas of the steel industry, is urging the Government to take immediate action to stabilise the industry. I share the concerns of Unite assistant general secretary, Steve Turner, who said that

“there is a real danger that a combination of ideology and the wrong political choices will open the gates to cheap imports, which will costs thousands of skilled jobs and devastate local communities.”

The Government may be willing to abandon steelworkers and their communities, but my party—the Labour party—will do whatever it takes to defend and protect them and build a stronger, greener, more prosperous British steel industry for the future.