Steel Industry

Debate between Hannah Bardell and Tom Blenkinsop

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

Thank you very much for calling me to speak, Mr Betts, and I assure you that I will not keep you nearly as long as 15 minutes.

I speak today on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows), who unfortunately is unwell and so cannot be here. I represent the constituency of Livingston. While Livingston does not directly have any steel jobs, it is a traditional manufacturing constituency. Over the years while I was growing up, I saw closures of sites by companies such as Motorola and Bausch & Lomb, and the devastating impact that such closures can have on a local area, so first and foremost, I will say that my hon. Friend and I stand in solidarity with the constituencies across the UK that have been devastated by the closures of their local factories.

The quality of the debate today has been fantastic and the debate itself has been very consensual. Clearly, there will be differences of opinion on certain policy matters, but on issues such as this one we have to transcend politics and come together, to call for our vital steel industries to be protected.

Last year in Scotland, as is well known, the Tata Steel plants of Dalzell and Clydebridge faced huge uncertainty, as do many others across the UK today. The Scottish National party-led Scottish Government worked with the company, with local members of all political parties, with trade unions, with local government and with local communities, and they kept their promise of leaving no stone unturned though the work of that steel taskforce and through the work of Fergus Ewing, who was the Business Minister at the time and who has recently won an award for his work on this issue.

The steelworks of Clydebridge and Dalzell have now been bought by Liberty House and are coming back into production. They had been mothballed and I absolutely take on board the point that the hon. Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove) made about his disappointment at the lack of foresight and strategy in not supporting the mothballing of a site so that it can be brought back into production later.

For the avoidance of doubt and in case anybody wants to raise this point, as it has been raised in other debates previously, in April this year, then Prime Minister David Cameron mistakenly claimed that there was zero Scottish steel in the new Forth road bridge. That was quickly corrected by my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond), who, as Members will know, is an assiduous pursuer of the facts, because steel from the Dalzell plate mill was used in the girders at either end of the bridge. My right hon. Friend further pointed out that the reason why there was no Scottish bidder for the main steel subcontract for the bridge was the closure of the Ravenscraig steel mill.

[Tom Blenkinsop]

The original contract let by the Scottish Government was with a Chinese company and a Catalonian company. The Catalonian company had to withdraw and it was actually Cleveland Bridge, in conjunction with Tata’s Dalzell plant, that stepped in to fill that gap. The original contract—as signed off by the Scottish Government—fell through and Cleveland Bridge, which is in Darlington, and the Dalzell plant stepped in to fill that gap. So Scottish steel was used—in fact, it was British steel, as it was slab from Scunthorpe.

[Hannah Bardell]

I will take that point on board, but the hon. Member will know that much of that steel was rolled and developed in Scotland. Nevertheless, I thank him for his clarification.

I was going on to say that one of the reasons that situation came about was the closure of the Ravenscraig steel mill by a previous Tory Government in 1992. I know that Labour Members—the predecessors of the Labour Members here today—fought hard alongside our party’s Members to save Ravenscraig. I pay tribute to all those Members who tried to save Ravenscraig.

That comment by the former Prime Minister reveals the lack of understanding about Scottish steel and indeed about steel across the UK, and the cavalier attitude with which such statements have been made about the industry. We cannot let that continue; there must be, as so many Members have said today, proper commitment from the Government.

I say that because the issues that we are discussing today are not limited to the steel industry but extend to British industry in general. Post-Brexit, the uncertainty and anxiety are greater than ever, because we have no idea what kind of deal many industries will get. We know what the car industry will get, although we do not have the detail of that deal. We do not know whether other deals will be made sector by sector, or area by area. Before the Brexit vote, we knew that the international demand for steel was falling: the OECD had said that excess global capacity was expected to widen to 645 million tonnes. Now, post-referendum, the pound is falling, so UK steel will be cheaper for foreign buyers, but as other Members have said, the cost of the imported raw materials will be higher in the long-term, which will make things very difficult.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop) on securing this debate and on the passion with which he spoke. He highlighted the contrast between the approach and guarantees given to Nissan and the automotive industry with the support for the steel industry. That is ironic, given that the World Steel Association has said that on average 900 kg of steel is used per vehicle. So we will be making cars in Britain but importing the steel to make them and many parts of those cars. I hope that irony is not lost on the Government and that they take this issue very seriously.

Strong anti-dumping measures are critical. They were nearly secured with our EU partners. In our view, it is indefensible that the UK Government blocked EU attempts to regulate Chinese steel. The hon. Member for Corby spoke about the importance of the all-party group on steel and metal related industries and its collaboration with others. He made a plea to Tata for more information and said that the Government’s leadership would be key. Although he is a self-professed Brexiteer, he wants better leadership. However, given that it was the UK that blocked the EU attempts to regulate Chinese steel, I am not sure how he thinks the UK will do a better job. He was not able to answer that question earlier; perhaps the Minister will be able to answer it. We are all interested to know how the UK industry will fare if the UK ends up operating under World Trade Organisation rules, as the Secretary of State for International Trade has said. To be fair, the hon. Member for Corby was encouraging his colleagues in the Government to be proactive in their industrial strategy and said they needed to champion steel.

The hon. Member for Sheffield Hillsborough spoke passionately about the speciality skills and products produced in her constituency and the importance of the Prime Minister’s visit to India next week in ensuring the future of speciality steel—