Protecting Britain’s Steel Industry

Holly Mumby-Croft Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Holly Mumby-Croft (Scunthorpe) (Con) [V]]

I am aware that many learned colleagues wish to speak this evening, so I will get straight to the point and will keep my remarks specific to the TRA safeguards issue.

As colleagues will know, my right hon. Friend the International Trade Secretary will decide whether to accept the Trade Remedies Authority’s recommendations on steel safeguards. Its recommendations are to remove safeguard protections for almost half of UK steel product categories. As it stands, if she does not accept that recommendation, all safeguard protections will expire by the end of this month, and I accept that her hands are somewhat tied in that regard.

I have put on record my opposition to the TRA’s preliminary recommendations in pretty frank terms, and many colleagues have spoken about the issue in Parliament, fed their views back to the TRA and raised the issue with the Department for International Trade. Despite this extensive feedback, a week later the TRA’s final recommendations still overlooked many of the arguments that were made on both sides of the House—namely, that it did not make a sufficiently industry-led assessment, that it did not use International Steel Statistics Bureau data but used data from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs instead, and that it did not sufficiently consider the impact of recent events on the UK steel industry. Reading the final recommendations, it is clear that the TRA is to some degree a hostage of the rigid terms set out in the trade remedies regulations. It is not forward-looking in its assessments and, regrettably, some decisions were made despite the data being insufficient.

I am sure that many across the House will agree that decisions that affect the lives and livelihoods of our constituents cannot be made in that way, and that we now need further proactive solutions to support the steel industry. We must look at whether reform of the Trade Secretary’s powers is required to allow safeguard assessments to be conducted in part by Ministers, who have an understanding of the bigger picture, who are in a position to make decisions about the trade-offs and who are accountable for their decision making. I thank my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister for his commitment to this issue and for agreeing to meet me. That will be a welcome discussion, and I urge the Government to explore how we can make World Trade Organisation-compliant changes in legislation to allow the Trade Secretary the option to take back control and consider whether it is legally possible to extend our existing safeguards. Speaking plainly, it is clear to me that when the EU is set to keep all 19 of its steel safeguards and we are set to keep only 10, that risks putting us at a disadvantage.

I was born in Scunthorpe, and I was there in 2018 and 2019 when the steelworks were at huge risk. I saw at first hand how much effort and funding the Conservative Government put in place to support jobs, and my words tonight are not a comment on the Government’s previous support for steel; they are a comment on the TRA’s recommendations and on how we react to them. They are a plain ask of the Government to help the steel industry again, because I believe that their instinct is to support the steel industry. No one in this country can go a single day without steel. It is a special case: it is a foundation industry and it affects my constituents, and I will work with right hon. and hon. Members from across the House to fight for the interests of steelworkers in Scunthorpe.