Britain’s Industrial Future

Holly Mumby-Croft Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Bill Esterson]

Unfortunately, the hon. Gentleman does not understand that 12 years of low growth, low investment and low productivity mean that places like Stoke-on-Trent have been hit very badly by this Conservative Government.

Where has 12 years of Conservative Government left British industry, not least in places such as Stoke-on-Trent? Manufacturing has seen the worst output over three months since the 1980s. Anyone who genuinely wants to turn around the UK’s poor economic performance cannot discount the role of industry in our economic growth. It is not a question of being either a service-led or a manufacturing-led economy. Successful economies are a combination, and successful industries are a combination, too. Good manufacturing depends on the services that support production.

Labour knows the value and understands the crucial role of our industrial base in delivering economic growth, which is why we have outlined our industrial strategy to give businesses certainty that they can invest alongside Government to safeguard our world-class industries. Economic strength needs partnership between Government and market, and between business and worker. Our new industrial strategy has partnership at its core, because partnership is how we ensure strong, secure growth and a fairer, greener future.

Our plans for a national wealth fund to invest in our great industries will play a crucial role, alongside businesses and trade unions, in delivering the certainty that investors and workers need. Labour’s plan will bring businesses, workers and trade unions together to safeguard the future of an industry that is the pride of communities across the country. I am talking, of course, about steel.

What we need is not crunch crisis talks and random nationalisations but investment in our great industries, with a real plan to secure our steelmaking future through a partnership to invest in the technology that our steelmakers need to export green steel around the world. But for 12 years the Conservatives have failed to back Britain’s steel industry. The Government have let the industry decline, with jobs offshored and communities damaged. While Governments around the world have been committed to their domestic industries, with long-term strategic investment in green steel production, the Conservatives have failed to invest in the transition, have attempted to weaken safeguards that protected our steelmakers from being undercut by cheap steel imports and have splashed tens of millions of pounds on imported steel to build British schools and hospitals.

Labour will make different choices. We will put UK steel at the heart of our wider industrial policy, building British wind turbines and railways, and investing in carbon capture and storage, and hydrogen infrastructure. I wrote to the Secretary of State two weeks ago about the concerns of the steel industry in this country. As he has not replied to my letter, perhaps the Minister winding up this debate will tell us what action the Government are taking to support this core industry.

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

Would a Labour Government be looking to support the steel industry in the same way as Labour did between 1997 and 2010: by halving the number of workers in the industry?

[Bill Esterson]

The hon. Lady should perhaps take more care about how the Chinese are threatening to pull the plug on steel production in her constituency right now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bill Esterson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that, and I suspect that even if Ministers will not admit it publicly, they would say so privately too. I mentioned that I wrote to the Secretary of State two weeks ago. I am disappointed that I have not had an answer sooner, given the scale of the challenge and the emergency facing so many parts of the steel industry.

[Holly Mumby-Croft]

The hon. Gentleman mentions the letter that he wrote two weeks ago. I am grateful to have that support even if it is only a letter and very late in the day. Can he set out in a little more detail what else he has done? In particular, can he say what he did to help with the two extensions of the safeguard, because I do not remember discussing that with him at the time?

[Bill Esterson]

I would have hoped that, as a Conservative MP, the hon. Lady would have been talking to her own colleagues. I hope that her ministerial colleague will have heard what she said, and that she will join me in calling on him to respond to the requests of the steel industry. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) can sit there and heckle all day—he does quite a lot of that—but the honest truth is that we do need cross-party working to deliver for steelworkers. I am happy to support the call of the hon. Lady, as I am the calls of my colleagues who have spoken in this debate.

On the automotive sector, it must make sense for the Government to support workers at one of the most productive car plants in Europe. That is why the Government should be working with BMW at Cowley to give it assurances that they support electric car production in the UK. They should be working with the car industry to support the transition to electric vehicles, not sitting on the sidelines while our great automotive sector falls behind our European competitors. While we have one gigafactory in operation, Germany has five, with a further four in construction. France and Italy are set to have twice as many jobs in battery manufacturing as us by 2030. The precarious future of Britishvolt is incredibly worrying for the local economy, risking up to 8,000 jobs, but it also further jeopardises our gigafactory capacity as a country. As part of our plans for a national wealth fund, Labour will part-finance the creation of three new additional gigafactories by 2025, with a target of eight by 2030.

Turning to shipbuilding, a successful strategy means making and buying more ships here in Britain, such as the Fleet Solid Support Ships, rather than seeing lucrative defence contracts built abroad. It is, of course, a very important way of supporting our steel industry. Investing in sovereign defence capability is a matter of national security as well as being good for jobs, 6,000 of which are at the UK’s high quality shipyards from the Fleet Solid Support Ship contract alone.

A hallmark of each iteration of this Conservative Government has been to act in the heat of the moment and lurch from crisis to crisis. The revolving door of Ministers, the seemingly endless soap opera, the unedifying sight of Conservative MPs eating bugs in the jungle mask a much deeper problem. The Conservatives are unable to offer British industry the bedrock on which it needs to grow. They do not have an industrial strategy that can last the term of a Minister let alone the turn of the century. Whether that is ideological opposition—the mistaken belief that Government should get out of the way—or pure incompetence, it is clear that the Conservatives are failing British industry.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It will come as no surprise that I want to concentrate on steel, not just because it is an important employer in my constituency, but because I recognise, like many hon. Members here today, that it is a truly crucial foundation industry. From the wire in our tyres to the rails under our trains, we rely on steel in every element of our life; from the skyscrapers around us to the knives and forks we eat our meals with, it has a huge impact on us all. That is why countries all around the world find ways to support and protect their steel industries, why a free market for steel does not actually exist, and why we must always do everything we can to ensure that our nation can make its own steel.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I agree with parts of the Opposition’s motion. They are right that steelworks provide high-quality, highly paid, skilled jobs. I also agree that the steel industry is crucial to meeting net zero targets: steel is irreplaceable, and if we are to have any realistic chance of meeting our goals, we need to see it not as part of the problem but as a way to find solutions. However, that is probably as far as my agreement goes.

The motion does not recognise the work that the Government have done to support the steel industry. In the past three years alone, I have seen with my own eyes how Conservative Governments have been paying workers’ wages in Scunthorpe. They have twice taken the step of extending the steel safeguards. They have helped with energy costs: since 2013, Conservative Governments have provided more than £800 million in support to the steel industry with energy costs alone. I say that not as a Tory MP, but as somebody born in Scunthorpe who comes from a steel family and understands the importance of the industry to our area.

Anyone who has stood inside an industrial cathedral like our steelworks in Scunthorpe, who has felt the heat on their face and who has felt the ground move as the metal is tapped will feel as proud as I do of the contribution that the industry makes to our nation. Of course there are many challenges, from the frankly crackers emissions trading scheme, which risks incentivising companies’ excess production to protect future carbon allocations, to the price of energy, which under Governments of both parties has historically been higher in this country than in the EU. That is unfair, and it makes it difficult for our world-class steelmakers to hold their own.

On our task of decarbonising steel, I agree with many of the points that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) raised. I want to be clear that we must not fall into the trap of lowering our own emissions simply by shipping them abroad. Our usage of steel will remain, as it should and must, and we must not create an environment in which we damage our capacity or close down our steelworks and end up importing steel. Our climate targets are important, but we all live in one world. I am not interested in any version of net zero that enhances our credentials by offshoring the issues.

We need to take steelworks with us on this journey. I hope the Government will be very firm. As a nation we need to use steel, and we will continue to need to use it. Hammering our own industry and adding the emissions of shipping in order to improve our face-value environmental credentials would be unconscionable and completely pointless.

I welcome the opportunity to raise these challenges—I never like to miss an opportunity to talk about steel—and I know that the Government are not blind to them, because I discuss them regularly with the Government. Many people, locally and in the House, will know that British Steel is also having talks with the Government, and I am very pleased that the Government are engaged in those talks. We need to understand the best way forward, and I hope the Minister will agree with me that we need to find a solution and protect our steel industry.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)]

This Conservative Government are incapable of fixing the structural problems at the heart of our economy. Just look at the past 12 years, when we had six different growth plans. In the past six years, we have had five Prime Ministers and, just this year, we have had four Chancellors. Where is the stability? Where is the consistent plan? Instead, there is a track record of wasted opportunities and mistakes. There has been chaos under the Conservatives, who crashed the economy.

Our growth rate since 2010 has been only 1.4%—lower than the OECD average and behind the USA, Canada and Germany. The country faces the lowest growth in the OECD over the next two years, behind countries including Italy and Greece. The Tories have dismantled our economy by entrenching low growth, low productivity and declining living standards. Working people are expected to pay the price of Tory failure.

For too long, industrial policy in the UK has been plagued by short-termism and its vulnerability to political changes. The British public need a fresh start and part of that is reaching a collaborative settlement with the European Union. Many of us voted to leave the European Union to see a strong, democratic sovereign state working in the interests of the British public: a state that works with business to grow the economy, create good jobs and deliver public infrastructure and projects. Essential to that is an ambitious, Government-driven industrial strategy. We need to rebuild British industry and deliver growth that makes all parts of our country better off.

A recent Rebuild Britain article stated that our country needs

“greater self-reliance with jobs, skills, industries and technologies rooted in local areas serving the needs of localities and the wider nation”,

as my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) outlined so well.

A modern industrial strategy requires building a partnership between the public and private sectors to meet the immense challenges we face. Let us take the automotive industry, which employs 780,000 people in our country and accounts for 10% of total UK exports. Car and van manufacturing can be found in every region of the UK, from the north-east to the east of England, and particularly in my constituency of Luton South, which is incredibly proud of its historical ties to the industry through the local Vauxhall plant.

Despite the Minister’s rhetoric, with the fast approaching 2030 deadline prohibiting the sale of new petrol and diesel cars, unless Britain secures domestic gigafactories for manufacturing batteries, manufacturers will move elsewhere to build their future electric models. Building gigafactories would contribute to meeting net zero, distributing growth across the country and helping to expand automotive exports. It is a win-win-win. However, I heard little about gigafactories from the Minister. Government inaction already means that the UK is far behind other European countries.

The UK has one gigafactory in operation, whereas Germany has five and a further four in construction, not to mention France and Italy, which are set to have twice as many battery manufacturing jobs as us by 2030. Manufacturers such as Vauxhall in Luton need certainty. They need a Government prepared to shape a competitive environment. A consistent policy framework, which businesses can trust, will encourage increased investment over the long term.

As part of our green prosperity plan’s national wealth fund, a Labour Government would part-finance the creation of three new, additional gigafactories by 2025, and we have a target of eight by 2030. Our plan delivers the certainty needed for automotive manufacturers to upscale their operations, in the knowledge that the Government have made a long-term commitment to the industry.

For the automotive sector and many others, we must safeguard the UK’s domestic steel production. While Governments around the world are committing to their domestic industries with long-term strategic investment in green steel production, the Conservatives have failed to invest in the transition, instead attempting to weaken safeguards that protected our steelmakers from being undercut by cheap steel imports and splashing tens of millions on imported steel to build British schools and hospitals.

[Holly Mumby-Croft]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Rachel Hopkins]

No; I am sorry.

Leaving the European Union enables us to increase strategic investment in our key domestic industries; it should not mean stripping back regulations and leaving them exposed to the global market. Labour understands that, and in government we will invest up to £3 billion over the coming decade to green the steel industry. Labour will end the short-termism through our green prosperity plan and by introducing the industrial strategy council, placed on a statutory footing. Labour will work in partnership with business to tackle some of society’s biggest challenges. We are ready to rebuild the country fit for a fairer, greener future. It is time for a fresh start.