Steel Industry

Debate between Ian Lavery and Angela Eagle

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ms Eagle]

I hope we can get some progress on procurement, not least from BIS, which is contracting out the icebreaker research vessel as we speak. Otherwise, all of this is a missed opportunity. The UK steel industry needs action, not good intentions. The Government need to act much more effectively on procurement, and if they do, we will support them, but we will judge them on the contracts awarded that guarantee a future for UK steel; we will not judge them on warm words or grand but meaningless press releases.

The Government should explore the scope for acting temporarily on business rates. Failure to act is not cost-free, as the hard closure at Redcar demonstrated. With redundancy costs and employment support of £80 million and on-site clean-up costs running into hundreds of millions of pounds, it might well be that in the long run strategic support is far better value than the cost of total closure.

Last week, the Business Secretary said that the Government would

“do everything within their power to support”

the industry, and he said to our steel communities:

“We will not abandon you now, in your time of greatest need.”—[Official Report, 20 October 2015; Vol. 600, c. 815.]

The Prime Minister had previously stated that the Government would

“do everything we can to keep steelmaking in Redcar.”—[Official Report, 16 September 2015; Vol. 599, c. 1046.]

The Government then abandoned the people of Redcar by refusing to mothball the plant and save the assets, which would have kept alive the possibility of a return to steelmaking in the future. In fact, the Minister said yesterday in evidence to the Select Committee:

“It needed that awful moment in Redcar to concentrate all political minds in Government”.

So, Redcar has been sacrificed and minds have been concentrated, and now we need to know what the Government are planning to do to safeguard the future of UK steel and what is left of our steel communities. In Redcar, Scunthorpe, Clydebridge, Dalzell and Rotherham, those facing uncertainty across the midlands and Wales—men and women who have spent years developing highly specialised skills but who now have to find alternative employment in local economies shattered by steel plant closures—are waiting to see how the Government intend to deliver on their warm words.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

We saw this happen in the coalmining industry: jobs went and people were asked to retrain. It is an absolute disaster. I welcome the £80 million, but Redcar, Rotherham and the other areas have high unemployment. We can train people as much as we like, but the jobs are not there. Does my hon. Friend agree that the money should be invested in keeping the steel industry alive, instead of closing it and trying to retrain people for jobs that are not there?

[Ms Eagle]

My hon. Friend speaks with much passion because he has been through this process with the coal community. It is easy for the Minister to dismiss the searing experiences that our coal communities went through following decisions taken by the last Tory Government, but I do not think she should.