Jim Shannon
Main Page: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)Department Debates - View all Jim Shannon's debates with the Department for Business and Trade
(3 weeks, 5 days ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
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Blair McDougall
We did not take the decision lightly, and we would have preferred commercial options. We are now 11 hours and 12 minutes into ownership of the company. We are deeply committed and open to private sector partnerships to ensure the future of British Steel, and that is an essential and early part of the conversation.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
As always, the Minister is positive and giving us encouragement. I welcome the steps that have been taken to secure the wider British steel industry, but I will press the Minister on the critical issue facing manufacturing in Northern Ireland. As the Minister will know, under the Windsor framework, businesses in Northern Ireland are being hit by a double whammy of 50% tariffs on imports exceeding the slashed quotas. That is catastrophic for our engineering firms, so will the Minister commit to urgent discussions with the Northern Ireland Executive and local businesses to resolve the tariff anomaly, protect internal UK trade, and ensure that Northern Ireland’s manufacturing backbone is not broken by an unintended own goal?
Blair McDougall
Having got through this urgent question without making any commitments on behalf of my hon. Friend the Minister for Industry, I will give one now and say that I am sure he would agree to the meetings the hon. Gentleman suggests. There are specific arrangements within the trade measures we have taken that are intended to ensure the flow of steel into Northern Ireland, and there is advice for GB companies taking steel products into Northern Ireland. The hon. Gentleman’s question again highlights the importance of having that ongoing conversation with the EU, because we are not the EU’s problem when it comes to steel, and it is not ours.