Scunthorpe Steelworks

John Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 27th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question and for his expertise as a member of the Select Committee. We had this debate yesterday. Yes, having a long view has to be the right thing. The Government must ensure that we spend that £2.5 billion of taxpayers’ money in the right way to secure the industry well into the future.

[John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)]

As the grandson of a steelworker in Corby, Northamptonshire, I understand something of the iconic nature of the industry. The hon. Lady tries to blame us Conservatives for what went wrong. Is the situation not too confused? The Government are not sending the right signals to the industry and we are not sure what we want. We already do not make the right kinds of steel for much of the defence industry. The steel strategy will be published in the spring—wonderful. When is the spring? The Government need to get a grip and send out signals now. If we are going to negotiate with the Chinese about the Scunthorpe mill and the amount of money we are spending there, should we not have some kind of golden share so that taxpayers are comfortable about what is going on there?

[Sarah Jones]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that I very much have a grip. We are working with officials, the Secretary of State and others all the time. In terms of the conditions that he suggests we should put on the offer of funding, the offer we made was conditional on job targets, fair terms for workers, adhering to UK law, protecting taxpayers’ money—a whole raft of conditions were set and need to be adhered to.

As for the hon. Gentleman’s haste, there was no steel strategy in the 14 years of the previous Government. We are developing one. I am not going to stand in front of taxpayers in my constituency and say, “I have spent £2.5 billion just on a whim.” We have to get this right.

We are working with industry. I was at Celsa in Cardiff this week at a roundtable of the scrap industry and the steelmakers talking about the plan. I have done roundtables with all the industries that buy steel to ensure that we understand what demand will be over the coming years. We are getting this right, which is what the taxpayer would expect of us.