(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberUrgent 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.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
I thank Mr Speaker for granting the urgent question. I will ignore the Minister’s political comments and focus on what is more important: the future of thousands of workers, in particular at the Scunthorpe works, part of which falls within my Brigg and Immingham constituency and where many hundreds of my constituents work.
There have been widespread media reports suggesting that coke will stop being imported from October, which would mean production would stop in Scunthorpe by Christmas. There are rumours concerning the fact that employees will be given notice very soon. That is obviously creating great anxiety among those directly employed by British Steel and those in the supply chain, which in northern Lincolnshire extends to many thousands of people and many businesses.
I accept that much of this is media speculation, but if you and your family are reliant on an income from British Steel or a business that supports the sector, it is a very worrying time. Many people who have worked in the steel industry all their lives, and people who know about the market for steel, have a genuine concern that turning off the blast furnaces would see the end, or at least the beginning of the end, of steel manufacturing, certainly in Scunthorpe and possibly more widely. If we allow Scunthorpe’s furnaces to close, we will become more dependent on world markets, and effectively the best outcome that can be delivered from that is Scunthorpe ending up rolling steel produced in countries across the world, which would leave this nation vulnerable to price and supply volatility. Unions have said that that would be devastating. Charlotte Brumpton-Childs, a GMB national officer, has been quoted as saying:
“Early closure of the blast furnaces at Scunthorpe would be devastating for the community and workforce”
—and so it would.
“Unions have been assured throughout the process that the blast furnace operations would continue throughout the construction of an electric arc furnace. There has been no consultation over an early closure.”
Indeed, when the Minister visited Scunthorpe earlier this year, she said—according to the Scunthorpe Telegraph, so it must be true—that the UK needs to maintain capacity to produce primary steel. Is that the Government’s policy?
Order. I am sorry, but the hon. Gentleman has exceeded the two minutes allotted to him. I do not know whether he wants to give us one final sentence.
I will bring my remarks to a conclusion, if I may, Madam Deputy Speaker, by saying that if the UK is to maintain a domestic steel manufacturing capacity, the Government must accept that there will always be a burden on the taxpayer.
(6 years, 11 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesQ
Dr Fowler: At the moment that procedure happens through the European scrutiny system because of the EU’s competence to conduct trade policy. The main instrument is the so-called scrutiny reserve, under which the Government deposits relevant documents with the European Scrutiny Committees in both Houses and they scrutinise them. The relevant Minister is not supposed to sign up to things in the EU Council if the relevant documents are still held under scrutiny. That works every time a new set of documents is tabled along the process.
The system can be quite effective but there is a difficulty about timing, and getting time on the Floor of the House. There is a difficulty if something has to move quickly at EU level, and then the Government quite often uses what is called the scrutiny override where it just says, “We had to go ahead with this.” Then there is also the difficulty about trying to schedule appropriate debates in Committee or on the Floor of the House.
Jude Kirton-Darling: My only addition would be that currently, one of our frustrations as MEPs is about what happens when some things that we have scrutinised heavily at European level, pass to the national level. We see the level of scrutiny in the German Parliament, in the Belgian Parliament, in Scandinavian Parliaments, where there are very detailed scrutiny processes—often going on at the same time as we are scrutinising at European level, so we get feedback from those Parliaments during the process—and we do not feel, in many cases, that same process from Westminster. So, regardless of what happens in terms of Brexit, it is one of the ways in which Westminster could do more to scrutinise trade in any case, and that would be a benefit for everybody.
Dr Hestermeyer: Just as a reminder, the scrutiny override was used for CETA. To compare that, under German law, for example, Parliament gets involved very early on. There was a change in the constitution and then an additional statute was passed, so Parliament gets involved very early on and can make binding statements for the Government, which will then be taken into account by the Government also in the Council. That way, there is a large impact of parliamentary statements in governmental positions, because in the end, the Government will have to defend measures in the Council.
Q
Jude Kirton-Darling: Unfortunately, no.
(6 years, 11 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesQ
Nick Ashton-Hart: There are so many moving parts. Assuming that there is a date, that we know it, and that all counterparties have a few years’ advance warning of it—the date that matters is a date on which existing agreements will no longer be available to us—we would have to look at their approval process and count backwards to find the date by which we would have to conclude our negotiations with them. That is the only way that you would know what your actual hard finishing date was for any of those agreements. I do not know if that analysis has been done by the Department for International Trade—I am hoping that it has done some of it, and I am guessing that it probably has. Say it takes two years, and we have two years. We are not going to finish an agreement tomorrow, so that means that that deal will not be done in time. What percentage of our GDP, and of our exports and imports, is that deal, which will not be available?
That is the first thing that you would have to do is know how much negotiating time you have, and with which parties. You would then have to prioritise deals based on their economic importance to us. I am not sure what the decision tree is within the Ministry—I am sure that there must be one—for what it prioritises. The only way that you all will have a clear picture of the deadlines is to work backwards. I have seen no discussion at all of how long it takes our counterparties to conclude approving an agreement, but it can be a considerable time, depending on the country. I imagine it would be very difficult. The short answer is that it is hard for me to imagine that there are even enough people to negotiate that many deals simultaneously with that many parties, unless you had several years to do it.
Q
Nick Dearden: It probably is, yes, because there may be countries where, for example, the human rights situation is so bad that any trade deal that you do is effectively reinforcing and giving succour to a regime to which we would not want to give succour.