Steel Industry

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

We have had a very good and, understandably under the circumstances, passionate debate. I am sorry that because the wind-ups have been truncated—the Minister and I have, I think, eight minutes each—we will not be able to refer to everybody who spoke in the debate. I think 21 Back Benchers participated in the debate. It is good that they were all able to speak and they did so with great passion. I would like to mention my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden), who represents the Llanwern area. That was where my father worked for 20 years and where I was privileged to work in the steel plant and coke ovens for six months before I went up to university. People who come from steelmaking backgrounds understand why everyone feels so passionate about this subject. I am sorry I cannot mention everybody’s contributions, but I commend the knowledge and passion the hon. Members who represent steelmaking constituencies brought to our proceedings, not just today but throughout the current crisis and long before that.

The Government cannot say that they were not warned about the crisis in the steel industry. MPs have been assiduously vocal over a long period of time. I see that the hon. Member for Stockton South (James Wharton), the so-called Minister for the northern powerhouse, has joined us. If he missed any of today’s proceedings he can read about them in The Northern Echo tomorrow. The efforts of my hon. Friends have been the very opposite of the showboating they were accused of. On the contrary, they have stood up for their communities, the British steel industry and its workers. They have made a substantial contribution towards forcing the Government to acknowledge that action is required, however late and inadequate it might be. It is good that the Business Secretary is finally talking to the European Commission, and it is good that he has gone to Brussels. Only last week, we found out in a parliamentary question from my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) that he had not—incredibly—until now spoken to the Commission about this. Clearly, he booked his Eurostar tickets very quickly to get over there today, and we welcome that.

It is perfectly reasonable, however, to ask why it has taken so long. Why has the Business Secretary been chasing rather than leading events? We know that when he became Business Secretary he did not want to have an industrial strategy and preferred to talk about an “industrial approach”. That hardly smacks of someone who will intervene before breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner, let alone supper, on behalf of British industry. There are echoes today of the famous row between Margaret Thatcher and Michael Heseltine over Westland.

[Sir William Cash]

rose—

[Kevin Brennan]

I am not going to give way, because of time.

We found out today that the Government are ordering hundreds of military vehicles and three new ships for our armed forces to be built using steel imported from Sweden. And this at the same time as Gareth Stace, of UK Steel, said that the British steel industry was “likely to die” without stronger support from the Government. He said that yesterday to the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee. We should not be surprised that the Business Secretary has until now pursued what Tata called in its briefing for this debate a laissez-faire ideology, because he has made it clear that that is what he believes in. You might not have read it, Mr Deputy Speaker, but his favourite book is “The Fountainhead”, by Ayn Rand, in which the hero blows up a poor housing estate because he does not like the design, such is his individualist approach.

[The Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise (Anna Soubry)]

Shameful.

[Kevin Brennan]

The Minister may say that, but my argument is that the basic cause of the Government’s slowness to respond to the steel crisis is that the Secretary of State fundamentally believes that it is not the business of Government to get involved in markets and industry. So while he is having to be seen to be doing something by going to Brussels today, he is actually in practice—[Interruption.] Government Members can chunter away as usual all they like, but in practice he has been busy planning the dismantling of his Department’s capacity to support steel and other key strategic British industries. He has volunteered to cut his Department’s budget by 40% , and this week we read in the Financial Times how investment grants to key British sectors are being converted to loans. It turns out that the much-vaunted apprenticeship levy will become a displacement tax on business and will not compensate for the cuts to the training budget.

This approach has to stop, and it is has to be replaced with a proper industrial strategy based on the consensus built up under the last Labour Government and, in fact, the last coalition Government, but which the Business Secretary does not believe in. We need a much clearer steer from the Government that they are prepared not only to say that steel is a key strategic industry, but to act to ensure it remains a key strategic industry. I again ask Ministers what they think is the minimum capacity for steelmaking in the UK below which it is not in the country’s strategic interests to go? The Minister told the Select Committee:

“I have an absolute determination to keep steel in this country”.

In her winding-up speech, will she make it absolutely clear what she means by minimum capacity for this strategic industry? What efforts are Ministers making to calculate the cost of cleaning up sites such as Redcar when they close? In a written parliamentary answer to me last week, she could not say. How can the Government decide whether closure is the right choice when they cannot even estimate the cost of cleaning up the site?

At last week’s urgent question, I urged the Business Secretary to implement the five points raised by UK Steel at the steel summit the previous week. At that time, he could not confirm that he would. Will the Minister now confirm, albeit belatedly, that the Government will do that, and will she fully implement the energy intensive industry compensation package now, not later?

Will the Government finally press hard at the EU level on anti-dumping measures? Will the Minister even admit that dumping is going on? Will she let that phrase cross her lips in her response? Will they remove plant and machinery from business rate calculations and stop gold-plating EU regulations? Will they support the use of British steel in major projects, unlike what we hear today with the staggering news about Swedish steel being used by the Ministry of Defence? Will they listen to calls from the trade unions, including Community, for a long-term strategy rather than a hand-to-mouth approach? What are the Government going to do to support skills retention and short-time working during the current crisis, if that is needed?

This has been the first major industrial test for the Business Secretary in particular and for the Conservative Government in general since the general election As I have argued, their initial response was to revert to type and do as little as possible. They were prepared, it seemed, to let a key strategic industry die without a fight. Because of the chorus of voices from local MPs, from us as Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition, from the workforce, from employers and from the public, they have had to move, albeit far too slowly and too late for thousands who have lost their jobs The steel industry is a classic example of a case where the Government need to be prepared to roll up their sleeves immediately and intervene before breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner. This Government have been slow to act. The steelworkers whose jobs have been lost know it, the British public know it and, deep down inside, Ministers know it too—it will not be forgotten.