Steel Industry (Special Measures) Bill

Lee Pitcher Excerpts

2nd reading
Saturday 12th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)]

Let me bring us back to the Bill that we are here to debate. We have heard some of the data, statistics and information, and about the finances and the associated commercial considerations. We have heard about the importance of British Steel to our defence industry and our national security, about the importance of energy and resilience, and about the infrastructure we need to build to give us the growth in this country that we can feed back and inject into the public services that so need it. Of course, the big thing here is the 3,700 jobs, and today I represent the voice of my residents in the Isle of Axholme and those living in neighbouring towns, including Scunthorpe, who are feeling it today and who are listening to every single word we say. I have to say that the risk to them and the impact—the personal impact—on them are unquantifiable. That is what I want to talk about.

Yesterday, I spoke to Richard, a fifth-generation worker at Scunthorpe who has recently finished there. He said that this is about the individual, about the families, about their colleagues and friends, and about the town. This is about their identity, and he described it in this way. He said that British Steel in Scunthorpe is the “beating heart” of the area, and over the last few years that beating heart has started to slow. As it has slowed, every time it skips a beat, as it has in the last couple of weeks, people hold their breath. They are anxious, they are scared and they are frightened. With every skip of that beating heart, people lose hope, and we cannot let people lose hope. He says to us that we need to come together and we need to pick up a community defibrillator, take it there, give it the injection of pace that it needs, and make sure that we stimulate that heart for all the generations in the future.

We have the opportunity with this Bill today to take control and to start to make that happen. We can turn British Steel—making primary or virgin steel, which is vital for all the things we have talked about—into a treasure, and not just a treasure, but a national treasure, which is exactly why we need to move this on today.