Protecting Britain’s Steel Industry

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

What a ridiculous speech we just heard; let us get back to reality.

On 19 May, only 19 days after the passing of the Trade Act 2021, which updated the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act 2018, the Secretary of State, who failed to amend the Trade Bill, said:

“The rules of the TRA were set in legislation in 2018, and I think we are in very different times now. We have had a global pandemic. We are much clearer about the issues of supply chains. I have briefed the Committee”—

the International Trade Committee, on which I serve—

“on…the way we are analysing critical goods.”

She went on to say that she would review the case of the TRA and see whether additional safeguards were needed. That was in May. A month and more later, what has the Secretary of State done? Did she review the safeguards that she acknowledged were weak? Did she change the system that she acknowledged was flawed, under which she can only ratchet down? No, she did not.

Last year, the Under-Secretary of State for International Trade, the hon. Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Jayawardena), who opened the debate on behalf of the Government, said blatantly that the

“system works…It is already delivering in a number of sectors, including steel”.

He must be on a different planet if he thinks it is working! He said that we have the ability “to act very quickly”. If we have the ability to act quickly, Ministers should do something rather than sitting on their hands!

Let us be clear what is happening: the US, the EU and our other major allies are taking action to stop their domestic markets being undermined; we are doing nothing. Just like when the EU took action and we were the ones dragging our heels when we were in the club, now that we are out of the club we are failing to stand up for our own businesses all over again.

I come to a fundamental point of the TRA. This is what the chairman of the TRA said: he has “sympathy” with the points raised around the environment, workers’ rights and extra protections, but he does not believe that the TRA should take any action on those things. He said that the TRA’s guidelines do not allow him to do so. That is the fundamental problem. The Government have dropped the ball—or maybe they are so wedded to the ideology of “free market against protection” that they are willing to sell our steel and other industries down the river. We will not stand for it. We will vote against it.