Steel Industry

Lord Glasman Excerpts

2nd reading
Saturday 12th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Glasman (Lab)]

My Lords, it is with great joy that I commend my Government for redeeming their promise to Scunthorpe. It is a place that I know well—I do a lot of work in Grimsby—and, without this, it would be another town left to die.

I am saddened but not surprised by the unrepentant Thatcherism expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. The whole escapade of privatisation subordinated our national security and national assets to profiteers, and it has ended up under Chinese ownership—that of a hostile power. We have to assert our fundamental national interest in preserving the steel industry.

I apologise to the House for not speaking more here. I think that I was the only Member of this House to be invited to the inauguration, so I will share one story. I was sitting in the White House, and President Trump walked past with his entourage. He is entirely one-faced, by the way; he is always the same. He was saying that his favourite word in the English language was “tariff”—I remember that. It was a discussion about putting industrialisation as the prime goal of US policy—the producers rather than the consumers. I was sitting with a group of his advisers, and I said, “What’s your favourite word?” One of them said, “The United States of America”. I said, “That’s four words—I want one word”. He said, “America”, and another said, “Family”. They asked me my favourite word, and I said, “Nationalisation”. I said that I sought the opposite to them—that I sought assurances that the steel industry would never, ever, be put back into the hands of profiteers and hostile powers.

I believe that this is a hugely important moment for us, in that we can now develop what has been squandered over the past 50 years: our industrial strength and our industrial power. It is absolutely vital for our defence and our defence industry. In response to my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer, I say that it is not just about the digital economy and the other things he mentioned; we have to produce weapons now.

This morning, I received many phone calls from Ukraine asking whether it is true that we are engaged in an industrial strategy. But we are living, as the Prime Minister said, in a new era, and I urge the House to pay attention to the Prime Minister’s words. It is an era based on national security and not merely the whims of the market; a new era that is entirely opposite to the era that other noble Lords pioneered, and which is not based on finance in the City but on the faraway towns and industry. I absolutely respected what the noble Baroness, Lady Redfern, said in her speech. This era is going to be based on weapons production, not TV production. It is a very different world.

Easter is coming and it is Passover for me tonight, so I may have to leave a little early, but I certainly believe in the resurrection, and it should be in our thoughts: the resurrection of Scunthorpe. I believe it is said that the last will be first. If we can have an absolutely modern, productive steel power in Scunthorpe, it will be one of the most wonderful miracles that we could witness. Port Talbot was absolutely necessary, but we have to integrate steel with titanium and graphite. Those are the modern materials of industrial top-end weapons production. I entirely agreed with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, in what she has just said—if Scunthorpe could become the European leader in steel production, I believe that we would have a proper Labour Government; a Labour Government who actually put labour and workers first, and our national security and defence industry first. If, today, we can only hear that beautiful word “nationalisation”, it would be a great day and a day to celebrate.