British Steel

Luke Myer Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Blair McDougall]

British Steel is now owned by the people. We will appoint non-executive directors and a board to take forward the transformation of the company so that it becomes productive, profitable and resilient. Part of the conversation will, of course, be about how the company can act in support of the wider objectives of the steel strategy, including the issues the hon. Gentleman raised in respect of the availability of specialist grades of steel.

The hon. Gentleman asked what compensation Jingye is asking for. We have been in discussions with the company, as we were looking for a commercial solution, but we did not feel we were going to get value for the taxpayer. The company has been running at a loss for some time. That said, in the autumn we will, through regulations, appoint an independent valuer to make a judgment on any compensation that is due, and that could be nil.

[Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

Teessiders know what it looks like when Governments stand back and fail to protect steel jobs, so on behalf of the British steelworkers in my constituency who work at Special Profiles in Skinningrove and Teesside Beam Mill at Lackenby, I thank the Government for their decision to step in and protect primary steelmaking in this country. They have preserved jobs and preserved our industry, and the decision will allow British Steel to modernise and prepare for the future, but one of the critical challenges in doing so will be addressing industrial energy costs. I am aware of the decisions that the Government have taken on energy to support industry. What more decisions will they take to bring down costs and make sure that there is a competitive environment for British Steel going forward?

[Blair McDougall]

My hon. Friend is quite right to say that steelmaking communities have been impacted by previous Governments standing by rather than intervening —we have seen it in community after community over decades. As a Community trade union member, I am very aware of that. On energy costs, he will be aware of the various interventions that we are making through the supercharger and the uplift in network charging compensation, and we also have the British industrial competitiveness scheme. A key priority for the new board will be looking at ways to reduce costs, and a huge part of that will be investing to help with energy costs.

Greenhouse Gas Removals Sector

Luke Myer Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Edward Morello]

I believe that we should back any and all solutions that help us face the challenge, and Northern Ireland is as well placed as any part of the UK to offer innovative solutions.

Technology such as direct air capture and engineered removal methods will become an essential part of moving beyond net zero towards net negative emissions. Those technologies are nascent. The businesses that will develop them need to be founded today and to scale over the next decade. They need investment, certainty and confidence if they are to become globally competitive and properly supported.

The encouraging news is that Britain already possesses almost everything needed to succeed. We have world-class universities that produce cutting-edge research, exceptional engineers, innovative start-ups and university spin-outs, globally respected financial services and investors, and advanced manufacturing capability.

The UK’s GGR sector already contributes about £1.2 billion to the UK economy. It has the potential to contribute between £7 billion and £9 billion to GDP by 2050 while supporting more than 100,000 skilled jobs. The countries that build those technologies first will not simply reduce emissions at home; they will be central to global emission reductions for decades to come. Britain should aspire to become the global centre of carbon removal innovation, the home of future climate tech unicorns and a leading exporter of GGR technologies.

[Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that creating industrial clusters is the best route to bringing in some of the new companies that look to scale up and invest? I recently met UnionDAC, which is looking to invest in Teesside. That is partly because of the huge amount of investment that is coming to the east coast cluster carbon capture, utilisation and storage project, which is creating 3,000 construction jobs as we speak. Does he therefore agree that the Government must continue to maintain the momentum for those clusters and new ones in next year’s spending review to create skilled jobs across the UK?

[Edward Morello]

There is a lot of truth in what the hon. Member has outlined. We see the most rapid transformation and progress where innovation and expertise are clustered.

British innovators are already developing world-leading GGR technologies. The problem is that many of them struggle to raise the long-term investment needed to move from successful demonstrations to commercial deployment. British companies have told me that they will be European or American by the end of next year if the UK does not do more to support them.

The Whitehead review made that point very clearly. It recognised that the United Kingdom possesses many of the ingredients required to become a global leader, but that early-stage GGR companies continue to face significant barriers to scaling up. Many of those businesses require substantial upfront capital before they generate meaningful revenue. Private investors understandably look for long-term certainty and a return on their investment. Without that certainty, investment simply flows elsewhere.

UK start-ups struggle to access patient capital at precisely the moment they need it most. Of all climate tech early start-ups that failed, 62% fail at series A, the start of the so-called valley of death. Britain has repeatedly invented world-leading technologies only to watch other countries commercialise them. We cannot allow that to happen again.

If we get this right, GGRs could become one of Britain’s great industrial success stories. If we get it wrong, we will again become purchasers of technologies developed elsewhere. The Government can create the long-term policy framework that gives markets confidence.

The publication of the GGR business model alongside the Whitehead review was an important milestone. The commitment to integrating GGR into the UK emissions trading scheme is another positive step, but companies developing GGRs are making decisions today about where to build their first commercial facilities. Those decisions will determine where future supply chains develop, where highly skilled jobs are created and where intellectual property remains.

What the sector is calling out for are low or no cost policy changes that would make a real difference until the response to the Whitehead review finally stops gathering dust on the Minister’s desk. Solutions could be amending the sustainable aviation fuel mandate, improving access to finance from public finance bodies, voluntary carbon market changes, expanding UK GGR standards to wider methods or endorsing interim standards, a new UK buyers’ club, a regulations audit, departmental sandboxes and standards for the emissions performance standard. We must give the market the certainty it is asking for and the investors the confidence to unlock that potential.

That brings me to what I believe is the single most important proposal that the Government should consider. The answer lies in creating a British carbon bank, a Government-seeded revolving fund that will crowd in private finance. A British carbon bank would provide long-term advanced market commitments for verified GGRs. That would de-risk the purchase for the offtaker as the credits are certified, provide the capital that the GGR project needs to start capturing greenhouse gases and generating carbon credit, and improve investor confidence because there is a guaranteed purchaser. Rather than the Government attempting to fund every project themselves, a British carbon bank would create guaranteed demand for high-quality removals over many years, allowing businesses to secure investment and scale their technologies with confidence.

The Whitehead review recognises exactly this challenge. It concluded that demand certainty will be fundamental if GGRs are to develop at the pace required. Without reliable long-term demand, many technologies will simply struggle to reach commercial scale.

One particularly interesting example is Terraset, a US charity. Rather than relying solely on traditional grant funding, Terraset uses philanthropic finance to early pre-purchase commitments to vetted projects, giving those projects the capital to actually remove greenhouse gases. Those advanced commitments provide early demand, giving companies confidence to develop technologies while demonstrating to investors that a future market exists. These projects deliver verified carbon credits to Terraset, which it then sells to buyers. Any revenue generated is then returned to the fund and gets deployed into new projects. For every $1 it deploys, it unlocks $5 in private finance and achieves a 15% mark-up for credits under this de-risk model. As a result of this profit margin, it is now attracting interest from institutional investors, including pension funds.

A British carbon bank would take that principle and apply it at a national scale. It would provide a clear signal that Britain intends to become the best place in the world to develop, deploy and commercialise greenhouse gas removal. One strength of a British carbon bank model is that it addresses the greatest barrier currently facing the sector: risk. The bank would purchase future carbon removals in advance, holding those credits until they have been independently verified and certified. There is, of course, a risk for the Government that some projects may ultimately fail to deliver the promised removals or not achieve certification. However, that risk can be significantly reduced through robust due diligence and careful product selection, as organisations such as Terraset have already demonstrated successfully.

Importantly, the model also overcomes the current “chicken and egg” problem in the market. Today, many buyers are reluctant to pre-purchase carbon removals because they bear all the delivery risk. By contrast, a British carbon bank would offer only certified verified credits to the market, making them far more attractive to businesses seeking high-integrity carbon removals while simultaneously providing developers with the up-front certainty they need to secure investment and scale their technologies. The market will determine which solutions ultimately prove effective, whether nature-based approaches, direct air capture or entirely new technologies that are yet to emerge. With a relatively small Government investment, we could seed this market, crowding in five or 10 times more in private finance.

Terraset supported Graphyte, which needed early-stage capital to move from planning into commercial deployment. Private buyers recognised the value of the project, but were not yet ready to commit at the scale or speed required. Through its revolving fund, Terraset made an advance commitment of just over $100,000, providing the confidence and working capital that enabled the project to proceed. Once Graphyte had delivered independently verified carbon removals, those credits were purchased by a commercial buyer, with the proceeds going back into the revolving fund to support the next generation of projects.

I believe that a British carbon bank could replicate this revolving model at scale, helping promising British companies bridge the gap between innovation and commercial success. Net zero is today’s problem, and net negative is tomorrow’s, but if we do not start thinking about it now, we will not be ready to meet that challenge. We should be ambitious. We should not settle for participating in the market—we should aim to lead it.

Will the Minister confirm precisely when the Government intend to publish their full response to the Whitehead review, and whether that will be before the House rises for the summer recess? Will he confirm whether the Government are giving serious consideration to the proposal for a British carbon bank or revolving fund to provide the long-term market certainty the sector has consistently called for? If the Government are not yet in a position to introduce longer-term reforms, what interim measures will they take to ensure that promising new UK GGR businesses are supported and not lost overseas while policies are being developed? Finally, will the Minister commit to continuing to work closely with the sector over the coming months, listening to businesses, investors and researchers, so that the UK can seize the opportunity to become a global leader in greenhouse gas removals rather than watching others move ahead?

Carbon does not recognise borders or respect international treaties; it is a global challenge that demands world-leading solutions. I believe that those solutions should be developed here in the UK.

North Sea Oil and Gas

Luke Myer Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Michael Shanks]

I have made my position very clear on that project. We were carrying out national security assessments, which should always rightly take priority. The First Minister of Scotland has been briefed on the security grounds for doing that. He is aware of why we reached the decision that we reached. I am obviously not going to comment further on that. Our national security always comes first.

Something that I have always said in this role is that our domestic production in the UK does matter. It sustains jobs and it delivers tax receipts and the gas that flows into our pipes every single day. We are not a Government that are for turning off the taps, and we never have been. But we are for recognising that a transition is under way and that investing in what comes next is critical. I am afraid that that is at the heart of the problem with the argument put forward by the Opposition, because they say that we need to build up the jobs that come next, but then oppose all the decisions that drive forward that investment. They criticise that there are not enough jobs coming from renewables but then say that we should not invest in the renewables projects that create those jobs. That is not a coherent argument to have.

[Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

The Minister knows that I am a fierce champion for the new clean power jobs that we are getting on Teesside. We are seeing some of those opportunities scaling up now, but we cannot see mass unemployment in the offshore industry while those opportunities are still nascent. What assurance can the Minister give that every worker will have the opportunity for a genuinely just transition?

[Michael Shanks]

My hon. Friend is right on that point, and I will come to it in a moment because it is the main thrust of my speech.

I will start with what my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Torcuil Crichton) said and also welcome Donald MacKinnon into his place. I know he will be a strong advocate for the western isles. My hon. Friend rightly recognised that this is about a sense of identity. Yes, it is about a job and a pay packet at the end of the month, but it is also about a sense of belonging to an industry that many people have worked on in incredibly difficult circumstances for a long time.

Since I came into this job as Energy Minister two years ago, and as a Scottish MP and someone who has friends and family working offshore right now, I have always said that getting the transition right for those workers is central. We have seen too many failed economic transitions in the past, so we have to learn the lessons from that. As hon. Members have made very clear today, we must also see the huge potential that comes from the projects that we need in the future, not least in the supply chain that will build many of the projects that we need as part of our transition to clean energy. That will come from those very workers, so it is hugely important that we put them at the centre of all of this.

We also have to recognise that this did not somehow just start happening in July 2024. We have been in a period of transition for decades now. A third of jobs in the industry have been lost in the past 10 years, and we cannot accept that failed status quo any more. Burying our heads in the sand and ignoring the realities of the need for us to fund this transition properly will not protect a single job, nor will it create a new one. Nor will abandoning the sector entirely and turning off the taps as others would seek to do. I notice that this is yet another energy debate where no Green MPs—who have the most extreme positions on this issue—have bothered to turn up.

It must never become a binary conversation. The North Sea Future Board, which I chair, has just produced a statement on what we are seeking to do to drive forward this transition. That says that, at the heart of it, that transition is not about one industry being pitted against another. It is about stewarding the future of the North sea through collaboration and through managing all the opportunities that come, as well as an obligation to work together. There is always rightly a lot of heat in these debates, but I honestly believe that underneath it all there is a lot more consensus about the need, not for one or the other, but for all the energy that we can get and for all the jobs that come from it.

I will briefly say what our position is on the North sea. Gas has been flowing into this country for more than 60 years and is continuing to flow into this country 24/7. I was pleased to be at Bacton gas terminal a few weeks ago to see the skilled work that they do to manage up to a third of this country’s gas. It will continue to be a vital resource for decades to come, but it is also a basin that has been in decline. The most accessible oil and gas has been extracted. Production has been in decline for a quarter of a century, and it reduced by approximately 75% between 1999 and 2024. That did not begin in July 2024.

Steel Industry (Nationalisation) Bill

Luke Myer Excerpts

Committee of the whole House
Tuesday 9th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Pamela Nash]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his very helpful intervention.

For the reasons I have set out, we are getting to the point where we are losing experienced staff and equipment is in danger of going out of date. Time is running out very quickly for Dalzell. If it is left to close up shop, we will not be able simply to go back later and restart it. I have no intention of being the Member of Parliament who sees the closure of the last steelworks in Scotland, and I know the Minister has no intention of allowing that to happen on his watch.

Steel is Motherwell’s heritage and is also a key part of its progress. It is our threads in the fabric of the future of our country. I want my constituents once again to look at planes, wind turbines and bridges and be excited to know that the steel encasing them came from Motherwell.

[Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

I have seen in our all-party parliamentary group on steel and metals-related industries how my hon. Friend is such a tenacious and tireless champion for her part of the world and the steelworkers in it. She mentioned defence earlier in her speech. Does she agree with me that we really need the Government to bring forward the defence investment plan, that its focus really needs to be on making sure that steel jobs benefit across the UK, including in Scotland and in Teesside, and that small and medium-sized enterprises and the entire supply chain benefit as well?

[Pamela Nash]

I appreciate my hon. Friend’s enthusiasm for the publication of the defence investment plan, but I do not think it is within the scope of this Bill and it is definitely above my pay grade as a Parliamentary Private Secretary to Defence Ministers.

Finally, I want to see Dalzell again supporting a vibrant workforce, providing safe, well-paid, high-quality jobs to local people and being able to develop apprentices for the next generation of steel processing in Scotland. I want to see income investment in Motherwell from the reinvigoration of this plant, allowing surrounding businesses to benefit from its success. I reject the attempts of Opposition Members to limit the Bill’s ability to support our industry when it needs it most.

In his closing speech, will the Minister reassure the workers at Dalzell that this Government will support them, possibly with the safety net of this Bill or otherwise, whenever it is necessary? Will he also confirm to the people of Motherwell that Dalzell remains at the heart of this Government’s plans for the UK steel industry?

--- Later in debate ---

[Luke Myer]

The Minister is right in what he says about trade. On amendment 6, however, industry is concerned that phasing out free allowances before the new CBAM is fully tested risks exposing UK industry to carbon leakage. Does he agree that the new CBAM must be robustly designed and implemented to genuinely level the playing field for industry?

[Chris McDonald]

I thank my hon. Friend for his work as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for steel and metals-related industries. The Treasury is responsible for the carbon border adjustment mechanism and is consulting extremely carefully with the industry on that. I am sure that the Treasury will have heard his remarks and will take them into account.

Amendments 7 to 9 relate primarily to some of the environmental liabilities. The issue also arose in yesterday’s debate, where there were concerns about liabilities—the phrase “unlimited liabilities” might have been used. However, the liabilities are not unlimited. We have a reasonably good sense of what the liabilities are. We would expect the valuer to take those liabilities into account—that is quite right—but we have extensive experience with the remediation of similar sites elsewhere in the country.

The Committee has heard about the Ravenscraig site, but the Teesside site is a more recent example. The remediation of the Teesside site—the amount of public money spent on that—is well documented. The site in Scunthorpe is of a similar age, has had similar industrial activity, and is of a similar size. Ultimately, however, the Government are seeking to avoid the crystallisation of environmental liabilities by ensuring the continued operation of steel on the site. It is the responsibility of the valuer to take that into account when determining the valuation of the company. For that reason, the Government do not consider it necessary to support amendments 7 to 9.

Amendments 10 and 11 propose increasing the frequency of reporting on financial assistance to every three months. Again, it is the Government’s view that the current framework is proportionate in terms of the balance between transparency and delivery. We are incredibly concerned to ensure that we do not impose unnecessary administrative burdens. Inevitably, the management of a business acquired through the Bill and the civil servants in my Department would have to deal with the reasons for the business’s acquisition. Although we of course feel that reporting, transparency and accountability to this House are important, we are trying to strike a balance.

I know that amendment 20 is particularly important to the Opposition, so I will spend a bit of time on it. We are all incredibly concerned about value for money, but we have existing arrangements across Government to deal with that. It is already the case that Departments must secure value for money under the Treasury’s managing public money framework. It is also our view that the drafting of the amendment does not quite meet the requirement as described: that the National Audit Office would check the assistance prior to being approved. We think that putting this requirement in statute would unnecessarily reduce the Government’s ability to act quickly where support is needed. We have heard from many contributions today that on the presumption that the legislation will be required, the Government must be able to move quickly.

We have seen the need for acting quickly before. Harking back to a previous example of a failed steel business, I recall that we had only a matter of days within which to save the Teesside business due to a shortage of coal. Of course, we all remember that it was necessary to come back to Parliament at incredibly short notice to pass the Steel Industry (Special Measures) Act 2025, again because there was a shortage of coal, with the potential for those coal shipments to be diverted. It is therefore incredibly important that the Secretary of State is able to act quickly when required.

A couple of amendments have been proposed by Plaid Cymru Members—although they are not present, I think it is still responsible to address them. One amendment is about restricting the National Wealth Fund, with which I completely disagree. The National Wealth Fund is one of Government’s primary instruments for assessing potential investment opportunities and investing in industry. In fact, there is provision through the Government’s £2.5 billion steel fund for the National Wealth Fund to offer support to steel companies, as set out in the steel strategy. We intend to use whatever funding instruments are available to Government, not to restrict them.

[Chris McDonald]

I thank my hon. Friend for mentioning the incident last Wednesday at the Port Talbot site. Pickle lines are notoriously susceptible to these sorts of incidents because of the high-temperature hydrochloric acid used to treat the steels. I would imagine that once such a blaze has taken hold, the effects can be absolutely devastating. I want to echo her commendation of the emergency services and the workforce, who are, in this situation, the first responders, protecting life and valuable industrial plants. I was incredibly relieved to hear shortly after the incident that every single member of staff was accounted for. It is a credit to Tata Steel and its management processes.

I am, however, concerned about our loss of productive capacity there as a result of this incident. As my hon. Friend rightly points out, we are fortunate in having another pickle line available in Llanwern, and I understand that as of last Friday Tata Steel is looking at restarting that plant and moving the work there—perhaps it has already restarted—but the hot mill was down for a time in Port Talbot. This really emphasises where we have points of vulnerability in our industrial capacity, not only in steel but more broadly. We are determined to address those points through this Bill, our steel strategy and our wider industrial strategy. I thank her for raising that matter.

[Luke Myer]

I thank the Minister for giving way again; he is being very generous. He has made a couple of references to the Teesside site, both to the crash closure in 2015 and to the remediation of the land. With that land having now been remediated, immense steel structures are being built there as part of the Government’s carbon capture programme. It was great to be on site recently and to see the progress of that site. The project is using 50% UK steel; of course, Liberty Steel in Hartlepool has benefited from that. Does the Minister agree that procurement measures like contracts for difference need to be adjusted to ensure that we are using domestic steel in as much of our major infrastructure projects as possible?

[Chris McDonald]

I agree that procurement has an important role to play here. I am sure that my hon. Friend will have welcomed recent changes in guidance by the Cabinet Office to ensure that British steel producers are well placed to win these orders, as well as in the areas of renewable energy, where the Government are awarding significant contracts, and nuclear power, where we are again endeavouring to ensure that British companies are well placed to win those contracts.

I turn to amendment 22 and new clauses 4 and 12, which would impose statutory caps on compensation and financial assistance. I have already addressed compensation, and financial assistance is somewhat similar in that applying a cap on the basis of the number of employees, or indeed a fixed cap of any kind, would ultimately restrain the Government’s ability to respond effectively to circumstances as they evolve.

I believe that could fundamentally undermine the purpose of the Bill, which is for the Government, with the will of Parliament, to be ready to respond to circumstances such that we are not required to fly back from wherever we are in the world at incredibly short notice, and prolong uncertainty among the workforce and suppliers. We do not want to create any legal uncertainty, uncertainty in the supply chain or commercial uncertainty. That is why it is important to have this level of flexibility.

The Bill has proportionate and robust transparency and accountability mechanisms for the provision of financial assistance. For instance, clause 59 requires the Secretary of State to report to Parliament at 12-monthly intervals, and funding will be subject to the established framework for managing public money, including through Treasury approval processes.

New clause 6 would place on the Secretary of State a requirement to put forward a proposal to Parliament about providing financial assistance if a Select Committee were to make recommendations on that. Again, that is not realistic. Given that financial support would be required immediately following a transfer, there would not be time for that level of parliamentary scrutiny. Important though scrutiny is—I certainly welcome the investigation into steel currently being carried out by the Public Accounts Committee—we have to be realistic about the point at which it is possible to apply scrutiny.

New clause 7 would require impact assessments to be published before exercising the Bill’s provisions. Again, the issue is essentially about pace among other things. We believe that impact assessments are crucial to show the impact of Government intervention, and the Government are committed to operating in line with our better regulation framework requirements. We do not want to introduce any further legal uncertainty, so we reject the new clause.

A number of colleagues mentioned new clause 9, so it is important to address some of the issues raised around that. Fundamentally, the new clause would not be at all helpful; I will give an example as to why. There is an assumption in the new clause that if the Government were to nationalise a business under the Bill, the best approach would be to treat it like a hot potato and immediately throw it away. We have seen the impact of that.

We heard yesterday about the nationalisation—briefly—of British Steel by the previous Conservative Government: they spent £750,000, made no investment in the business and immediately sold it on to a company called Greybull Capital, whose track record was failure at Monarch airlines, failure at Comet electrical stores and failure at Rileys snooker halls. If you cannot run a snooker hall, you definitely cannot run a steel company.

This is where the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) and I have some points of agreement: there is more than one way to bring investment into a business other than selling it to an overseas investor. We could have debt and equity finance, and the Conservative party used to be keen on mass public ownership via a listing on the London Stock Exchange. There are many different ways in which we can bring private sector investment into a business and resolve issues around ownership.

Of course, it is intolerable to work in a business that is constantly up for sale—I have been in that position myself—as businesses do not perform in that position. A decision to sell a business is a decision made at a point in time, not an ongoing process. The Government therefore reject that new clause.

Given that I have detained the Committee considerably over the last couple of days, I have no wish to do so any further. I hope that, having responded as fully as I can to the amendments and new clauses, the Members who tabled them might feel sufficiently reassured not to press them and therefore save the House their consideration. I fully and sincerely thank everyone for their incredible participation in the debate, for the marvellous speeches that we have heard today, and for their strong interest in the steel industry that I have worked in and which I continue to champion in this House.

Steel Industry (Nationalisation) Bill

Luke Myer Excerpts

Committee of the whole House
Monday 8th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Ann Davies]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Some £500 million has been ringfenced for Port Talbot; that money is rapidly gone, with no benefit to the local community, but that is another issue that I will not talk about now.

We want an end to the double standard. Welsh steel must be given the same guarantees as English or Scottish steel. What we want is equality for all the sites across the UK; we want the same security and the same commitment to preventing closures and safeguarding jobs.

[Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

I am delighted to welcome the Bill, and will speak to a couple of the new clauses and amendments. I declare my role as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on steel and metals-related industries, through which it is a pleasure to work cross-party in the interests of the industry.

Just outside Middlesbrough, wedged between the gas pipes and the railway, is an old path. Someone walking there 200 years ago would have found sailors trudging through salt marsh hamlets, and 100 years ago they would have found steelworkers—hundreds of them—walking home on the tired commute. The cinders underfoot gave the path its name: “the black path.”

If someone walks that path today, they will see the remnants of a bygone age for Teesside iron and steel. They will see a former railway station, now disused, which was used for industry. They will see a lost ironworkers’ village and the red wild flowers that thrive on former slag pile soil. And, of course, they will arrive at one of the largest brownfield sites in Europe: the former Redcar steelworks, which once stood as a great shadow on our skyline, the heart of the region, pumping out steel across the world.

The phrase on Teesside goes, “We built the world.” Everything from the Sydney harbour bridge to the Churchill War Rooms were made with Teesside steel. It can never be forgotten that, in 2015, the then Conservative Government’s laissez-faire approach to Chinese steel dumping denied us the intervention that we needed on Teesside. The closure of Redcar steelworks tore a hole through our region and cost thousands of jobs. I pay tribute to my constituency neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Anna Turley), who at that point was a newly elected MP and fought tirelessly for the workers of Teesside, but we can never allow a situation like that to happen again.

We cannot change the past, but steel is not our past, as the workers at British Steel Special Profiles at Skinningrove in my constituency will tell us, or the workers at Teesside beam mill at Lackenby, along with the many supply chain SMEs on Teesside. Having run a Teesside steel company for many years, the Minister for Industry knows that landscape well. I commend the decisions that the Government have taken, particularly on British Steel, that have protected and safeguarded jobs in my constituency and my region.

--- Later in debate ---

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman is giving a powerful speech and showing great expertise. Is he confident, as so many critics of the steel plan were not, that the £2.5 billion that has been found by the Treasury is sufficient to allow the interventions that he so enthusiastically supports? If it is not, is there not a danger that we will not invest in things, but just bleed out public cash on facilities that continue to be uncompetitive and do not get renewed? If we do not put the right resource in, as France and other countries have arguably done, we will be losing out and not winning.

[Luke Myer]

As a Back Bencher, I will always fight for more funding to modernise our steel industry. What I do know is that the current owners of British Steel are not responsible owners. We saw last year the crisis that was created when they failed to provide sufficient supply to keep the blast furnaces running. We cannot allow the current situation to continue if we are to protect our domestic industry. This Bill is about having the powers to nationalise and ensure that the national interest is served. Whether there is sufficient funding is a question on which I will continue to push the Government.

We are not focusing today on clause 58, but the freedom to make the necessary fiscal decisions to support operational stability and competitiveness is fundamental to the sunset clause we are discussing, as well as the potential for ongoing considerations on other critical assets that the Bill might be used for. It would be helpful to hear more about the Government’s intentions on issues like energy and procurement, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor (Alan Strickland) said. We had a positive intervention from the Cabinet Office last year and the ambition to increase domestic steel market share back towards 50% is right, but the test will be in the delivery.

For too long, we have had industrial strategies while approving publicly backed projects that import vast quantities of overseas steel. Taxpayers rightly expect public investment to strengthen British industry and British jobs. Mechanisms like contracts for difference and other subsidy schemes must align much more closely with procurement objectives, so that public money genuinely supports UK supply chains. The forthcoming defence investment plan is a major opportunity to ensure that we are using UK steel across the country in industrial communities to support national security. At the end of the day, economic security is national security. Britain cannot become dangerously dependent on overseas steel for critical infrastructure or defence capability.

While I support the shift to electric arc furnaces and the increased focus on how we use domestic scrap, which is welcome, Britain should seek to retain some primary iron capability. Other countries are investing heavily in technologies like direct reduced iron. We need only look at Luleå in northern Sweden, for example, where an operational hydrogen-powered DRI facility is already producing steel. That has not held the region back in any way. Economically, it has had the opposite effect of attracting inward investment in new industries, from data centres to clean power. I would like to hear a little from the Minister about DRI and whether we will be looking seriously at that, but I do not wish to stray too far out of the scope of the Bill.

The legislation was brought forward in the context of British Steel, but we should not pretend that British Steel is the only critical asset that may ever require Government action. There may be other sites, capabilities and parts of the supply chain where future intervention is needed to protect jobs, sovereign capability and the national interest, so my concern with amendment 12 is that it would make these powers too easy to lose. A future Government may not share the same commitment to active industrial strategy and may not be as willing to renew the tools needed to protect the sector, so we should not remove the extension mechanism now because we may leave workers and industry more exposed later on.

Opposition Members made the point that politicians should not run businesses, although of course the Minister for Industry did run a steel business for many years and did so very effectively. They may mean that politicians from this country should not run businesses. The Bill is before us because of the approach that Jingye has taken. The Chinese steel industry has long benefited from huge state subsidies, and cheap state-directed finance, energy support and overcapacity policies. Beijing did not leave it to the market; it used state power aggressively to expand industrial capacity, which is worth bearing in mind.

I will finish on this point. While the Government cannot say which assets they wish to use these powers for, it is evident that British Steel cannot remain in Chinese hands. I do not know what the long-term ownership structure will look like—perhaps it will be modernised and sold to a new buyer, or perhaps it will be taken into public hands and remain there, with steelworkers having some stake in the company that they built—but I do know this. When a Labour Government intervened to create the nationalised British Steel Corporation in 1967, Teesside enjoyed such high employment and high wages that it was classified as one of the best places to live anywhere in the UK. It brought stability to tens of thousands of families and built the second largest blast furnace in Europe.

In 1979, a very different Government took office with a very different theory of Britain—a small state and a blind faith in the global free market. In just five years, our region had the highest registered unemployment rate anywhere in Great Britain. By the end of Thatcher’s premiership, almost 250,000 jobs in our region had gone. They took a British industrial economy and turned it into a globalised service sector economy.

Today the Thatcherites are back, with a new logo and a new face. They will talk a big game on steel, but we have been here before. It is my belief that only a social democratic Government can truly protect our steel communities and equip them to face the future, because a social democratic Government recognise something that a foreign private owner cannot: the value of protecting sovereign industry, even when the going gets tough.

This issue is about our jobs, but it is also about our security. Will we be left exposed in a volatile world, or will we build for the future again? I hope that this Labour Government have the courage and ambition to do so.

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Minister McDonald, I believe you wish to contribute again.

Seasonal Hospitality Businesses in Coastal Areas

Luke Myer Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2026 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Kate Dearden)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. I congratulate the hon. Member for Isle of Wight East (Joe Robertson) on securing this important debate on Government support for seasonal hospitality and leisure businesses in coastal areas. I thank all hon. Members for talking about businesses in their communities and constituencies. I could really hear their passion as they championed their local areas and businesses.

The debate is important because the sectors are important. They provide accessible jobs, drive tourism and generate significant economic activity. They support local economies, particularly in coastal and seaside communities, where tourism, hospitality and leisure form the backbone of economic activity. They support wider social objectives, creating vibrant places where people want to visit, work, live and invest.

Creating the economic and social environment that hospitality and leisure businesses need to thrive cuts right across Government. Members have raised so many issues that cut across the responsibilities of many Departments, and I thank them for that. Co-ordinated action from the Department for Businesses and Trade and myself, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport; the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Home Office and His Majesty’s Treasury is required to ensure that the great British seaside has a secure and prosperous future.

That is especially important when many coastal communities are entirely dependent on hospitality and leisure businesses to provide the vast majority of employment and opportunity for local people. They prop up the vital local government services that residents rely on, too. These businesses are not simply part of the local economy; they are the local economy.

[Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

Last year, I worked with some of the businesses in my coastal community to develop a local economic growth plan. Would the Minister meet me to discuss that plan and some of the policies that we would like to see?

[Kate Dearden]

I am always happy to meet my hon. Friend and his brilliant local businesses. I thank him for his intervention.

I regularly meet local businesses from across the hospitality sector, and I hear at first hand about the pressures that seasonal and coastal operators face. I recognise the importance of hospitality businesses in our coastal communities. I have been delighted to meet many hon. Friends representing coastal towns and cities to understand the challenges that hospitality and leisure businesses in their constituencies and across the UK face.

I recently spent the day visiting Blackpool with my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South (Chris Webb) to meet business owners, workers and residents who have come together to extend their peak season and reduce the structural issues of operating seasonally. Visiting in April came with a breeze, but that was never going to stop the magic of going up Blackpool tower, having delicious fish and chips and talking all things hospitality. I thank my hon. Friend for his hospitality on that day. It was particularly useful to meet those leading Blackpool’s tourism sector who are using hospitality as a launch pad for social mobility, high-quality employment and local regeneration.

It is clear, both in Blackpool and across the UK, that future-proofing our coastal communities is only possible by developing those strong partnerships between public, private and third sector organisations. I have taken the learnings from meetings with colleagues and from contributions to the debate, and I will continue to do so with my colleagues across Government. I assure hon. Members that I will work with them and their communities to continue to deliver for coastal towns and communities.

I thank hon. Members for raising the issue of business rates with me on numerous occasions on behalf of businesses in their constituencies. Members will know that we have introduced permanently lower business rates multipliers for eligible retail, hospitality and leisure properties. I know that the Conservative party put temporary relief in place, so it is right that we give businesses permanent relief. We did not think that was right, which is why we stepped in and made our announcements. In addition, we have provided support to pubs and live music venues.

Steel Industry (Nationalisation) Bill

Luke Myer Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 21st May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffith]

There was absolutely a plan before the election to open arc furnaces in Redcar—that was absolutely case—and to move Scunthorpe operations to Redcar.

I asked the Secretary of State to address the issue of tariffs. There is no better example of the folly of these plans—

[Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

Will the shadow Minister give way?

[Andrew Griffith]

No, I am going to make some progress on tariffs. A number of hon. Members have raised this very important issue, shedding light on the way that the Government are tilting the playing field on tariffs. Under this Government, we have already seen a flurry of Trump-style tariffs—doubling steel tariffs and halving quotas—that elevate the interests of one firm over the automotive, aerospace, advanced manufacturing and defence sectors. Firms involved in the supply chains of AUKUS and Tempest are now looking at shifting tooling and jobs to other countries, instead of manufacturing components here.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Griffith]

My right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti) have made exactly the right point: we need a more thoughtful approach.

I have written to the Secretary of State, as have many of my colleagues, asking that the tariffs are delayed for six months while the Department does more work; that the Government investigate more specialist grades of steel; that within the broader tariff buckets, they look again at the steel alloys used in the defence, aerospace and automotive sectors that are simply not made here today, because there are perhaps unintended consequences of the tariffs; that they be more forensic in their approach; and that they bring forward the measures the Conservatives have talked about on industrial energy costs, which are damaging not just the steel industry but many other industries’ and our basis on which to compete.

There is no point securing what the Secretary of State thinks is in the national interest for one steel manufacturer in a particular location if the foreseeable consequence, unintended or otherwise, is to ship offshore large parts of our high-end automotive manufacturing, engineering and defence industries, so that they are lost forever and conducted in other countries. I have raised that serious point with the Minister, and I ask him to address it.

[Luke Myer]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Andrew Griffith]

I will give way if it is about this particular point.

[Luke Myer]

I am afraid that I want to give the hon. Member another chance to answer the question from my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald), which was not about the prospect of a future EAF on Teesside—a prospect that I support but that the Leader of the Opposition confirmed from the Dispatch Box was not as advanced as the hon. Member claims. My hon. Friend’s question was about the crash closure of the blast furnace at Redcar in 2015, which ripped 3,000 jobs out of our region. What message does the hon. Member have for the people of Redcar, whose Government he was in when that happened?

[Andrew Griffith]

I am afraid that the hon. Member ought to look again at the calendar, because I was not only not in Government but not in this House—I was getting on in business trying to help grow the British economy. When the same issue arose in Port Talbot, it was the previous Government—indeed, my right hon. Friend who is now the Leader of the Opposition—who took action and were willing to back the private sector owner to secure the future of steelmaking in Wales. That was what we did in Government.

We are talking about the issue of tariffs because it is intrinsically related to the Government and the taxpayer taking ownership of one participant in a complex industry supply chain. I know that on the Government Benches, some of the truths that we share today may not be immediately popular, but past Governments failed because they were happy to do what was popular in the moment, without looking at the long-term consequences. The truth is that we should not be nationalising British Steel, and certainly not with the Bill in this form—my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden and Solihull East made the point about the sweeping nature of the clauses, whatever we think about the Secretary of State’s intentions.

We have demonstrated in the past, and we will again, that there are other options, such as partnering with the private sector and negotiating a better deal. The Conservatives would fix the cause, not the symptoms; we would save steelmaking in this country not through state quick fixes, but by fixing the state itself. We would not pit industries against each other, as Labour is now doing, and we would not sit idly by for a rerun of the 1970s horror show that Labour made Britain sit through the last time around.

UK Steel Strategy

Luke Myer Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Peter Kyle]

My hon. Friend’s analysis is absolutely correct, and he has been a tireless advocate ever since he joined this place. It is correct to say that we have invested and are investing in steel in Wales, but we are also investing in modernising the economy and infrastructure of Wales. The creation of two AI growth zones sits alongside the work we are doing on steel and other areas of infrastructure in Wales. Again, it demonstrates two Labour Governments working together for the benefit of the people of Wales. It works, and he is part of that, for which I am grateful.

[Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. What a contrast there is between the Government of just over a decade ago, who ripped the heart out of my region, and this Government, who finally have a strategy after many decades. I welcome it, but what is more, so does the industry—I spoke to those in the industry this week, and they strongly welcome the measures, particularly on procurement and trade. This is a Government on the side of British steelworkers.

One of the biggest issues affecting the industry is, of course, energy. I hear what the Secretary of State says about the supercharger, but even with that, there will still be an energy price gap with many of our competitors. What more can we do to ensure that we reduce these gaps for our industry and protect jobs years into the future?

[Peter Kyle]

The workers at Skinningrove have a true advocate in this place in my hon. Friend. I can reassure him that the work we have done on the supercharger will make a tangible difference to the workers and the sustainability of that plant. I can also reassure him that this is a Government who act when we have to. We are in constant touch with the steel industry. We are on its side. We are working with it to create a sustainable industry into the future.

Industry and Exports (Financial Assistance) Bill

Luke Myer Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 15th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

I support the Bill. It is a common-sense adjustment of limits that were set in another economic age, so that powers that Parliament has long judged to be legitimate can carry on being exercised to support our industry. It is not in the interests of working people for arbitrary historical figures to determine whether the Government can act in the national interest today or in the future. No country can sensibly insist that its industries compete in the modern world and at the same time bind its own hands with ceilings fixed years ago when the scale of production, trade and finance were altogether smaller—and indeed when my hon. Friend the Minister was last on the Government Benches, though of course he has not aged a day since then.

Without this Bill, both UK Export Finance and assistance under the Industrial Development Act 1982 would simply run into statutory limits because the law has failed to keep pace with reality. In places like Teesside, we know what happens when the tools of industrial policy are allowed to rust. We have seen world-class steelmaking exposed not because the work lacked value but because the state lacked the capacity or will to act. This Government have shown, including in their response to the challenges facing British Steel, that they will not hesitate to step in when working people’s security is on the line. This Bill is another step to ensure that that ability to act is preserved.

For industries such as steel, which are foundational to our defence, energy, infrastructure and advanced manufacturing, an active state is a necessity. The Bill is not the whole answer, and the steel industry still needs a full steel strategy as well as clarity from the Government about their response to the current global trading environment. However, the Bill is a reasonable change to support the industrial strategy and ensure that assistance already sanctioned by this House in principle does not fail in practice because legal ceilings have been allowed to fossilise. I therefore support the Bill.

There is a clear difference between intervention that entrenches privilege and intervention that enables productive work when private markets alone cannot bear the risk. Anyone who has spent any time at all speaking to our steel manufacturers, who are competing against heavily-backed overseas rivals, understands that distinction.

In that sense, the Bill is simply a maintenance of our existing capacity, updating it to today’s values. It keeps faith with our strategic industries and the communities on which they rely and ensures that the instruments that Parliament has judged necessary are not rendered useless by neglect. It also supports jobs across every region of the country and in doing so preserves Britain’s ability to make, build and export. For those reasons, I support the Bill.

Critical Minerals Strategy

Luke Myer Excerpts

Monday 24th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris McDonald]

The hon. Gentleman is right to point out that the critical minerals strategy will benefit every nation in the UK, including Northern Ireland. I am particularly keen to learn more about the ionic liquid separation methods of Ionic Technologies, which has been a flagship project for Queen’s University Belfast. I wrote to the relevant Ministers in the devolved Governments before the launch of the strategy, and I am keen to continue working with them on it.

[Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

I welcome the Government’s critical minerals strategy, but I wish the great British export of polyhalite had been included and given the recognition that it deserves as a critical mineral. As Teesside is a region with great critical mineral strength, how will the strategy benefit it and the wider supply chain?

[Chris McDonald]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the polyhalite mines. There is the Whitby mine, of course, and I went down the Boulby mine myself some years ago. They are quite remarkable and a great natural mineral strength for the UK. Two projects—Tees Valley Lithium and Green Lithium—are considering sites in the Teesside area, and we hope that they will be operational soon. They are certainly positioning Teesside to continue in its strength as a processing centre for critical minerals in the UK.