Steel Industry (Nationalisation) Bill

Debate between Luke Myer and Nusrat Ghani

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

[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.

Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill

Debate between Luke Myer and Nusrat Ghani

2nd reading
Wednesday 11th June 2025 Commons Chamber

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

I welcome the Bill, particularly the introduction of the revenue certainty mechanism, which is not only a sensible intervention but a timely one. It gives investors clarity, it gives producers confidence and it gives communities such as mine a sense that this transition will bring jobs rather than take them away. I thank Ministers for listening not only to the sector but to those of us who represent Teesside.

In our region, we have a number of producers with an interest in scaling up SAF production—principally Alfanar, which has already invested £2.5 billion in our region and wants to go much further by building a brand-new plant that will create 2,300 construction jobs and 300 permanent jobs. Alfanar is not alone, however; we also have Iogen, Willis, Nova Pangaea, Abundia, Arcadia and many active producers or others looking to scale up—serious players with serious plans. I spoke to one earlier this week; it said that the Bill is exactly what the industry is looking for.

May I put just a couple of questions to the Minister? What those producers need now is confidence that enabling work for final investment decisions can begin, ideally before the Bill completes its full legislative journey. Of course, there is a precedent for that in the Energy Act 2023. What engagement will the Minister have with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero on the carbon capture track project. I know that a number of the producers are keen to benefit from track 1 expansion, so producing those two things in train seems like a sensible thing to do, and I hope that there is cross-departmental engagement.

Ultimately, I thank the Government and urge them to move at pace to deliver the jobs that we want for the industry in our region. I want to ensure that young people watching from working-class communities across Teesside know that these are not abstract opportunities that are distant from them, but opportunities for them that they can get into—like our expansion in skills training. This sector can be transformative for the Tees valley region—not only for Middlesbrough but for Redcar and Cleveland, Stockton, Darlington and Hartlepool. Our area suffered industrial decline for many decades, but now we are seeing new life and new industry. Finally, Teesside is taking off.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call Chris McDonald for the final Back-Bench contribution.

Church of England: Safeguarding

Debate between Luke Myer and Nusrat Ghani

Monday 3rd March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Luke Myer]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. Before the hon. Member gets back to his feet, I should say that, although I can see that this is a serious and important debate, interventions must be short.

--- Later in debate ---

[Luke Myer]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. The Church has been making various decisions on this, but it has not been moving forward with the required pace. My intention in bringing forward this debate is to shine a light on that and urge it to act with pace. I thank him for making that point.

I have listed various individuals and groups within the Church, and my intention in this debate is not to diminish or tarnish any of their contributions but to highlight how processes have not functioned and how survivors have been let down, and what we can do as a House to encourage the Church to implement better structures.

The journey of safeguarding reform in the Church is long and complex. It runs from the Clergy Discipline Measure 2003 through the past cases reviews in the 2000s, the Chichester visitation in 2012, the establishment of the national safeguarding panel and national safeguarding team in 2014 and 2015, the Stobart review in 2018, the Social Care Institute for Excellence report in 2019, the Chichester/Peter Ball investigation in 2019, the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse—IICSA—by Professor Jay, the Elliott report in 2020, the Wilkinson report in 2023 and the further Alexis Jay report in 2024 to the recent Makin report, among others.

We have had plenty of reports, but while some improvements have been made, there remains “systemic underlying vulnerabilities” arising from the Church’s safeguarding structure. Survivors have told me that there are complex, hard-to-navigate structures and slow, institutionally defensive responses. Around 2020, calls for an independent structure to oversee safeguarding practices emerged.

The Archbishops’ Council debated what that should look like—whether to create a fully independent body or to establish a board for the oversight of safeguarding, which would develop further independence. That board became the ISB, which was established in 2021. There were problems that affected the ISB, as the Wilkinson review explored, but its work was important. It built trust with victims and survivors. In fact, Mr X told me that he was

“initially sceptical of the ISB when it was set up”

but said that it went on to

“provide a ray of hope for the survivor community”.

By 2022, the ISB had started reviewing cases and making recommendations, with the first published in November that year, but, as Wilkinson found, there was a “lack of trust” between the ISB and the Church’s safeguarding structures concerning

“how the recommendations should be implemented.”

As issues escalated, ultimately, in June 2023 the board members were sacked and the board disbanded.

Wilkinson found that

“no risk assessment beyond informal conversations was carried out by or on behalf of the Archbishops’ Council members about the effect of”

this decision

“on victims and survivors who were engaged with them, particularly those involved in case reviews”.

She went on to say that it

“showed lamentably little trauma-informed regard for the vulnerability of the individuals with whom the ISB were working”.

I have heard from some of the 11 survivors, who suffered mental distress after the decision. Three landed in emergency mental services, and two developed serious suicidal thoughts. Mr X called it an “obliteration of hope.” The treatment of survivors here is itself a serious safeguarding failure. It is clear that the secretary-general of the Archbishops’ Council has questions to answer.

Around the time of the dissolution of the ISB, Professor Jay was invited to provide recommendations on the way forward. Her report said that “the only way” in which safeguarding can be improved is by making it

“truly independent of the Church.”

The central problem is that the complexity of the Church means that rather than one approach, there are 42 different dioceses, each with different safeguarding systems. Safeguarding practitioners have said that this limits effective safeguarding. Professor Jay noted in her report:

“Church safeguarding service falls below the standards for consistency expected and set in secular organisations.”

Lesley-Anne Ryder, the independent co-chair for the response group to Jay, said to Synod that

“this level of complexity is incomprehensible. It is counter productive”.

She said that it is

“One of the ways in which you are losing the trust…of the nation”.

The complexity creates a patchwork of different approaches. Some dioceses do implement robust safeguarding practices, and some have independent sexual violence advisers. The diocese of Newcastle has four permanent staff members with key safeguarding roles, including a caseworker and a training lead.

I pay tribute to the Bishop of Newcastle, whose leadership on the issue has been commendable. I met her last year to discuss these matters, and she has much support in the country and, I am sure, the House. Other dioceses, however, lack such comprehensive systems, often relying on bringing in external consultants. It is simply not acceptable that the experience of survivors should vary depending on where they live. There must be a unified and consistent system that is evenly resourced with the same quality of support, respecting the independent expertise of safeguarding professionals.

Professor Jay recommended the

“creation of two separate charities, one for independent operational safeguarding and one for independent scrutiny of safeguarding.”

It is that issue that went before the General Synod last month. While Synod voted in favour of setting up an external scrutiny body, it only backed the principle of an independent operations body. That is deeply disappointing—a two-stage approach for an issue of such urgency, when survivors have already waited decades, moving from one system to another with no sign of any meaningful resolution. One survivor told me that he first reported his abuse over 40 years ago. Any further delay in delivering justice for survivors is simply unacceptable.

I do not wish to be misunderstood. The agreement of the Synod to

“affirm its commitment to greater independence”

going forward is an important step, but the decision on operations did not follow the recommendation from Professor Jay and many other specialists and professionals, or the preference of many survivors. I believe that more delay will simply confirm the survivors’ view that the Church is kicking the can down the road. Having spoken to Synod members, I do not think that that is the intention, but the reality is that, as things stand, this patchwork of procedures remains, and the Church effectively continues marking its own homework. That is clearly not acceptable.

We will hear from the Minister shortly. It is a welcome step that, earlier this year, the Government agreed to implement Professor Jay’s IICSA recommendations on safeguarding and abuse. That makes it all the more pressing that Professor Jay’s recommendations for the Church be implemented, too. As Mr X said to me:

“This is a critical point for the Church.”

Scripture teaches us to

“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves.”

The Church ought to be a place of refuge, of grace, of trust. Yet, for far too many, it has been a place of harm. We have seen apologies, report and reviews, yet survivors still tell us that they are unheard, ignored and left to fight alone for basic justice. That must change. The Church’s safeguarding structures must be independent, transparent and accountable. Its days of marking its own homework must end. Survivors must be not just consulted but placed at the heart of reform. Let us be absolutely clear: protecting the reputation of an institution must never, ever come before protecting the safety of a person.

The test of faith is not in the easy moments but in the hard truths, and the hard truth is this: trust in the Church will only be restored when every survivor who steps forward is met with compassion, justice and meaningful action.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call Marsha De Cordova.