Former Steelworks Site in Redcar

Marion Fellows Excerpts

Wednesday 14th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Redcar (Anna Turley) on securing this important debate.

I want to speak about my constituency’s experience of a steel plant closing down, because there are valuable lessons to be learned from it. The Ravenscraig integrated steel mill closed 26 years ago in 1992. That was before devolution, so there was no Scottish Government and all industrial matters were dealt with by the UK Government. In the mill’s last two years, 4,400 people—mainly men—were laid off. Unemployment stood at 15% shortly after the closure and is still higher than average. The constituency still does not have the same number of highly paid and highly skilled jobs that it once had. The former MP for Motherwell and Wishaw, Frank Roy, did a lot of work to try to re-energise and rework the Ravenscraig site and led on a proposal to build a new town on it, but that has never come to pass because of recessionary pressures and local resistance.

Ravenscraig is slap bang in the middle of my constituency, between Motherwell and Wishaw town centres. The SNP Scottish Government made it a national priority in 2007, and lots of money has been poured in from various funds and resources. Ravenscraig Ltd was set up as a joint venture between Tata, Scottish Enterprise and Wilson Bowden when the plant closed. The site now has a new college, a new regional sports centre, less than 1,000 new homes—although more are being built—a pub, a hotel and a building research centre. There are proposals for more new homes and for a civic park. In 26 years, we have not come a terribly long way, given that it is a 1,400 acre site, most of which is covered by roads that do not necessarily lead anywhere yet.

I do not want to sound too pessimistic—as the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke) said, we need to have hope—but when something as big as the Ravenscraig integrated steel mill closes, that is a hammer blow to a community. Not much help, if any, was given by the then Conservative Government; I hope that the Redcar site does not suffer the same fate. North Lanarkshire Council—of which I was recently a member, as the hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Hugh Gaffney) still is—is spending quite a lot of money on trying to make the site viable.

As the council’s new chief executive, Des Murray, says, it has always been recognised that there needs to be a redevelopment site at Ravenscraig, because it is of symbolic strategic significance, but we cannot live on symbols. The hon. Member for Redcar talked about Redcar as an iconic site, as was Ravenscraig, but people cannot live on such sites. People do not get jobs just because sites are iconic. There needs to be real and continuous development.

I do not want to paint too gloomy a picture, because there are improvements. The new Ravenscraig regional sports centre has hosted international and national events to great success, and the new houses there are lovely. The site building is now creeping forward, and in April there was another planning application put in for a more modified, and probably more likely to be built, new area in Ravenscraig, which now includes industrial and retail centres as well as two primary schools and development of the civic park. This is all good news, but I have to warn people in Redcar that it takes a long time and does not necessarily lead to the kind of jobs that have been lost.

[Alex Cunningham]

The hon. Lady is giving us a good illustration of why we need big, fast decisions and investment now. I am sure she will agree that Redcar cannot wait 20 years for the Tees valley to secure the good, well-paid jobs that we need. We do not want service jobs; we want good, well-paid jobs like we have had in the past—that needs decisions now.

[Marion Fellows]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I do not have a solution; I can only lay out what has happened at the Ravenscraig site. People have been doing their best, but the recession in 2007 really bit into developments there. When things get delayed, they do not always come back again, which is a real worry for everyone.

I give credit to North Lanarkshire Council, as I always do when it does things right, for continuing to work on the site and for trying to get more investment into it, but I fear that, with Brexit apparently here, this is going to be an ever-growing challenge to local agencies and authorities. Motherwell and Wishaw were iconic not just for Ravenscraig; there were always steelworks in my constituency. The fact that the Scottish Government managed to save what is now Liberty Steel—the DL works—and, in a neighbouring constituency, Clydebridge, is testament to the work that they have done and are trying to do.

We need steel. When I was first elected to Parliament, the all-party parliamentary group on steel and metal related industries was the very first one that I joined. I fought hard to save the steel industry in my constituency, and that was achieved. Ravenscraig does not make steel—it simply rolls plate—but it is still there. That is thanks to the work of the Scottish Government, who were determined to save that site and as many jobs as possible—not only the workers, but, more importantly, the apprentices who were working on the site at the time. It will be interesting to hear whether the Minister can give the same commitment to the industry in England and Wales. There are no longer steelworks in Redcar, but we need these iconic industries at our backs if we are to move forward as a group of countries.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland for saying that everyone has to work together, which I think everyone realises. It is not a party political issue when something like this happens, but things do move ahead on party political lines. We have to be cognisant of that fact, and people have to keep putting pressure on the Government to make decisions and to treat the area favourably, even if it is not recognised as a really good area for their party.

I go back to 1992, when very little was done by the central Government to support Ravenscraig and the workers who lost their jobs. I moved into the area shortly afterwards, and all I could hear was tales of when the steelworks used to be open and how Motherwell and Wishaw were such thriving, wonderful places. It took a long time for the towns to recover. They still have not recovered totally, because the jobs that people do now are completely different. I think that is what is found in Redcar, too.

[Anna Turley]

Regarding the hon. Lady’s experience, does she sense that there was a loss of skills and a loss of the workforce in any way? My big concern is that the longer this delay goes on, the more people will move away from Redcar to look for work elsewhere, and we will lose our highest-skilled and best workforce.

[Marion Fellows]

The hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) has already said that Scots people go all over the world looking for work. Yes, there were people who left and people who retrained. There was a very good deal in those days for the steelworkers who were made redundant; they were given, I think, two or three years’ training, which allowed many to go to college or university and completely retrain. In fact, my predecessor retrained and then became an MP, which was not necessarily what he retrained for, and he moved away—part-time, anyway—down here to work.

It really is important that all parties look at what happened after Ravenscraig shut, because that is comparable and it should be used as a template, in some regards to complement what is still going on there, but in others to look at this and say, “We mustn’t allow that to happen. We mustn’t allow things to stall and nothing to happen for long periods.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Harrington]

All in good time. I cannot give the hon. Gentleman a date now, but I will come to that shortly. I will make progress because I want to leave time for the hon. Member for Redcar to sum up.

The £14 million granted by the autumn Budget and the special economic area status for the site are both important. They came about because all those different Departments—including the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and the Treasury—are working with South Tees Site Company, the development corporation and the combined authority. We have worked together on the proposals and will continue to do so. The 1,500 jobs quoted are a first step, but I know they are nothing compared to the number of jobs that were lost when SSI went into liquidation and struggled from crisis to crisis.

It is very easy to blame one Government and not the other or to say that the Government could have intervened by putting in a load of money to keep things going, but I have seen the consequences of that. I have seen places in the valleys in Wales where hundreds of millions—if not billions—of pounds were spent on keeping businesses open, and I saw a failed industrial policy in the north of England, where I was brought up. That does not mean that Government do not take part in industry—we are spending more money on research and development than ever before.

I really believe that the industrial strategy, in partnership with businesses, is the future. The reason why there is not a steel sector deal—as the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) mentioned—is that industry itself has not come up with its side of the proposals. I am working on this, meeting industry regularly, and am still hopeful, but that is work that must be done in partnership.

The Government responded immediately with support for the site when the closure took place, including a sum of £30 million that was ring-fenced for the statutory redundancy payments. The SSI taskforce, under the leadership of Amanda Skelton, took a leading role and deserves a lot of credit. The hon. Member for Redcar was a member of the taskforce and did a great job.

The clichés about people working together are predominantly true in this case; spats and disagreements come and go. I think it is fair to say that we cannot recreate what was there before—time has moved on. My right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill) made the point about how steel has changed and certain commodity products cannot compete with much lower costs. Of the factors for the industry growing up there—iron ore, steel and water—only one remains. That does not mean that the site does not have a fantastic future—I really think it does. I am delighted that the hon. Member for Redcar quoted Lord Heseltine and former Chancellor George Osborne in different parts of her speech.

The Scottish National party spokesperson, the hon. Member for Motherwell, made a very—

[Marion Fellows]

For Motherwell and Wishaw.

[Richard Harrington]

I was abbreviating—my apologies to the half of the hon. Lady’s constituency that I did not mention. The hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) made some good points about apprenticeships, and I am very pleased about the way that apprenticeships in steel are going. I was pleased that all the apprentices at Redcar were found alternative jobs and positions. The experiences of Ravenscraig and Consett were fed into the creation of the solution, with the development corporation and so on. That does not compensate for what happened, but it shows that lessons have been learned.

The master plan is excellent, and proposals for additional funding will be carefully considered. They have to meet public funding guidelines, which I know all hon. Members will accept. The Government’s current position is therefore to commit resources in a number of areas. I accept the shadow Minister’s view that some of that is just hot air and announcements, but that is the way that public sector financing works; there is a principle and then there has to be a business case. I make no apology for that—that is the way it has to work. Business cases are not there to be stopped; they are there to be taken on board.

I really am running short of time—that is my own fault for giving too many compliments to most of the other speakers, which I should not have done—so I will hurry up. The subject of the airport, which was raised very eloquently, is not one that I have really concentrated on. Maybe I should have, but I have not. May I suggest a meeting with the hon. Members who are interested in the airport issue, rather than just giving a vague answer today?

We very much believe in the concept of a local solution, and the Government are very open to specific suggestions from private companies or from the development corporation. I hope we see through all the smoke about individuals—who should be in this or that job, or who said this or that—and come to the collective solution that we all want.

The debate has given me the chance to canter over matters. We must remember that the site is the UK’s largest regeneration opportunity, and if the UK is to develop in terms of its industrial strategy, which we hope it will and fully intend it to do, that will be there. The site has received much publicity thanks to the efforts of hon. Members present, the Mayor and everybody else involved in the development corporation. We know what the challenges are in the special economic area in the Tees valley. Even people who did not watch the documentary on television—I was very disappointed about the lack of a starring role for the hon. Member for Redcar; had I been in charge of casting I would have altered that—will know that these things take a lot of time. Decontamination has to happen first, before a deal with the banks, which I am sure will come about—these are very complex matters. It is not as if the banks are a single entity; there are three of them, with very different views.

The Government are determined to see the site redeveloped in an exciting way in the end, so that it is a flagship for our future industrial strategy and an example for the next industrial revolution as it was for the first.