Steel Industry: Contribution to the UK Economy

Marion Fellows Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2023 Westminster Hall

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

I am extremely grateful to have this opportunity to speak, Mr Pritchard, and I thank the hon. Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) and all the other Members who have spoken.

I do not want to be too downbeat or to go back too far, but ever since I came into this place in 2015, we have been in a steel crisis. In my constituency, we have Dalzell works, which does not produce steel; there is no steel production as such in Scotland. However, we use the steel produced mainly in Scunthorpe and roll it to a very high standard. The Scottish Government managed to save that mill in 2016. However, in all the time that I have been here, I have talked to a succession of Ministers—I welcome the new Minister, and I apologise for not meeting her this morning—and nothing has fundamentally changed. We have had steel charters, which Ministers signed —we all signed the steel charter—and we have talked about how the UK must produce its own steel, or otherwise we would be in grave danger. We are the only member of the G7, the G20 or whoever that might not produce steel in the future. That is not the way forward in the 21st century.

I was very proud when the Scottish Government stepped in and managed the deal that saved Dalzell works. In a constituency such as mine, which has a proud tradition of steelmaking, that was really important, not just because it is an iconic industry, but for the future. A lot of the work that is done in Dalzell ends up on wind turbines. Scottish renewables, as far as the Scottish Government are concerned, are one of the ways forward for Scotland to thrive as an independent country.

We are in the very lucky position of having lots of wind power, although we have had attempts to block the renewables industry. We wanted a carbon capture and storage unit and to reduce the price of steel by reducing the price of energy. We want to move things forward, so the Scottish Government actually have a plan. That has always been missing in the UK. I appreciate that the Minister wants to help in the latest crisis, as have all her predecessors. That is what has happened: they have helped in each succeeding crisis but we just keep stumbling from crisis to crisis, kicking the can down the road without actually implementing a proper, forward-looking strategy that would take the entire UK steel industry forward.

We have talked a lot about the value of steel, but we should also look at the supply chain and all the other industries and all the other parts of the economy that benefit from having a really good steel industry. For example, when the Scottish Government put out tenders for offshore wind, applicants for the ScotWind leasing, which took place recently, were required to submit a supply chain development strategy that set out the level and location of supply chain impacts throughout the lifetime of products. That goes back to what I talked about—signing the steel charter. We now have the ridiculous situation where in the UK, High Speed 2 suppliers and contractors were not mandated to use UK steel. That is basic stuff: it would not happen anywhere else, and it is really important that it should not happen here.

I do not want to take up too much time, but I want to plead with the Minister to look at energy costs, which is another huge issue faced by energy-intensive industries such as steel, as well as ceramics. I recognise most of the Members present from my long-standing membership of the APPG for steel and metal-related industries. For the whole time I have been in this place, all of those Members —the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) has also been mentioned—have been fighting to save either their local plant or the industry in general. We have seen huge increases in tariffs from the US and cheap Chinese steel flooding into the country, so again, I go back to the major point I want to make: could the Minister please give us an indication of the way forward, with a steel plan for the next few years? We should be looking 20 years ahead, not stumbling from crisis to crisis.

I am not shy about saying that the Scottish Government look at things, consult and try, using their limited powers, to do stuff that helps Scottish industry—in this case, steel. We need the same commitment from the UK Government; we need something like mandated use of UK steel in projects across the UK, because without that, we are leaving the business open. Brexit has had an awful effect on steel as well, because we can no longer access markets in Europe in the same way. We cannot go back to the drawing board, because there has not been a drawing board on which a steel strategy has been written. Can I please have some sort of assurance that the UK Government will look at energy prices, among other things, and create a proper industrial strategy that includes steel, making sure that the UK is still a steel producer in five years’ time?