British Steel

Debate between Marion Fellows and Greg Clark

Wednesday 24th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend. My training under his expert tutelage on the PAC stood me in good stead for ministerial office, and I am grateful to him for that.

I am encouraged by my right hon. Friend’s encouragement to take an activist approach. That is the approach that I have been taking. In my view—and this applies to everyone who has been part of the support group—we let this slip through our fingers if we are not there to make sure that all the questions can be answered, whether through the trade unions, which have been magnificent in this, or through the local authorities, including some of his neighbours in Lincolnshire. Ursula Lidbetter, who leads the Lincolnshire local enterprise partnership, has been very active in the group. I will, in so far as I am still at this Dispatch Box, continue that approach. I am sure that my right hon. Friend’s recommendation of an activist approach will sound with some resonance down the corridors of this place and reach the ears of the new Prime Minister, who I hope will follow his sage advice.

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

It is disheartening to hear that this process continues to drag on with no idea how long it will take for a deal to conclude. This UK Government must at last stand up for the steel industry and deliver a sector deal. In today’s global world, the uncertainty caused by Brexit is providing businesses with the nudge they need to leave the UK. How many more will leave when it becomes apparent that the new Prime Minister has no plans beyond a no-deal Brexit? Our thoughts are with all those dealing with continued uncertainty—employees, management, unions, and those in the supply chain. What will the Secretary of State, who has shown real commitment to securing the continuation of the British steel plants, do—or, indeed, what will his successor do—in the face of a Brexit that is doing irreparable damage to our manufacturing sector?

[Greg Clark]

I am grateful for what the hon. Lady said about me personally.

I think it would be more disheartening if this process had concluded, as was the wide expectation eight weeks ago, with what happened in Redcar, as the Redcar mentioned, which was the more or less immediate closure of the plant. The fact that the process continues, far from being disheartening, is heartening in that there are several bidders that the official receiver and his agents are working with. It is absolutely vital that those discussions should continue for as long as they prove necessary. That is one of the reasons why my first act on the warning of the insolvency was to commit a Government indemnity to allow an orderly process to take place, and I very much hope it will.

I very much agree with the hon. Lady that having a sector deal with the steel sector is highly desirable. All the sector deals—colleagues have heard me launch different sector deals from this Dispatch Box—require investment by the industry and by the Government alongside each other. That is precisely what we want to do in this case. I hope that this will be a catalyst for the investment that allows such a deal to take place.

British Steel

Debate between Marion Fellows and Greg Clark

Wednesday 22nd May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I agree with my hon. Friend. I was unaware that he had had that early experience in the steel sector. I do not want to make a partisan point, so perhaps I can take this in a historical sense to illustrate that the steel sector has been through periods of turbulence and difficulty in this country and around the world, and it is clearly going through one now. It was the case that steel production fell by 50% between 1997 and 2010, as did employment in the sector, but I do not blame that on the Government of the day. It was a feature of the market at the time, but I think that we should learn the lessons from some of the decisions that were taken then. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Middlesbrough reminds us from a sedentary position that the blast furnaces at Redcar were mothballed, which made it difficult to return them to service. They did come back with SSI, but it was very difficult to do that. The point is that we should have the maximum possible continuity, and attend to the lessons from that time. Criticisms were made at the time of the approach being taken both there and in SSI, and in the present situation we should learn the lessons and ensure that we have maximum continuity.

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

I thank the Secretary of State for giving me advance sight of his statement.

Since I was sworn in as a Member of this House four years ago, I have watched two Tory Prime Ministers and two Business Secretaries fail the steel sector across the UK. Time and again, they have refused to level the playing field for steel in relation to energy costs and to rates in England. I have been happy to show solidarity with those in the steel sector who face the prospect of not having a job and with those who work in the supply chains. We cannot keep on repeating this.

The UK Government need to achieve a sector deal for steel and, by their actions, fully commit to the steel industry’s future across the UK. A first step would be to listen to the industry and its concerns on Brexit, and I am glad to hear the Secretary of State say that he will do that. The inaction and apathy of this Government and this Prime Minister towards industry are reminiscent of another Tory Prime Minister. We are still recovering from the damage that Margaret Thatcher did to the steel industry in Scotland. Do this Tory Government recognise the danger inherent in pursuing their current policy regarding industrial strategy?

In 2015, by contrast, the SNP Scottish Government saved the Scottish steel industry. They saved the Dalzell works in my constituency and the Clydebridge works in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West constituency. Indeed, I am going there on Wednesday to sign the UK steel charter with the Scottish Minister for Trade, Investment and Innovation. Will the Secretary of State look to what was done by the SNP Scottish Government in setting up a Scottish steel taskforce and commit to saving steel across the UK? The Scottish steel taskforce was a model committed to saving those works, and it did so because it started out with that commitment as its sole objective, by contrast to the UK steel summit that we had in 2015. Minister, you have a grave responsibility here and I hope that you will come back and tell us that you have achieved what we all want for British Steel.

[Greg Clark]

I recognise that responsibility, and the intention of the group that the hon. Lady describes is precisely what I have set out. We all need to join forces to provide the best prospect for continuity for these operations. She referred to the important steelworks in Scotland. Sometimes, for the reasons I have set out, it is necessary for a Government to participate in a sector where discontinuities and interruptions can be difficult to recover from. I think she would be generous enough to concede that the £120 million that I informed the House of on 1 May gave precisely the possibility for these operations to continue, without which we would have been unable to have this discussion today about the prospects for the industry.

The hon. Lady asked about energy costs. Energy-intensive industries obviously incur significantly higher energy costs than other sectors. Over the past few years, we have paid £291 million in compensation to energy-intensive sectors, including steel. The industrial strategy contains an industrial energy transformation fund to increase the energy efficiency of energy-intensive operations, and that is worth about a third of a billion pounds. That constitutes, I think, the kind of action that she would expect. We now need to ensure that that is applied to the situation facing British Steel so that it can continue to operate and, indeed, to flourish.