Mark Tami
Main Page: Mark Tami (Labour - Alyn and Deeside)Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
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Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the future of the UK steel industry.
Before I begin, I would like to congratulate the steel football club of Middlesbrough on re-entering the premier league this weekend. I congratulate the chairman, Steve Gibson, who yet again has shown what a great model can be provided by a fantastic chair over many years. It is high time he was given a knighthood for his services to football.
Today is about the British steel industry. I want to reiterate that the British steel industry has a future. It is not a sunset industry; it is not a basket case. We, as steel MPs, have hammered home the well-versed arguments of industry and Community, the steelworkers’ trade union, that the Government have not provided the will to back trade defence mechanisms, especially in the case of the lesser duty tariff; that Chinese and Russian dumping is causing chaos in the world, European and British steel markets; that an imposition of the carbon floor price on energy-intensives has had significant repercussions; and that compensation for the carbon price floor and the EU emissions trading system has been slow to non-existent, despite continuous British ministerial promises. Business rates also need fundamental reform.
Despite all that, only this week we saw seven potential buyers come forward with the intention of purchasing the remaining Tata assets. Those assets across the UK—from Port Talbot to Shotton, Trostre, Llanwern and Hartlepool—are manufacturing different products at different levels of the stream of steel production. Prior to that, Dalzell and Clydebridge were purchased by Liberty House. Various Caparo sites previously in administration were also purchased by Liberty. Long product sites such as the Teesside beam mill, Skinningrove and the integrated works at Scunthorpe were all purchased by Greybull Capital, with the intention of significant investment. That is not evidence of a sunset industry. Those are serious players with real desires to invest and make money.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
While those boons are obviously welcome, I am worried that we see it in the press that somehow everything is okay now. It is not. There is still a great deal of worry out there. I am particularly concerned about people who are leaving the industry to get jobs elsewhere because they do not see security for them and their families.
Tom Blenkinsop
I thank my hon. Friend for bringing up that issue, because skills retention is key. There are historical precedents that the Government could look to—not very old ones, but from the previous Labour Government in 2010—for how to use facilities and Government finance in order to retain skills. I will get on to that a little later.
What could have been for the Teesside Cast Products site in Redcar, the second most efficient plant in Europe, if it had been given time and the Government had committed to step in and co-invest, instead of the miserable inaction of a Government paralysed by dogma? It was saved once, but the lessons of how that was achieved were ignored.
Our British steel industry is a world beater. Investors desire to own it. International market conditions are changing right now. Indeed, indicators regarding strip in the UK are far more positive. As world demand increases and Chinese steel sites are closed due to international pressure, we are well placed to capitalise on that, but only if we now rally hard behind our British steel industry.