British Steel Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Nick Thomas-Symonds
Main Page: Nick Thomas-Symonds (Labour - Torfaen)Department Debates - View all Nick Thomas-Symonds's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
(4 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Andrew Stephenson
That is a good question. We were the first EU country to implement socioeconomic and environmental factors in public procurement rules, which means we can take into account the impact on carbon emissions and on local communities. This is the first year in which that information has been published and made readily available. Now that it has been published, I have asked my officials to look into how we can consider not only that information but the steel pipeline, to ensure that we support British companies as much as we can. If British companies need to transform some of their processes to supply a greater proportion of UK domestic demand, I am sure my Department will do whatever it can to support them but, as I have said several times, any support that we provide to any businesses in the steel sector has to be compliant with UK domestic law and EU state aid law.
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)
The forthcoming Government project to build the Royal Navy fleet solid support ships will clearly use enormous amounts of steel. Quite simply, why can the Minister not ensure that those ships are built of UK steel?