Steel: Preserving Sustainable Jobs and Growth in Europe

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2017 General Committees

[Mr Hurd]

While we are a member of the EU, we play by the EU rules, and we try to be as creative and intelligent in playing that system as anyone else. As I said in my statement, we have managed to release funds in quite a strategic way. I make no comment on the past, because I was not involved in that process. Looking beyond Brexit and at the Government’s approach to using public money to support the competitiveness of key industries, that is work in progress, but the industrial strategy Green Paper is the first step.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

Of course, the question is not only what gets done, but how speedily those actions are taken. One problem with the EU is that it is lamentably slow. The document that is the source of the debate talks about

“Additional efforts to accelerate the process”.

May I ask the Minister some questions on progress? Will he advise us of any progress that he and the Commission have made? For example, the document says:

“The Commission will further optimise its internal procedures, follow a stricter approach when dealing with requests for deadline extensions of questionnaire responses”

and

“streamline hearings by grouping them together.”

Those are all very obvious things.

The Commission also says that

“additional reforms need to be considered, taking into account the inter-institutional debate”.

Will the Minister advise us on what progress there has been on streamlining inter-institutional debate to assist the steel industry in the EU since May last year?

The document also talks about

“intermediary deadlines such as those for sampling of interested parties or parties’ reaction to the disclosure of the essential facts”.

Again, that refers to efforts to speed up any progress that is being made. Finally, the document says that

“the Commission will propose a prior surveillance system on steel products.”

I ask those questions because an important consideration during the debates was that the EU had been slow off the mark compared to the United States, and it is obvious that that is recognised in the document. It sounds to me that some fairly basic, fairly sensible steps were meant to be taken, but quite a few months have passed. Will the Minister update us on any progress that has been made on those issues?

[Mr Hurd]

I thank my hon. Friend for his questions. I do not think it is any secret: anyone who has dealt with the EU emerges from that process frustrated about the pace of action. That is perhaps not surprising, because getting agreement between 28 countries is convoluted. That is the reality of it; it is slow. The UK has played an honourable role in putting pressure on the system to improve. I would make a couple of observations in response to his questions. Whether the EU has been slow or not in responding, I am reasonably satisfied that we have made significant progress within that response. I cited the 41 trade defence measures that have been put in place, but more important is the impact of those measures, in terms of reductions of 70% to 90% in the level of dumped products. Slow or not, what has been put in place has clearly had an impact.

There has been some suggestion from Members on the Opposition Benches that the UK has been a drag anchor in the process, but that is not the case. We were in the lead in pointing out that provisional duties on products such as rebar and cold-rolled flat products were too low. We pressed for higher definition on that and got that. Higher duties were put on rebar from China. On 29 July, an increase from 9% to 13% was announced.

My hon. Friend talked about pace. Again, we were instrumental in pressing the Commission to conduct its investigations into cases more rapidly than usual, and there is some evidence of response to that. Driving pace continues to be a challenge for any UK Minister involved with the EU, but let us be clear about the context. There is widespread recognition across the EU, not least by the UK, that the sector has a deep structural problem with overcapacity, and it is no secret where most of the problem comes from. In that context, I doubt the EU scores anywhere near 10 out of 10, but it is certainly not at the lower end of ones and twos. There has been significant progress, and the policies put in place have had an impact.