UK Steel Manufacturing
Richard Tice Excerpts(1 day, 20 hours ago)
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Sarah Jones
I completely agree with my hon. Friend, who has much expertise in this area. The Department is working closely with the Ministry of Defence and the Secretary of State for Defence to make sure we are maintaining our defence. We are building as much as we can in the UK, with as many contracts in the UK as we can. We are using the power of Government to deliver that.
Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)
The hypocrisy of this debate is utterly extraordinary. Everybody agrees that steel is of strategic national importance, yet the obsession with net zero of both main parties, led by the Conservatives, is leading to the removal of our blast furnaces by both British Steel and Tata. That obsession is killing our steel industry and steel jobs, and leading to our inability to produce primary steel. Over 75% of all new steel generating capacity in the world is in Asia, and over 90% of that is produced in blast furnaces. Our obsession with net zero—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. I am sure that the hon. Member is coming to his question.
Richard Tice
Given the obsession with net zero, will the Minister guarantee that if Tata is subsidised with more than £500 million to produce new electric arc furnaces, the money will be linked to the construction as opposed to Tata taking the money early and then not building the furnaces?
Sarah Jones
The hon. Gentleman talks about our obsession with decarbonisation and producing green steel, but we also have to go with the market. The market and big companies are now saying to us, “We want to buy green steel”. That is what they are demanding and what we will produce. If we do not, we will not be selling it on the same basis. We will use the money we are investing through the national wealth fund to develop a steel strategy that will enable us to bring new entrants into the UK, which the previous Government did not try to do, so that we can have a vibrant, competitive steel economy in the UK and create good, highly paid jobs in the green industries of the future. If we fall behind, others will come before us and take our jobs.