Oral Answers to Questions
Sarah Jones Excerpts(7 months ago)
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Chris Heaton-Harris
I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s welcoming of the restored institutions. I am also a great respecter of referendum results, and I believe we had one in Scotland. That is probably enough said.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr Steve Baker)
The Government remain committed to supporting integrated education in Northern Ireland and have already made funds available to support more schools than ever to convert to integrated status. I and my noble Friend Lord Caine look forward to engaging with the new Education Minister, Paul Givan, to make progress on this important issue.
Sarah Jones
I travelled with colleagues to Northern Ireland two weeks ago, and we visited Forge Integrated Primary School and met lots of very fine children. In 2015, £150 million of Fresh Start funding was earmarked for integrated education in Northern Ireland. What does the Minister say to those schools that were expecting this funding but have found that it is no longer guaranteed?
Mr Baker
The House may not know that only 7% of schoolchildren in Northern Ireland can be said to be attending an integrated school, which we would like to see change. The period over which Fresh Start funding was released would have ended at the end of March 2025, so we have repurposed £150 million of that funding to provide additional flexibility to the Northern Ireland Executive in respect of that funding stream and schools.
We are determined to see more parents given the opportunity to choose integrated education for their children as a vital part of the process of reconciliation. I, for one, am especially committed to it as someone who proudly attends a Baptist church, where for many years I worshipped with a Roman Catholic lady and had no idea. We should help Northern Ireland move to a point where denomination is a small matter and where people move forward together.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I know and understand the frustration across Wales, particularly in my hon. Friend’s constituency, about this state of affairs. The Welsh Government have not prioritised building new roads. They are damaging growth potential in places such as Anglesey, and are spending £100 million on new politicians. We will work with her to ensure that we resolve the matter.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
The Deputy Prime Minister
I think the hon. Lady knows that she does not correctly represent the views of the candidate. I find it extraordinary that she has raised the issue of crime, because while Labour’s London Mayor has increased the precept by over 70%, recorded crime in London has increased by 20%. That is the record of the Labour London Mayor—no wonder people will be voting against him.
Lithium: Critical Minerals Supply
Sarah Jones Excerpts(7 months ago)
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Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary, and a pleasure to follow all the contributors to what has been a thoughtful debate. I am grateful to the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) for securing the debate. I completely understand why he wanted to do so, and think I agree with everything he said in his speech. Although we have made some small progress, I agree that there is a silo mentality and it is disappointing that the Government are not as joined up as they should be on these issues. I also agree with the hon. Gentleman’s points about the need for more focus on the midstream. I have heard that several times from people I have engaged with while I have been in this role.
The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) highlighted the potential role, as we learned, of Northern Ireland. When I was in Northern Ireland a couple of weeks ago, I met representatives of the chamber of commerce and visited businesses including Harland & Wolff, and their ambitions were very high. It was reassuring and encouraging to hear that everybody is pushing forward now that the Assembly is back up and running; it feels as though real progress is being made.
I listened with interest to the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) about her role on the all-party parliamentary group for critical minerals. I have met the Critical Minerals Association and others and I understand what she is saying. I agree that mining is not always the dirty industry that it once was, but in some places, it is. Our role is to try to make sure that it is not a dirty industry and that, where we do it and where we supply and rely on others, it is being done properly. I agree that the Government need to be more agile in responding to some of the challenges that we face. The role of the extractive industries and how that works is an important part of the debate, as the hon. Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson) said.
I will add to some of the key arguments that have been made. If people are not familiar with the term “critical minerals”, it has an air of mystery about it, but there is nothing clandestine about the importance of critical minerals and how key they are to our modern society. I welcome the Minister to his new role. If he has not already read “Material World” by Ed Conway, I encourage him to do so, because it brings to life how important critical minerals are for us all.
The first thing that many of us do when we wake up in the morning is check our phone, which is powered by a lithium battery. We might spend the day working on a laptop; its chip is laced with tin. In the coming years, we will get more and more of our electricity from turbines that are powered as much by metals like cobalt as by the wind that turns their blades. If the Minister has not already been to the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre, I encourage him to go, so he can see how important critical minerals are in the production of batteries, which will be important for electric vehicle manufacturing in this country.
As has been said, the move to net zero is key. The International Energy Agency has predicted that demand for critical minerals could more than double by 2030. There are different figures—the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth said that it would quadruple—but we know that the need for critical minerals will increase significantly. It is therefore vital that we secure the supply of lithium and other critical minerals to this country.
Labour is clear that the green transition is our biggest economic opportunity. It is our chance to bring economic growth back to this country—the driving mission of a future Labour Government—along with hundreds of thousands of jobs everywhere, from Cornwall to Carlisle. As the shadow Chancellor has set out, we are living in an age of insecurity. The vulnerabilities exposed by the pandemic, by rising geopolitical tensions, which have been mentioned, and by the changing climate have made it clear that a joined-up approach to the economy is vital for our nation’s security.
Many of the 18 minerals that the UK defines as “critical” are concentrated in specific geographic areas, the majority of which, as has been said, are not dependable allies of the UK. China is the biggest producer of 12 of the 18 minerals. That makes it clear that strategic, co-ordinated and effective steps to secure our supply of those minerals are vital. Critical action is needed, on which we believe that the Government have critically underdelivered.
Other countries are racing ahead, but the Conservatives still refuse on ideological grounds to have an industrial strategy, which leaves our approach to critical minerals disjointed and scattergun. Instead of showing decisive leadership, we risk seeing the UK sidelined in the global race for the industries of the future. The EU Critical Raw Materials Act has introduced benchmarks for domestic capabilities along critical mineral supply chains. The US Inflation Reduction Act, which has accelerated the race for critical mineral production there, is a powerful intervention that the Chancellor dismissed as a “distortive …subsidy race”.
We welcomed the Government’s critical minerals strategy when it was finally published, but some parts of their approach were frankly baffling. For example, why did they choose not to assess the vulnerabilities of the UK’s industrial supply chains while drawing it up? Why did the strategy contain no specific targets for priority sectors? Why was there no plan to expand midstream capacity for processing and refining in the UK, including in the critical minerals refresh published last year? As the Critical Minerals Association said, without developing the UK midstream, there is a risk that the UK Government will not be recognised as integral to global critical mineral supply chains.
The strategy should have been a vital document, but as others have mentioned, the Foreign Affairs Committee concluded in a report that it is simply too broad to have real impact. That failure is deeply concerning, and it means that crucial investors in the critical minerals supply chain will look elsewhere. They will look to Europe, to countries such as Germany who are expected to have the largest battery manufacturing capacity on the continent by 2030. In comparison, the UK still has just one gigafactory that is actually operational.
The Government’s ad hoc approach has failed; the Conservatives have left Britain vulnerable, and Labour will take a new approach. Where this Government have proved themselves ideologically allergic to joined-up thinking, Labour knows that a real industrial strategy is the only adequate response to our age of insecurity. Building a resilient economy will be a core principle of our approach, which is why our industrial strategy provides for a new supply chains taskforce to analyse the potential supply chain needs across critical sectors, to review the vulnerability of critical supply chains to extreme risks and to assess the potential requirements of responding to those shocks.
That industrial strategy will work hand in glove with Labour’s green prosperity plan, built on the principle of using catalytic public investment to secure investment from the private sector—a principle that the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay may be able to attest to the power of. Labour will make strategic public investments to develop and support critical supply chains here in Britain. Our national wealth fund will invest £1.5 billion in new gigafactories and aim to draw in three times as much from the private sector. Boosting Britain’s automotive industry at the one end and the critical minerals supply chain at the other, the new gigafactories will help to put Britain back on a competitive international footing and to secure Britain’s place in the international supply of those key materials.
When it comes to critical minerals, it is vital to look way beyond our borders, which is why a Labour Government would ensure that our trade policy works in step with our domestic plans. That is why we need to work with our friends and allies on secure and resilient supply chains, aligning capacities in key sectors with our wider security relationships. I was at a roundtable recently with the Critical Minerals Association and many others, including representatives from Australia and Canada, and we were talking about how the Foreign Office works in terms of its relationships and priorities. It is clear that the need for critical minerals needs to be stamped on what is done by the Foreign Office, as well as by other Departments. We need to make sure that we are building relationships with our allies from whom we will need to source materials in the future. We should also use our international position to boost standards, which, when it comes to critical minerals, have too often been sorely lacking.
Securing the supply of new critical minerals is crucial, but it is also vital to consider how we make the most of the materials that already surround us. I did not know that there is an estimated average of 20 unused electronic items in every household across the UK. We have to not make a mockery of recycling, as our Prime Minister has, but see it in its rightful place in helping to secure the circular economy, with buy-in from devolved Administrations across the UK. That is a real priority in moving towards a sustainable future.
Getting this right is vital, so I hope that the Minister can answer a few questions before the end of the debate. What is the Government’s plan to support the development of midstream critical mineral capacity in the UK? How do the Government plan to support the move to a circular economy to reduce our demand for new minerals? How is his Department working with the Foreign Office to engage with our allies so that we can secure our critical mineral supply and boost international standards? In the Government’s response to the task and finish group, they said that they would consider new supportive proposals. Have the Government done that yet? Securing our supply of lithium and other critical minerals needs leadership—leadership that the Government have so far failed to deliver. We risk letting the UK fall behind in securing our supply of critical minerals. Labour will put the UK back in the race.
Financial Assistance to Industry
Sarah Jones Excerpts(8 months, 1 week ago)
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Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard.
The Minister has laid out the case for this legislation clearly, for which I thank her. As she says, Britain boasts a world-leading automotive sector, which supports hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country and contributes billions to the economy. We are proud to host a whole ecosystem of major international players: JLR, Nissan, Toyota and of course BMW, whose manufacture of BMW Minis in Oxford has become an iconic institution, supporting thousands of highly skilled, highly paid jobs, with more than 100 years of history in the area.
It is vital to communities, to our economy and to our global leadership position in the green transition that the UK retains and develops our automotive manufacturing capabilities. For those reasons, while Labour has major concerns about the Government’s overall approach to this issue, we will not reject the measure under consideration today.
The motion would, as the Minister has mentioned, authorise the Secretary of State to pay a grant of up to £75 million to BMW to support the transition of its Oxford plant to the manufacture of electric Minis. The grant would be paid under section 8 of the Industrial Development Act 1982, which provides for financial assistance to be given to businesses outside the assisted areas, of which Oxford is not one.
We accept that significant changes are needed to adapt the plant to EV production, such as capital investment, as the Minister says, in new tooling, new machinery and new skills for workers at the plant. The case has been reviewed by the Industrial Development Advisory Board, which has supported the proposal, and the report by the Competition and Markets Authority’s subsidy advice unit accepts that the Government have made an adequate case that the project would not have been undertaken in a similar form, manner and timeframe without the subsidy.
As such, and given the strategic importance of supporting electric vehicle manufacturing in the UK, Labour is not opposing the motion. We do have some concerns that it would be helpful for the Minister to address, not least because this is a substantial amount of money that we are handing over. First, while we are pleased that the Industrial Development Advisory Board has reviewed and supported the proposal, it is slightly unclear what that body’s role and function is. If we look on the Government website, the only documentation this body has published in the last three years has been a statement on its membership, as far as we can see.
Can the Government explain what the IDAB is doing, and will they republish its report on this grant or the minutes of the decision it came to? There is advice on the website that people can make a freedom of information request to get information, but perhaps the Minister can save us having to do that and see whether we can get the information from that body.
Secondly, the report by the Competition and Markets Authority’s subsidy advice unit concluded that, while it is absolutely right that overall the positives outweigh the negatives,
“in our view the Assessment would be strengthened if it followed the Statutory Guidance more closely in explaining the relevant market failures and providing supporting evidence. The Assessment has not clearly demonstrated the existence of positive and negative externalities constituting market failures that require government intervention.”
The unit does accept that the subsidy will not be used to finance something that would have been financed anyway if the subsidy had not been there, but it asks some questions and it would be helpful if the Minister could perhaps answer them.
Thirdly, the Government have said that the grant will be subject to performance on employment key performance indicators. Will the Government make public the details of those KPIs, or at least explain a bit more about what they are and against what timeframe BMW’s success or failure will be judged? More specifics on those three areas would be very helpful.
It is important to note briefly the wider context of this discussion. The reality is that this deal was a near miss. The money from Government came after BMW had publicly announced its plans to relocate production to China, bringing us to the brink of what would have been an historic loss for British manufacturing capacity. We on the Opposition side think that getting ahead of those kinds of crisis situation, by having a strategic industrial strategy to help businesses to invest in this county and deliver the economic growth we all want to see, would be a more stable and longer-lasting approach and, in the end, would help the automotive industry much more.
Steel Industry: Wales
Sarah Jones Excerpts(9 months, 1 week ago)
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Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith) was able to secure this debate, and I want to congratulate her on such an excellent speech. She is right: we stand at a crossroads and we risk being left behind. She painted a lovely picture of the tinplate factory—as she knows, that is where my grandfather worked—and how long that has been there.
I also want to mention the other speeches, particularly that of my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), who told us that this is not about the past; this debate is about the future and what the steel industry can become. My hon. Friends the Members for Neath (Christina Rees) for Newport East (Jessica Morden) and for Newport West (Ruth Jones) made, along with others, really brilliant speeches that highlighted the problem incredibly well. I listened carefully to the debate, and I am very proud to have such Members on this side of the House standing up for workers in south Wales.
My main takeaway from considering everything that has been said is: what is this Government for? What are they usefully doing? What is their plan on steel? The challenges we face in Wales have been excellently set out, but let me set out the broader context. The steel industry is badly broken. It has been lurching from crisis to crisis for more than a decade, and there are two fundamental points where the system is not working.
First, the steel industry does not serve the needs of the UK—of our economy or of our security. Companies pursue completely legitimate corporate objectives, but those are no longer aligned with what we need as a country for our security or our economy.
Secondly, the steel industry is not serving the needs of private investors either. Companies are struggling to make money or find opportunities for growth. We have seen investment in the steel industry in other equivalent countries—big investment—but it has been staggeringly low for many years in the UK. It is not working for anyone.
What have the Government done in the face of this challenge? Well, we have the worst of all worlds. They do not know whether they want to be interventionist or not. They do not know whether they want to encourage competition or not. They do not know whether they want to have a plan or not. They dither; Ministers change; obsessions lie elsewhere, so this Government end up treating each crisis in isolation. They support existing players in the market rather than encouraging new ones, failing to tackle the lack of competitiveness and pouring billions of pounds of public investment into the steel industry without any improvement in the sector or any increase in capability. The result has been a significant fall in the amount of steel we are making. What is the overall outcome? Our steel industry is now smaller than that of Belgium, jobs have been offshored and we have damaged our communities.
Labour’s approach could not be more different. We will not pour billions of pounds into an industry without being clear what it is for, what the outcome will be or how the security and economy of the UK will be enhanced. We will not stifle competition; we welcome competition. We will go after new entrants to the market to encourage investment. We want the UK to be the most attractive country in western Europe to invest in steel. Labour’s £3-billion investment in steel will unlock billions of pounds of private sector investment. We will not just shore up a broken model, as this Government are doing. We will not dither. Our industrial strategy will clearly define the objectives for UK growth. We will identify the space in which UK national objectives align with corporate objectives, and we will be agile enough to respond to the different scenarios facing the industry by the time this wretched Government have finished their work.
Labour also has a commitment to primary steel making, unlike this Government. We will not jeopardise the security of our nation.
Jonathan Edwards
This is a genuine question—I am not trying to catch the hon. Lady out. As I alluded to earlier, there will be a change of Government before the end of the year and the hon. Lady will effectively be the Minister. Are the Labour Front Benchers now in a position to negotiate directly with those steel producers about the plan that will be in place in a year’s time? They are essentially a Government in waiting, are they not? Are those negotiations happening, or is there no chance of them happening at all?
Sarah Jones
Obviously, we need to wait and see if there is a change of Government, and we would not assume that. Many of us are in constant conversation with Tata and the unions about the way forward, and we are also talking to the Government about a different approach. We are doing everything we can from an Opposition point of view, but obviously the Government hold the reins at the moment.
Holly Mumby-Croft (Scunthorpe) (Con)
The hon. Lady makes mention of talking to Tata, and presumably that has been ongoing for some time. Can she be very clear whether her understanding is that Tata would have removed all its UK-based jobs had it not been able to reach a deal with the Government for some support at Port Talbot?
Sarah Jones
That is not my understanding—no. What we are trying to focus on in any conversations we have about any industry on steel is what the future is and where we go from here—that is the important question.
My advice to the Minister is to go to the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) and talk to him about when he worked down the mines, and what happened to his communities when the mines shut—the cliff edge, the redundancies, and the closure of all the community assets that went with it. That is what we risk doing in Port Talbot with the cliff edge that we face—nearly 3,000 jobs, as well as the huge knock-on impact of one job in the plant linked to three jobs in the community. Let us not lose 3,000 jobs in Port Talbot. Do not spend half a billion pounds on that. Let that not be the Government’s legacy.
It is not too late; there is an alternative that we could all work towards. The multi-union plan helps us to transition in a way that protects jobs. That is what the Government should be talking about to Tata. It is not too late for the Government to have a steel strategy, to spend taxpayers’ money in a way that works for the UK, our economy and our security, and to listen to their own work, if not Labour’s. The Government’s 2017 review, “Future capacities and capabilities of the UK steel industry”, identified the barriers to growth: supply chains, competitiveness, skills, and research and development capability. Has the Minister read that? What is the Government’s response to that review from 2017? It could do with an update now but the basics are there. The Harrington review is clear:
“The reality is that many of our competitors chase investments via their industrial strategies backed by substantial government support…The UK needs to respond.”
Has the Minister read the Harrington review and what is the response on steel? What is the Government’s steel strategy?
Ministers talk about how important scrap is going to be, and of course it is for electric arc furnaces, but how are they incentivising measures to keep our scrap here rather than exporting it, which is currently the case? Ministers talk about how we need new technology, but electric arc furnaces are not really the new technology any more—they are years old. What are we doing to take us towards a direct reduced iron facility in the UK using hydrogen? What is the plan? What is the plan to grow the steel industry and where is the ambition? What are the Government doing about carbon border adjustment mechanisms? The steel industry will be exposed to unfair competition, so what is the Minister going to do about that? What is the plan on skills, and what is the Government’s view of the multi-union plan for steel in Port Talbot?
Many of the manufacturing industries that I meet across different sectors are at a crossroads. Bills are high, there is no strategy to support them, they are reducing their output and they are struggling to find people to work with them. The steel industry in Wales is a case in point; the Government’s last-minute, chaotic deal was a masterclass in how not to run the transition. Members across the House are worried about the future of the UK steel industry. Members across the House do not want thousands of steel workers to lose their jobs.
Stephen Kinnock
My hon. Friend is summarising the discussion extremely well. I declare an interest as a member of the transition board. During the board’s discussions, we talked about what the vacancies looked like in the labour market in south-west and south-east Wales, and the vast majority of vacancies are in the retail and healthcare sectors. Those are really important sectors and really important parts of our economy, but does my hon. Friend agree that there is not really a connection between the skills and experience of the men and women who have worked in the blast furnaces, for example, and those required to fill the vacancies in the labour market outside those steelworks, and that that is extremely worrying?
Sarah Jones
My hon. Friend makes a really good point, which is why we keep coming back to this cliff-edge approach and saying that it is not the way to transition. If we think about south Wales and the Celtic sea, we think about the huge opportunities with an industrial strategy and industry working together with Government, including the jobs and growth that we could create, but do we have any of that under this Government? No, because they do not even have the starting point of a plan for steel.
Members across the House do not want to see this country becoming the first developed country in the world without the capacity to produce primary steel. Is the Minister concerned about our defence capabilities if we lose the capacity to make steel here from scratch? Does she think that the Government’s plan is really money well spent? Can she answer the question that was originally put today: what conditionality has been placed on this deal? We keep asking for the answer to that question, but we have yet to receive it.
Labour will have clarity of vision on steel. We will invest to unlock private sector investment and we will work hand in glove with the private sector. We will use our flagship policies—the national wealth fund, GB Energy becoming a clean energy superpower, grid reform and an industrial strategy—to make the UK a place to invest in, not a place to leave.
Once again I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli for making such a brilliant speech today and I also thank all the Members who have contributed to the debate. I hope that this debate serves to raise the Government’s game, but Labour stands ready to step in if it does not.
Ms Ghani
My hon. Friend is far more knowledgeable on steel plants and steelmaking than I could ever be. The discussions continue. There is a consultation taking place. I was with the unions this week. They will continue to push their plans, which Tata has made clear are neither credible nor economically viable. But within those plans there is a proposal that electric arc furnaces will be upstream, not years away but in a couple of years’ time, which also gives assurances to the supply chains. My hon. Friend knows that the negotiations continue with British Steel and she will probably want to intervene on me later. A huge amount of support was provided by Tata and the transition board, which makes this a far easier programme of work to manage.
Tata has seen a decade of financial losses, with the Port Talbot plant reportedly losing £1.5 million every day. As I mentioned earlier, those challenges stem from complex international dynamics. China’s long-standing practice of flooding the global steel market with subsidised products has been a significant factor. Despite our efforts to mitigate the impact of cheap imports through domestic measures and challenging unfair practices internationally, we cannot ignore the harsh economic reality.
Ms Ghani
I will in a moment. Private companies in the UK steel industry are facing immense difficulties in turning a profit. In fact, without the opportunity to transition to a modem electric arc furnace, the existence of the Port Talbot plant would have been in jeopardy. I cannot stress that enough.
Sarah Jones
On the point that the Minister makes about China, we know that the cheapest steel from China has been a factor, but major importers to the UK are western European nations: the Netherlands, Italy, Spain and Germany. We are not competing with them, either. There is a fundamental problem in the way that we run this economy, which has meant that our industries cannot be competitive when others in the European Union can be.
Ms Ghani
I thank my hon. Friend for putting that on the record. I am not sure what evidence the hon. Member for Croydon Central has that the plant would not have been under threat. When Tata circulated information prior to our debates or made announcements, it said that there was an absolute threat to Port Talbot and the company. The reality is that if we did not provide that support, there was a risk of losing all 8,000 jobs.
Ms Ghani
The hon. Gentleman knows better than most that these conversations and negotiations have been going on for years. The Labour party had an opportunity to invest in the blast furnaces when it was in government, and it did not do so. He also knows that the blast furnaces are coming to the end of their life, so a decision would have to be made at some time. Tata could have decided to exit completely, which would have resulted in a loss of the 8,000 jobs and certainty in the supply chain. The hon. Gentleman knows that, because he had I have been at meetings with the unions and at the transition board. I know it is very difficult when there are potential job losses in one’s constituency, but the reality is that the model was not working.
Before I give way to the hon. Member for Croydon Central, let me say that Opposition Members constantly want harder, greener net-zero policies, and this is what happens when we flow those through. Customers—end users—want cleaner, greener steel that is made in electric arc furnaces, and this is the outcome of that demand. The reality is that, without the support, there would have been a high risk of Port Talbot and Tata no longer producing steel in the constituency of the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock).
Sarah Jones
The Minister is being very generous in giving way. I want to return to the point about whether it was this deal or the end of everything. If the Government had paid attention to their own report in 2017, which said, “Here are the problems with the steel industry: the supply chain, skills, R&D and transition,” and responded with a steel strategy, Tata would not hold all the cards and would not be able to say, rightly or wrongly, “It’s all or nothing.” We would not be in this situation. But the unions are supporting a reasonable deal that has a calmer transition and would not lead to job losses. Does the Minister think there is merit in that union plan?
Ms Ghani
I will go on to reference that, but not all unions subscribe to the plan, as the hon. Member knows. It was put forward by a collective, but not by all of them. Tata has been clear that keeping open a blast furnace for a very narrow period of time while opening up electric arc furnaces, which will provide the certainty that we need so that we can use scrap steel in the UK, is neither credible nor financially viable. Keeping a blast furnace open also creates difficulties around security and health and safety.
The negotiations continue, and a consultation is taking place. I was asked about what I am doing to ensure that Tata is observing the parameters of that consultation. The transition board is in place, and our focus is on ensuring that the consultation is as wide and deep as it can be, and that the transition board can do the job that it was set up to do, with huge sums of money.
I have already mentioned, and I cannot reiterate enough, the threat that the Port Talbot plant was under. We recognise the vital importance of the steel industry to the community’s heritage and identity. As I have mentioned, the Government have committed £500 million —the biggest sum ever invested in the steel sector—as part of a total investment of £1.25 billion to ensure the future sustainability of Port Talbot steel. That is what we have been able to do, and we should reflect on that. The investment is a huge step towards fortifying UK steel. Sustaining the blast furnaces would entail significant additional losses for the company and compound its current issues. Moreover, as the hon. Member for Llanelli knows, the UK’s blast furnaces, such as those in Port Talbot, are approaching the end of their operational lifespan.
Ms Ghani
My hon. Friend raises an important point. UK Steel and a number of other umbrella organisations have done a huge amount of work in this space, including with universities in Wales, and they have huge confidence that we could retain most of the 11 million tonnes of scrap steel that circulates in our economy and the 8.2 million tonnes that is exported overseas for use in the electric arc furnaces. Technology will move forward as well—it never stands still—but Tata is confident that it can meet 90% of the contracts it has in place at the moment.
Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
May I make an observation? It is helpful if the Minister can respond to one intervention before people bounce up and down for the next one. Let us take it calmly.
Sarah Jones
It has been a while since I bounced up and down, Chair; I am too old for that. Is the Minister exploring incentives to keep scrap steel in this country? Because at the moment we export it all. Is she looking at VAT relief, tariffs or restrictions to help that process?
Ms Ghani
I will make some progress before I take any further interventions. If the hon. Lady paid more attention to the business model, she would know that we cannot use more scrap steel in the UK economy because we do not have the capacity. But we will with the electric arc furnaces, which will be the dynamic change that is definitely needed.
Furthermore, by reducing our reliance on raw materials such as iron ore and coking coal, electric arc furnace technology offers a more sustainable alternative. Unlike blast furnaces, electric arc furnaces use scrap materials that are readily available—as I said, we have around 11 million tonnes circulating—from abundant domestic sources in the UK. In fact, the UK ranks among the top exporters of steel scrap globally, second only to the United States. Leveraging our ample supply of steel scrap for electric arc furnace production enables us to create new steel products locally, supporting British and international manufacturers alike. Every tonne of steel scrap that is sourced domestically diminishes our dependence on raw material imports from overseas countries, none of them near neighbours.
Wider support for the steel industry was raised in the debate. More widely, we are backing UK-made steel and, crucially, we are backing it in the right way, investing hundreds of millions of pounds to help the industry to thrive in increasingly challenging global markets. We are launching initiatives such as the British industry supercharger, which reduces electricity costs for the steel industry and other energy-intensive sectors, bringing them closer in line with the charges of other major economies. That is complemented by the £730 million in energy cost relief given to the steel sector since 2013. We have given specific support through our energy bill relief scheme and energy bills discount scheme.
We are, then, ensuring the resilience and prosperity of the UK steel industry in the face of increasingly competitive global markets. This work is preparing UK steelmaking for the coming years, but it is not the final word in future-proofing the industry. The SUSTAIN future manufacturing research hub, which is led by Swansea University, is the largest fundamental research activity centre working right now to decarbonise and improve the efficiency of steelmaking in the UK. I believe it is also looking at the quality of scrap steel and new technologies to ensure that we can make even more products using steel in the UK.
Other points were raised by the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter), who serves on the Welsh Affairs Committee. I will go through the transcript from that Committee; I am across most of the issues raised. She asked about an unlimited budget; I am not sure that having an unlimited budget is a good use of taxpayers’ money, nor does it answer the question about the demands of customers looking for cleaner green steel.
A question was asked about absorbing further technologies. We are looking at electric arc furnaces at the moment, but that product is just the first step. As other technologies become commercial, they could be considered in future. I thought the question about our taking a stake in the company was curious because that is not something that we do. Regarding the condition on the grant, the consultation is taking place, and agreements are still being finalised and will include appropriate conditions on the grant. That is why the transition board is vital to that conversation. The grant will be paid in arrears against set milestones for the build of the electric arc furnace.
Protecting Steel in the UK
Sarah Jones Excerpts(10 months, 1 week ago)
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Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
This has been a powerful debate, reflecting the huge strength of feeling in this place, but also the huge knowledge and ambition for our steel industry. I was disappointed that the Minister came to this place and said that this debate was performative, less than a week after Tata Steel announced nearly 3,000 job losses. I think we all would have expected better from her.
Like many others, this afternoon I met steelworkers and union officials not only from Port Talbot, but from all the other steel sectors and steel sites across the country. They have come because they know what this announcement means for them and their future. These actions will have consequences beyond last week’s announcement. The steelworkers here today, like many of us, are baffled by the Government’s approach. They know that steel is a foundation industry. They know how crucial it is to our economy. They know that the world is uncertain—for goodness’ sake, the Prime Minister was here only this afternoon talking about strikes on Houthis in Yemen—and that having our own supply of primary steel is crucial to our security. Our genuine question is: why are the Government so content to be spending half a billion pounds on a scheme that leads to thousands of job losses?
Stephen Kinnock
On jobs, my hon. Friend will have seen that every steel industry across the G20 and around the planet is going through massive change, but the only place where there is a threat of thousands of job losses is the United Kingdom. Why does she think that might be?
Sarah Jones
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He made a brilliant speech earlier and has been a great defender of his constituents. The lack of any plan from the Government over the last 14 years is at the heart of the problems we see today.
As the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds), said in his opening speech, we also risk something much wider: that net zero becomes a zero-sum game for working people and we lose the public consent that we need for the transition. There is no getting away from the facts. The Government have pushed a plan that uses hundreds of millions of pounds to make thousands of people redundant. If Scunthorpe ends up going the same way—the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Holly Mumby-Croft) made a powerful speech to the contrary—we will be unable to produce primary steel in the UK.
In the Port Talbot plan, the two blast furnaces will shut this year, with a cliff edge for jobs. For at least three years, steel will be completely imported from India and the Netherlands to feed Trostre and Llanwern in south Wales, but there is no guarantee that once the electric arc furnace is built, those jobs will stay. We know that there are huge questions about scrap steel and whether it will produce the steel we need. Many Members, including the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), asked questions to which the Government have so far provided no answers.
Alun Cairns
I did not have an opportunity to develop this in my speech, but would the hon. Lady and the Labour party support a development corporation to diversify the economy so that it is not so dependent on one industry and one company?
Sarah Jones
The Labour party would support an industrial strategy, which would have myriad plans that would look exactly at some of these issues. Our national wealth fund would fund some of the really important future industries that we need, crowd-in private sector investment at a much greater scale and, hopefully, lead to the manufacturing industry growing and not the managed decline we have seen under this Government.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) said that the plan is exporting jobs and importing carbon, and he is exactly right. My dad was from Llanelli, once the tinplate capital of the world. My grandad worked at the tinplate factory that was then called Richard Thomas and Baldwins, and his brother worked at the Salter saucepan works. They would have stood in Stradey Park singing “Sosban Fach,” I am sure bursting with pride.
Britain’s steel industry has seen us through momentous periods in Britain’s national story—the white heat of the industrial revolution; the planes, ships and tanks that saw us through the second world war; and the buildings dotting our skyline across this modern Britain—but if we get nostalgic for the past, we do not look to the future. The world is changing, it is less safe and less secure, and steel is changing. New technologies are transforming how we make and use steel, and it will be as crucial to our future as it has been to our past.
We cannot make solar power without steel. We cannot make electric vehicles without steel. We cannot make wind turbines without steel. We will not reach the Paris climate agreement targets without steel. Steel is used for 3D printing and robotic automation, and everything from the tools that our doctors use to save our lives to the rocket ships that reach into space needs steel. Our pens are made of steel, and Big Ben ticks because of steel. Anyone who does not know that it is magic should read Ed Conway’s book “Material World”. Steel makes the machines, the tools and the factories that make everything possible. It will forge our future, not just our past. The debate is not about nostalgia: it is about looking head. Labour Members know that steel can have a bright future in Britain.
The Government’s last-minute chaotic deal is a masterclass in how not to run the transition. What they offered was never a serious plan for the long-term of our steel industry; it was yet another sticking plaster from a Government lurching from crisis to crisis, unable or unwilling to take a long-term view.
There are other ways forward. Labour has a cast-iron commitment to support our steel industry. We have earmarked up to £3 billion for investment in green steel alongside industry, working with steel communities to ensure that the transition comes with jobs. There are other ways forward that can help us, not least hydrogen. While the Conservatives scramble around for last-minute deals, Labour will make long-term investments. That is the central difference in our approach.
We must think about manufacturing differently. I have lost track of the number of times businesses have said to me, “We would invest in renewables, but the Government make it too hard.” Our manufacturers say, “We want to decarbonise, but we are living hand to mouth because our energy bills are so much higher than in other countries, and Government won’t help us.” This steel debacle speaks to a much wider issue. We do not just need a steel industry: we need glass, ceramics, cement, compost, critical minerals, batteries, composites and cheap energy. We need supply chains that work, an upgraded national grid, planning reform and a job plan to create jobs across every part of this country—a transition from the old to a much cheaper renewable future. In short, we need an industrial strategy. We need a Government who believe in working in partnership with industry, not just telling them to “F off”, and we need a plan that looks to the future of our own country and does not just rely on cheap imports from China.
We are asking the Government to think again, to look at the multi-union plan again and to think about how to defend primary steel capacity in our country. We know that steelworkers are watching this debate, and they must feel wretched. I ask Government Members in all sincerity: are they concerned about our defence capabilities if we lose the capacity to make primary steel? Do they really think the Government’s plan is money well spent? Should decarbonisation really be about cutting jobs? Is manufacturing really a Victorian pursuit best left to the Chinese, as a former Tory Prime Minister is reported as saying?
Or, as the great country that we are, can we harness the skills and talents of our people and create a vibrant manufacturing sector here in the UK? Tonight, can we send a message to the steelworkers here that we want to protect the future of British steelmaking, and that we will not sit by and let managed decline be the hallmark of this great British industry? I commend the motion to the House.
Oral Answers to Questions
Sarah Jones Excerpts(10 months, 1 week ago)
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Stephen Farry (North Down) (Alliance)
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
Chris Heaton-Harris
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question and, indeed, for the way in which he and his party have conducted themselves in the talks to try to restore the Executive. The UK Government put an extremely fair and generous package for a restored Executive, worth £3.3 billion, on the table before Christmas. The money that Northern Ireland civil servants and I have available is from the budget passed in this place in the last year.
Sarah Jones
I was recently in County Kildare with the Minister of State and the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, working to build understanding between the two countries. We heard from Irish Ministers and the ambassador about the impact of the lack of a functioning Northern Ireland Assembly. Bearing that in mind, and the struggles that we know people are having in Northern Ireland with their bills, potential strike action and all kinds of issues, can the Secretary of State say a bit more about what he is doing, and about the meetings and conversations he is having, to work at pace to try to get a solution?
Chris Heaton-Harris
I thank the hon. Lady both for her interest and for the sentiment behind her question. A huge amount is happening, including meetings galore with all the political parties in Northern Ireland, and especially the Democratic Unionist party, because it is the DUP that I need to get on board so that the Executive can be restored. The hon. Lady says “at pace”, and we will happily work at whatever pace we can, but it is slightly determined by our interlocutors.
Oral Answers to Questions
Sarah Jones Excerpts(1 year, 4 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is entirely right. I might add that Labour Governments also spend every last penny in the Treasury. I well remember the note saying that there was no money left when we entered government. We should never allow that to happen to the British people again.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
The Deputy Prime Minister
I am not sure that there was a question in that; I might respectfully say that it was a rant. I will proudly defend this Government’s record. We have grown the economy in the past two years faster than any other country in the G7, with record low levels of unemployment and fewer people in workless households, all of which would be put at risk if the Labour party ever entered power.
Oral Answers to Questions
Sarah Jones Excerpts(2 years ago)
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The Prime Minister
My right hon. and learned Friend rightly champions this area and knows an enormous amount about it. I look forward to working with him closely to get his recommendations on how we and industry can improve the lives of those who need our help.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
Tributes to Her Late Majesty The Queen
Sarah Jones Excerpts(2 years, 2 months ago)
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Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
I rise on behalf of my constituents to offer our condolences to the family of Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth and to offer our loyalty to the new King. Queen Elizabeth II, who reigned for 70 years, is the only sovereign most of us have ever known. She was our constant in a changing world, our cornerstone at times of crisis, and our comfort when in sorrow. My nanna was a big fan. My mum, who is 70 this year, remembers as a child being read books about the young princesses and looking at photos of them all the time. I think the war years made that generation feel particularly close to the young Queen.
The Queen was a friend to Croydon and visited many times in her reign. I remember precisely how exciting it was as a Brownie lining up with my flag to welcome her when she opened the Queen’s Gardens in the middle of my constituency—few things in my suburban childhood topped a visit from the Queen.
Of course, it is not just Croydon and this country who are mourning. The world is in sorrow. The front page of The New York Times this morning simply says, “Queen and Spirit of Britain”. Many of us find it hard to imagine Britain without her. It feels bleak, but then I think, what would she do? What did she do when her own father, King George VI, died? I know that she would stand tall, face the day, pray to her God and do the best job that she could—and as the King said this evening, she would fearlessly embrace progress. That is the spirit we all keep alive.
Heavy is the head that wears the crown—quite literally, as it turns out. The Queen was once heard to say that wearing a crown was like wearing a 10-lb salmon on her head, but she bore the weight well. Her service, her humility and her constancy are what we can all strive to achieve.
The Queen’s death comes at a time of real challenge for our country. If ever we needed to be more like her, it is now. Let one of her legacies be that we will all try to be a little more like her—service, steady progress, humility, constancy and some fun along the way. None of us will see another Queen in our lifetime, so we say “Thank you” to Her late Majesty, and God save the King.
Standards in Public Life
Sarah Jones Excerpts(2 years, 4 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Michael Ellis
If the right hon. Gentleman is asking me about machinery-of-Government processes and changes, that is not within my area of responsibility, but he knows what has been said about that. There is work going on all the time to look at machinery of Government and no doubt that will continue.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
We now seem to be in a position where No. 10 have just admitted that the Prime Minister was told about the upheld complaint, but he forgot. Has the Minister ever found himself in a position where he did not immediately recall being told of an upheld complaint of sexual harassment against a fellow Minister?
Michael Ellis
I would ask the hon. Lady to understand that a Prime Minister has myriad urgent and pressing responsibilities. He may be told literally hundreds of things in any one day. The reality of the matter is that I cannot speak exactly to somebody else’s mind, whoever that person may be. But if she says to the House that she has never forgotten anything, or asks whether I have ever forgotten or misremembered something, I do not accept that.