Scunthorpe Steelworks
Debate between Sarah Jones and Kevin Hollinrake(1 week, 4 days ago)
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Mr Speaker
I call the shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers) and Rob Waltham, our excellent candidate for Mayor of Greater Lincolnshire, for their engagement and work on this issue.
Despite repeatedly promising to protect and support virgin steelmaking capacity when in opposition, the Labour party is potentially presiding over its total demise. In the process, thousands of blue-collar jobs in this once proud industry have either gone forever or are at risk, including 5,000 directly employed roles at Port Talbot and Scunthorpe alone and many more in the supply chain.
Given that the regions with the highest numbers of steelworkers are Wales and Yorkshire and the Humber, the situation is dealing a hammer blow to efforts to address regional inequality. Steel is obviously a key strategic industry—even more so given our need to increase defence spending and infrastructure investment, and even more so again given President Trump’s game-changing imposition of tariffs.
The Prime Minister keeps saying that the world has changed, and that we are witnessing the end of globalisation. I cannot say that I totally agree, but if that is the Government’s position, surely they have no choice but to intervene to support domestic production. The alternative could see us locked out of reliable, consistently priced sources of steel. The Government have stepped in to help car manufacturing in recent days, so will the Minister now redouble her efforts to reach a deal with British Steel?
Steel production is just one of the industries closing due to our high energy prices, which are 50% higher than our competitors in France and Germany and 400% higher than in the USA. Other manufacturers such as CF Fertilisers on Teesside and Ineos at Grangemouth have closed their doors or are in the process of doing so. Will the Minister press with the Chancellor the case for permanently lower industrial energy prices?
The Minister mentions support for steelworkers. How many steelworkers have the Government engaged with? What support has been given to account for the knock-on effect to communities? What assessment has the Minister made of the effects this situation will have on national security? She mentions a bright future for steelmaking in this country. Will she confirm that that means primary steelmaking capability?
Sarah Jones
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution and for welcoming the Prime Minister’s announcements today on the zero emission vehicle mandate and the changes we have made to support the automotive industry, which is incredibly important.
The hon. Gentleman talks about the number of good steel jobs that have gone forever or are at risk, but that happened because the previous Government failed to intervene to support our steel industry. That is why we lost so many jobs over the last decade. Not having an industrial strategy or a plan for steel meant that we allowed offshoring of our jobs in the steel sector, which has damaged us. He rightly said that in many key parts of our country we need good jobs. I should say that steel produced really good jobs, which are better paid than the average in the area and are done by really good, qualified people we want to retain in the UK.
The hon. Gentleman talked about energy. Again, the reason why we are here is that we had years of the previous Government not intervening in this space. We are well aware of energy prices in this country and are doing all we can to bring those down. [Interruption.]
I was asked by the hon. Gentleman to redouble my efforts in the negotiations we are having with British Steel. I will do everything that I possibly can—as we are doing. I hope he understands that I cannot go into detail about the state of those negotiations because that would be bad for the workers, bad for our supply chains and bad for the outcome.
The hon. Gentleman talked about national security and primary steel. We are conducting a review of primary steel as part of our plan for steel and we will have the results of that soon. We will look at those results and see what we need to do. I should stress that there is defence equipment made in the UK from electric arc furnaces; there is not much defence work either in British Steel or at Tata in Port Talbot at the moment. People such as Sheffield Forgemasters produce steel from electric arc furnaces. However, the hon. Gentleman is right to talk about the importance of national security and to say that the world has changed and things have moved on, so we need to ensure that we are protecting our country as we need to.
As I said in the Chamber in response to the last urgent question on this issue, there is a reason why Putin bombed the blast furnaces in Ukraine pretty much first: it was because a country wants to have that steelmaking capacity. We are alive to those issues, and that is why nothing is off the table. We are doing everything that we can.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Sarah Jones and Kevin Hollinrake(5 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Sarah Jones
The hon. Gentleman oversaw the worst Parliament for living standards in modern history. We did not choose that inheritance, and we have made choices. Would he rather we did not compensate for the infected blood scandal? Would he rather we did not compensate the Horizon victims, for whom there was no money in the Budget, on his watch? Would he rather we did not invest in the health service? Would he rather we did not increase the minimum wage? Would he rather we did not support carers? Would he rather we made the choices that he made, such as cutting national insurance for workers when there was no budget for that? This Government are fixing the foundations, so that we can have a bright future for all our country.
Kevin Hollinrake
The Government’s choice was to hit businesses, and that is because there is not an ounce of business experience among them. Labour’s death taxes will hit farms and businesses. Families with a typical farm will have to find hundreds of thousands of pounds or see their farms broken up and sold. The Environment Secretary said 10 months ago that he had no intentions of putting death taxes on businesses. That was a broken promise, was it not?
Sarah Jones
I will not take any lectures from the Opposition, who said “eff business”. Conservative Members have some cheek to come at us when we are clearing up the £22 billion black hole that we inherited, and setting in train stability. I spent quite a lot of yesterday, as the hon. Gentleman would expect, talking to and having meetings with businesses about the Budget and its implications. We talked about the potential for growth, long-term stability, and changes that this Labour Government are making.
International Investment Summit
Debate between Sarah Jones and Kevin Hollinrake(6 months ago)
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Sarah Jones
I am always happy to meet and to talk about what more we can do in our next 100 days, and indeed—we hope—our next five to 10 years in government.
Some Conservative Members have questioned whether some of these investments were teed up under the last Government. They know perfectly well that business confidence can rapidly change investment decisions. All the announcements included are of new, firm commitments being made by companies to invest in the UK either when final investment decisions have been taken or when announcements have been accelerated or unlocked because of actions taken and support provided by this Government.
I am sure that Conservative Members will have seen the letter, published in The Times at the start of the week, from five of the world’s biggest banks, joined by private equity firms, insurers and tech giants, saying that it was
“time to invest in Britain”,
and that Britain’s “greater stability” had increased its attractiveness to investment, which was of course a reference to Labour’s decisions when we took office. They concluded:
“We are optimistic about the future of the economy, and believe it is time to invest in Britain.”
The fact that scores of investors attended our summit on Monday, with tens of billions of pounds being firmly committed to new projects, shows that under this Labour Government, business and investors have a great deal of confidence in our growth mission.
Kevin Hollinrake
The Minister is talking about confidence, but if confidence is rising, can she explain why the Institute of Directors has stated that confidence has gone from plus 30 in June to minus 7 today?
Sarah Jones
The shadow Minister knows that we are working very closely with businesses, business organisations and others to ensure that the changes we bring in grow our economy. We have huge confidence from a raft of people. For every quote the hon. Gentleman can find, I can find 10 that say the opposite. He can pick on one if he wants to, but I suggest that £63 billion does not lie. Let us not forget that our summit on Monday was organised in a matter of weeks. The Conservative party had two years between their investment summits, yet we secured double the amount of investment compared with its summit last year.
To respond to a couple of other points, the Lib Dem spokesperson, the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), rightly mentioned business rates. We are looking at that and will deliver on the commitments in our manifesto. She was right to raise skills, which are a huge challenge for us. We see huge opportunities for growth across the entire country but we must ensure that we have the skills landscape, which is why we are setting up Skills England. She also talked about the national wealth fund and its ability to crowd in funding for the green sector and green technologies; it absolutely will do that.
To summarise, across the House we are united in the belief that Britain needs to facilitate growth. Let us face it, we have been severely starved of it. Only through growth can we keep taxes lower for working people, invest in our public services and create secure, well-paid, high-skilled jobs. Of course, this is against a backdrop of the poor economic inheritance left by the Conservative party, who lurched repeatedly from Prime Minister to Prime Minister, gave us seven growth plans in 14 years, made millions of people pay the price of a Trussonomics Budget and saddled the people of Britain with a low-growth, low-productivity, low-investment economy. The steps that this Labour Government have taken in just 100 days show that we are overturning the Conservatives’ legacy of inaction, stagnation and deterioration, and creating a country of stability, innovation and prosperity.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the International Investment Summit.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Sarah Jones and Kevin Hollinrake(7 months, 1 week ago)
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Sarah Jones
I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is aware that until recently his party was in government, and inward investment from China grew over four times since 2014, so I will take no lessons from him on these issues. The automotive industry, which I work with closely and meet regularly, has not asked for what he suggested—
Sarah Jones
No, it has not. The hon. Gentleman is chuntering again from a sedentary position. It has not asked for that. This is something we are monitoring. We will work closely with the industry and do the right thing, and if we need to intervene we will intervene. As I said, the UK’s economy and industry differ very much from those of other countries, and 80% of UK auto production is exported. It is not that we have the risk of EVs in the other direction. The hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) needs to recognise the part that his Government played in the development of these matters over many years, and be reassured that we are working closely with our colleagues to make sure we do the right thing.