Redcar Coke Ovens
Debate between Sharon Hodgson and Anna Soubry
Anna Soubry
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments and for his question. I very much agree with him. We have to take an honest and realistic approach to all these matters, looking at conditions and at events we actually have no control over. There are, however, many things we can do. To say that we do not have a strategy is just ludicrous, because we absolutely do have one.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
With regard to the £80 million in support funding, apart from the disgraceful issue of statutory redundancies being paid out of it, when will people actually get some real money in their hands? People have not been paid for up to eight weeks now. Apart from retraining, what they need is money to buy food and pay bills before this tragedy turns into an utter disaster for those families.
Anna Soubry
Unfortunately, the hon. Lady is right when she talks about the people in the supply chain who have not been paid because of their absolute determination to try to support SSI. One of the things we absolutely looked at was whether there was anything we could do to help them. At the moment, we cannot find any way to help people along the supply chain who have not been, but who should have been, paid. It was known that the redundancies were part of the package of £80 million, but we will have to agree to disagree on that. [Interruption.] Well, I certainly said it in the media, so perhaps they did not listen to the local television. In any event and most importantly, we are determined to make sure that it is not just the workforce at SSI Redcar who benefit from the package, but that it goes through the supply chain. We know there are many thousands more who suffer because of this liquidation.