Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Kinnock Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Lady is right to raise this issue, and earlier I set out specific actions such as giving the Small Business Commissioner more powers, and producing league tables. We work closely with the Good Business Pays campaign, which produces league tables on this issue, and naming and shaming the people responsible is important. The Government are leading the way, and from April 2024 firms bidding for Government contracts worth more than £5 million will have to demonstrate that they pay their invoices within an average of 55 days, tightening to 45 days in April 2025 and to 30 days in the coming years.

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

14. Whether she has had recent discussions with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on taking fiscal steps to help support the steel industry.

[The Minister for Industry and Economic Security (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

The Chancellor and I meet regularly, and obviously we know and recognise the importance of the steel sector in the UK economy. Our commitment to the sector is clear, and we will be investing more than £500 million in the Port Talbot site to ensure that steelmaking continues in the UK. Without that investment, the 8,000 jobs at the port and the 12,500 jobs in the supply chain would have been at risk.

We are working with Tata, and we have set up a transition board—the hon. Gentleman knows about that because we both serve on it—and we have provided more than £100 million of support for affected employees and the local economy. Last Friday, Tata announced that it will provide an additional £130 million of support for employees facing redundancy. The option was steel- making no longer continuing at Port Talbot, or the investment that we have provided.

[Stephen Kinnock]

Ministers keep spinning this line that Tata Steel was threatening to close down the Port Talbot works and walk away, but they know that was an empty bluff, because the costs of dismantling and remediating the Port Talbot steelworks were vast and utterly prohibitive. Against that backdrop, let us be clear: is it the case that no strings were attached to the £500 million of taxpayers’ money that has been given to Tata Steel? Was that £500 million given by the Prime Minister to Tata Steel with a green light to make 2,800 steelworkers redundant?

[Ms Ghani]

I would not want steelworkers to think that we are not working together, and the hon. Member and I work together and will be working together to ensure that steelworkers are protected as much as possible. I think it is extraordinary that the position he is now putting forward is that it would have been better to risk the absolute loss of steelmaking in the UK and then allow the taxpayer to pick up the cost to manage the site.

[Stephen Kinnock]

It was a bluff.

[Ms Ghani]

I believe it far more preferential that we made the largest investment ever in steelmaking to protect more than 5,000 jobs at Port Talbot and the 12,500 jobs in the supply chain—[Interruption.] Fundamentally, we have steelmaking—