2015 Steel Summit Commitments

Stephen Kinnock Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered progress on 2015 steel summit commitments.

It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I am pleased to have secured this debate, which comes almost three years on from the 2015 steel summit. At that summit, in the midst of the steel crisis, steel producers, steelworkers, trade unions and parliamentarians came together with Government to discuss the challenges facing the industry and the support needed to at least level the playing field. We were not looking for special favours or advantages, just a fair environment so that British steel makers were not fighting against state-subsidised steel from east Asia or excessive energy costs compared with our competitors in Europe.

My constituents in Redcar felt the sharp end of that battle when the SSI steelworks and coke ovens were closed. Cheap Chinese steel had put the works under strain from falling prices, but it was Government inaction, in the face of pleas from parliamentarians, industry and the Community trade union, that left the works in a battle for survival. The closure wiped out 3,000 jobs and many more in the supply chain, rippling across our local economy.

Redcar is resilient and we are fighting back, but many families continue to struggle, working on lower wages in insecure jobs, working away or not working at all. Many come to my surgeries or visit the local citizens advice bureau, struggling with mortgages and personal debt. I do not repeat that story to dwell on the past, but to highlight why it is so important that the steel industry gets the support it needs to thrive. We cannot countenance any more reductions in steelmaking capacity in the UK after the loss of 175 years of steelmaking on Teesside. We cannot be complacent, as before, about the loss of any more steel jobs.

To return to the 2015 summit, there was a united request in the form of five asks, or five areas where the industry was struggling to remain sustainable, often because we were at a disadvantage compared with our competitors around the world. We were playing fair, but the playing field was tilted against us. I am speaking in the past tense, but sadly not enough progress has been made on those asks since 2015. The playing field is still uneven and tilted against British steel. While the existential urgency of the 2015 crisis may have passed, my town stands as a warning of what can happen if complacency sets in and the industry is not given the support it needs to survive.

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

On the point my hon. Friend has made about what happened in Redcar, does she agree that the closure of the blast furnace and coke ovens there was an act of industrial vandalism that led to the loss of a strategic asset for our country? Does she also agree that the steel industry needs to be seen as a strategic asset and in the context of our national security?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Energy and Clean Growth (Claire Perry)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. It was also a pleasure, as is often the case, to listen to the hon. Member for Redcar (Anna Turley), who is my friend and who speaks so passionately on these matters. I congratulate her on securing the debate. It is always good to see such a doughty group of campaigners for this vital industry.

The hon. Lady will know, as will her colleagues, that I visited her constituency and saw for myself the shock caused by the closure of what was once an exceptionally large and productive plant and the concern expressed by people who had lost highly productive jobs that were critical to the UK’s economy. She also knows that the Government, and my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Richard Harrington), who has responsibility for the sector, want to do everything that we can to ensure the return of those jobs. She has done wonderful work in her constituency, ably supported by the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), other parts of her region and its mayor, to reopen that site as part of the new, low-carbon economy. I am in no doubt about the passion with which she speaks and of what a hammer blow that closure was for employees, their families and the whole region.

The hon. Lady is right to raise what has happened since the closure. That was clearly a momentous time for the industry, and some tough questions had to be answered by the Government and the industry, working together. There have been signs of progress. We have seen a recovery in the world price of steel. The UK has benefited from the decline in the value of our currency, which has made our exports more competitive. However, we are under no illusions about the difficulty of the international market, which we will raise with President Trump when he visits us this weekend.

We are all deeply and profoundly disappointed with the section 232 tariffs. Huge amounts of work have happened behind the scenes to try to focus the US on potentially legitimate concerns about over-capacity production in China, rather than on penalising its closest allies and their industries. Those conversations have happened—my hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade raised it directly with the US Secretary of Commerce last week. We will continue to make the case for a UK and EU exemption to the tariffs. We have shared legal support on these exemption questions with UK firms and with the industry, and we are pressing hard on behalf of those companies for assurances on the product exclusion process.

Those are the direct impacts of the tariffs. The indirect impact can have a chilling effect on the supply chain, which we are aware of. Indeed, we voted in the EU in support of provisional measures to curb steel imports only last Thursday. We will continue to offer a doughty response, which we must do on behalf of British-based companies.

That 2015 plant closure was such a pivotal moment. We received the five asks of the steel industry, which looked not only at what could be done in the short term but also at the long-term outlook for those companies. A number of changes to the industry’s structure have happened since. Greybull Capital acquired Tata’s long products business, which is based in Scunthorpe and is now part of the British Steel group. The Scottish mills have reopened under the ownership of Liberty Steel, which also bought Tata’s speciality steel business, based in Sheffield and Rotherham.

We should all be pleased to see the Tata-thyssenkrupp venture in Port Talbot coming to fruition. I visited it myself and saw the pride in that long tradition of steelmaking. I pay tribute to the management and the unions, who worked so hard in making that deal happen. Securing those jobs was vital. The deal was accompanied by the decision to invest in the blast furnace. The company will now work to ensure the commitment that as much as possible will be done to avoid any compulsory redundancies until 2026. I have to pay tribute to the pool of highly skilled workers who are dedicated to the future of the industry. We are incredibly lucky to have them.

However, the Government have done our bit, too. We set up our industrial strategy. The hon. Member for Redcar rightly raised energy costs. The Dieter Helm review that we commissioned found that, while our energy companies pay more than some of their European counterparts, it is often because other countries decide to spread those costs to consumers’ bills.

[Stephen Kinnock]

I recommend that the Minister looks at the “Steel 2020” report produced by the all-party parliamentary group on steel and metal related industries. It contains a detailed road map on what can be done on energy, including on wholesale costs, network and transmission costs, energy efficiency aid, reform of the emissions trading system and long-term remodelling. Will she update us on what the Government are doing, and whether she has had a chance to look at the report?

[Claire Perry]

I am happy to read the primary source. I have seen many of those recommendations, which inform our response to the Helm review.

I was making the point that other countries have taken policy decisions to put the costs that would in this country be borne by industrial customers on to household bills. We have ended up in a situation in which some of our industrial energy bills are higher than average, but our household bills are lower than average. Those policy levers are difficult to change; we all support, for example, the energy price cap Bill that we will bring forward later this week.

However, as the hon. Member for Redcar pointed out, we have spent more than £250 million in compensation specifically for the steel sector and other energy-intensive industries to help to mitigate those policy costs as we transition to a low-carbon future. We successfully pressed for the introduction of trade defence instruments to protect UK steel producers from unfair dumping. We set out visibility on the pipeline going forward, which I know was a big ask from hon. Members in the room.

The Government plan to procure construction contracts that will use 3 million tonnes of UK steel over the next five years, which is enough to build 170 Wembley stadiums. I understand the comment from the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) on the Swansea bay tidal lagoon. Believe me, I worked so hard on those numbers, but to build the country’s most expensive ever power station basically to create a couple of dozen jobs was just not economically effective when compared with other opportunities in all our constituencies.

The power of Government procurement should not to be underestimated. Every Government steel contract in England is now required to consider its social and economic impact on local communities and what those decisions mean for the constituencies we are all so proud to represent.

We are grateful for the constructive proposals put forward by the steel council. I asked for guidance on this. The steel council, which I was proud to chair when I was the relevant Minister, met last in June and will meet again before September. It now meets regularly, and that is an opportunity to discuss the current challenges but also for the industry to work together. Historically, members of the industry have not sat around a table and worked together on the outlook and productivity investments; it has had a very competitive mindset. The industry working together and with Government is a very important part of the plan as we go forward.