Tom Pursglove
Main Page: Tom Pursglove (Conservative - Corby)(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Anna Soubry
The hon. Lady makes a very good point and I thank her. I will certainly go back to my officials about that issue and discuss what can be done. Obviously, I would wildly encourage anyone within the supply chains to buy British-made steel; that is incredibly important for all the obvious reasons and because the steel is of such high quality.
In his opening remarks, the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland talked about the skilled workforce. It may be that we have to revisit that issue, to ensure that apprenticeships are encouraged and that younger people are brought into the industry. However, the workforce in the steel industry are highly skilled.
Of course, there are certain niche sectors of the steel industry where we do particularly well and we rightly have a worldwide reputation. However, I will come back to the hon. Lady. Perhaps I will write to her about what more we can do, because the state aid rules are a real problem for us.
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
I am obviously very grateful, as are all members of the all-party group, to Ministers for their willingness to talk to us and engage on the issues that we are discussing. However, I would be interested to know a little about the up-to-date thinking on carbon taxation and the support available to businesses that are tackling that big problem.