Wendy Morton
Main Page: Wendy Morton (Conservative - Aldridge-Brownhills)Energy-Intensive Industries
Wendy Morton Excerpts(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope. I congratulate the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans) on securing this important debate.
Support for energy-intensive industries is a matter that I care a great deal about. My hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) and I represent the two constituencies with Scotland’s remaining steel mills, and those are sadly at risk. I have worked hard since my election to fight to save our steel industry. Although the Clydebridge steel treatment mill employs far fewer people than mills in other constituencies, it is no less devastating when jobs are at risk and when such an iconic industry stands to be lost from the constituency.
As the steel industry transitions to lower-carbon forms of production, it deserves our support. When crisis hit in my constituency, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon moved swiftly to establish the Scottish steel taskforce. That has resulted in positive action to retain jobs and hopefully to save and protect this established industry. If an alternative operator takes over, production will be able to resume swiftly due to the Scottish Government’s steelworkers retention plan. Action has been taken on business rates, and in addition to new public procurement guidance on steel, the Scottish Government have released an ambitious and visionary new action plan entitled “A Manufacturing Future for Scotland.”
The Scottish Government’s decarbonisation of industry steering group promotes and co-ordinates action to support energy-intensive industries, such as the steel industry, in making the transition to lower-carbon forms of production.
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
The hon. Lady and I both sit on a newly formed all-party parliamentary group on ceramics. Does she agree that not only the steel industry but industries such as the ceramics industry face huge challenges? There are a number of firms in those industries in my constituency.
Margaret Ferrier
I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention, and I will come to ceramics later, if she will bear with me.
The Scottish Government’s steering group specifically helps them to deliver their emissions reductions under the EU emissions trading system and to meet legal obligations such as the UK climate change levy and the energy savings opportunity scheme.
It is clear that the Scottish Government are committed to protecting the steel industry as a key strategic asset in the Scottish economy, and on behalf of my constituents, I would like to put on record my sincere appreciation of that. The UK Government have gone some way, but there is still more to be done.
On the issue of ceramics, in addition to a very long-established steel mill, there is a brickworks in my constituency—Scotland’s only remaining clay brick company, in fact. Raeburn Brick is an established family- run business in Blantyre. Somewhere in the region of 15% of the bricks used in Scotland are produced by Raeburn, which means that about 85% are imported from outside Scotland. Those figures might not mean much to others, but to me they show that there is a real opportunity for more domestic business.