British Steel latest: Starmer passes law to take control of Scunthorpe plant

A Labour peer has said nationalising British Steel should be a long term outcome after MPs voted in an emergency bill to give the government control of the steelworks plant.

Labour peer Lord Sikka said the Government was trying to avoid explicitly saying it would nationalise British Steel, but said it should be the long-term outcome.

He said: “My Lords the minister said that the Government seeks to take control of blast furnaces at Scunthorpe, without taking control of British Steel.

“It’s really trying to avoid the words nationalisation and public ownership, but that is really where we are heading. British Steel’s most recent accounts show falling turnover, increasingly losses and negative net worth. It is bankrupt and the compensation should be very little, if any.

“Steel is essential for civil and defence industries. In a world of trade wars, we need to be self sufficient. We need permanent public ownership of the steel industry.”

The House of Lords is debating the government’s bill to take control of British Steel, following a rare emergency debate in parliament.

Former navy chief Lord West of Spithead said the UK production of virgin steel was vital to national security, especially the military, and backed the Government’s swift action, likening it to Cold War plans to destroy Soviet submarines.

Speaking in the Lords, the Labour former security minister said: “In the Cold War when we used to work on how we were going to kill Soviet submarines, and we would have been jolly good at it I hasten to add, I am glad we didn’t have a war but we would have been good at it, the slang word for it was ‘fastest with the mostest’.

“In other words, you got a sniff of a submarine, you moved really quickly, and I think the Government here have moved really quickly when they have seen something needs to be done, and then you put every effort, everything you had into that because you needed to kill it.

“On that issue I would say there are things that need to be done and I am not sure that all of them are being done and I do have a concern about the cost of energy.”

MPs have backed the government’s plans to take control of British Steel.

Following several hours of debate in an emergency session of parliament, Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle put the question to a vocal vote in the Commons, declaring: “The ayes have it.”

China buying and then closing British Steel’s Scunthorpe plant maybe in Beijing’s interest “in a competitive world”, a Labour former defence secretary has suggested.

Backing the government’s intervention to safeguard UK steel production, Lord Reid of Cardowan hit out at Tory criticism and argued it was the previous Conservative government that had “sold this industry to the Chinese”, saying: “We are constantly told not least by the party opposite that there is no firewall between the Chinese government and Chinese industry.

“Did it never occur to anyone in the last government that it maybe, in a competitive world, in the interest of the Chinese government to purchase and then close down the British steel industry? And if that wasn’t considered then there was a gross omission of responsibility, I am afraid, by the previous government.”

Everyone should worry about the cost to the taxpayer of the emergency legislation being debated in parliament, Conservative shadow environment secretary Victoria Atkins has claimed.

Speaking outside parliament, she said legislation does not contain the detail needed to “safeguard jobs and to protect the steel industry”.

Ms Atkins said: “I think we should all worry about the cost on the taxpayer and this is why we have been asking how much is this going to cost, and at the moment we don’t have an answer from the government.

“How on earth can they put a piece of legislation of this importance before parliament rushing it through in less than three hours in order to safeguard jobs and livelihood?

“How can they do that without telling us, the taxpayer, what it will cost, what our future liabilities will be, what are the prospects of the private sector becoming involved again given how badly the government has handled the economy since the disastrous budget at the end of last year.”

She added: “They have not provided us with the detail we need in order to ensure that their plans will hold water and will actually do what we all want the legislation to do, which is to safeguard jobs and to protect the steel industry.”

Opposition parties have tabled eight amendments to the government’s Steel Industry (Special Measures) Bill.

They include three from the SNP and Plaid Cymru extending the Bill’s scope to other parts of the UK beyond England, two from the Conservatives and one from the Liberal Democrats imposing time limits for using the powers in the Bill, and one from the UK calling for the immediate nationalisation of affected steel works.

Discussing the emergency legislation being debated in parliament, Greenpeace UK’s director of policy, Doug Parr said: “Parliament has acted in the nick of time to save British Steel and the thousands of jobs it supports.

“But much depends on what the government chooses to do with these powers. Ensuring the steel industry has a future will depend on converting the Scunthorpe plant to produce virgin green steel made with hydrogen technology. This will ensure the UK remains a contender in the global race to produce clean steel.

“It is also critical that lessons are learned from Port Talbot and that workers have a voice in future decisions about their jobs.

“The clean energy transition is an opportunity to lower bills, reduce pollution and provide decent jobs long into the future. Today’s vote is an important milestone on that road.”

A Tory MP who has campaigned to save the British Steel plant in Scunthorpe has accused the government of being slow to act on the issue.

Martin Vickers told the Commons he had first raised the issue in September last year, with another urgent question in March: “Now thankfully we’ve had a six-month reprieve from those threats which were coming forward in October, but I have to say the government have been a little dilatory on this.

“I know that negotiations have been taking place on this, and I appreciate that ministers cannot give away their negotiating position, but having made that point as long ago as September surely the government were beginning to realise that the negotiations with Jingye were going nowhere.”

He said he supported the Bill, but also the Conservative amendment that would introduce a so-called “sunset clause” on its powers. “I can assure them that I give them my full support today and will continue to do so when they act in the best interests of my constituents,” he said.

Protesters in Scunthorpe put up banners while MPs discuss an emergency bill to save British Steel plant

Liberal Democrat Treasury spokeswoman Daisy Cooper has said British Steel bills “could set a very dangerous precedent.:

Liberal Democrat Treasury spokeswoman Daisy Cooper told the Commons: “Under the terms of this Bill, the Secretary of State (Jonathan Reynolds) is giving himself huge and unconstrained powers, which could set a very dangerous precedent.

“I urge the Secretary of State in the strongest possible terms to make a simple commitment today that the powers that he is giving himself will be repealed as soon as possible, within six months at the latest, and if they are still required after that, whether he will come back to this House to ask for another vote if he wants to extend them.”

The Liberal Democrat MP said Conservative MPs’ calls for steel nationalisation “shows just how through the looking glass we really are”.

She told the Commons that recalling Parliament “is absolutely the right thing to do”, adding: “It is quite astounding that even after British Steel was sold for £1, even after British Steel entered insolvency, even after the Government’s Insolvency Service temporarily ran the firm, the Conservatives pressed ahead to erect more trade barriers through their botched Brexit deal, they scrapped the industrial strategy council, and allowed the sale of the steel plant to a Chinese firm, which now, according to ministers, is refusing to negotiate in good faith to at least keep the plant going.”