UK Steel Industry — House of Commons, 2016-04-12
Topic: Energy
Tom Blenkinsop (Labour, Centre-left): This is not just about the obvious news stories about Port Talbot or the strip industry; it involves all Tata sites, including Aldwarke, Thrybergh, Stocksbridge, Shotton, Llanwern, Orb, Corby and Hartlepool; this is a UK steel crisis I reiterate that Tata has to behave like a responsible seller, and we need to remind it of its antics in 2010, when Kirby Adams, the then chief executive of Tata in Europe, tried to use skulduggery to shut Redcar. We solved that problem, but it took more than two years—two years in which there was not one hard redundancy. We need to remind Tata of its previous behaviour and not see it happen again British steel is not a basket case, a failed industry or a sunset industry; it is a very successful industry. We had evidence of that recently, when Liberty Steel bought Dalzell and Clydebridge—integral parts of any programme for Trident renewal. Teesside Beam Mill, Skinningrove, Scunthorpe, York, Blaydon and, indeed, Hayange in France, which is part of the long products division sold off to Greybull, are another success story of assets that investors want to buy into. They also demonstrate the European aspect of the previous Corus-British Steel envelope, and we still have sites in IJmuiden and Hayange British steel has always relied for its totemic name on its quality and its research and development. Places such as the Materials Processing Institute in Teesside at the old labs at Grangetown, as well as the research and development capacity in Rotherham and Sheffield, when linked with blast furnaces and electric arc furnaces, gives us the ability to control the destiny of metallurgy in our nation. That means we can innovate and create new products. That must be remembered I am interested in the notion of co-investment, whether that is in cash terms, or whether it is about an equity stake, a loan, R and D or, more importantly, Government policy. If we are to have a real discussion in this place, we have to look at the different options for co-investment. That is not about the individual commercial parties that may be interested in purchasing, but about putting ideas on the table so that we can actually plan an industrial strategy, because we have not done that in the last five years Let us take the issue of Chinese dumping. This is a new phenomenon; it has been going on for four and a half years. Before that, it was not happening. The circumstances have changed, and that is why the Government have to change the way they behave on the lesser duty rule and other legislation. There are no precedents, and that is why we cannot stick to rigid dogma, or even analytical argument around World Trade Organisation rules. On co-investment, I have to question whether we are properly looking at issues such as shale gas, and whether parties are being honest about the policy on that, because we are talking about gas-intensive industries On carbon capture and storage, the Government have to come clean. They have pulled the rug from under energy-intensive industries on carbon capture and storage. How will they maintain energy-intensive industries—whether it is chemical processing, shale, steel, light manufacturing, glass, cement or bricks—without a proper strategy on carbon? Taxes can be implemented under the EU emissions trading scheme or unilaterally, by bringing in the carbon price floor. They did that in the Budget some years ago, and they promised to give compensation. However, they did not calculate that if they wanted to compensate people for their own unilateral British tax, they could do so only via the European Union. They had not done the requisite work; they looked at the margins that a Treasury civil servant brought forward and just applied a rule, and they are now reaping the consequences of that Ultimately, Port Talbot, the strip and every single other site need time. In 2010, Redcar was saved over two years; SSI had six weeks and fell. We have to give British Tata sites time so that they can be saved. We need proper definitions of co-investment for the community to discuss.