Protecting Britain’s Steel Industry — House of Commons, 2021-06-21
Topic: Foreign Trade
Richard Quentin Fuller (Conservative, Centre-right): Changes by politicians to the recommendations of the Trade Remedies Authority is the sort of meddling that the regulations were designed to discourage, because political involvement is too often influenced by lobbying pressure and special interests rather than by the wider benefits to society. The TRA is clear that trade protections should continue where there is evidence of an import surge over the period of investigation and injury to producers. Protection will continue on 82% by volume of currently protected products. Protection is recommended to end only where there has been no import surge at all or where any increase in imports has resulted in no injury to producers. We should not continue protection when no injury has been incurred The motion says that, on Monday 28 June, Labour will be prepared to take all the steps necessary for "urgent legislative action to protect the vital interests of the British steel industry." However, that is false for two reasons. First, as analysis by the authority demonstrates, the changes are designed not to affect steel industry participants. The UK steel industry is at risk from dumping arising from chronic global over-supply, but it also suffers from relatively high labour costs, burdensome energy costs, a large green footprint for accessing raw materials and an expensive, unproven and unfunded pathway to a green steel future, none of which is addressed in the motion but all of which is vital for the industry’s future Secondly, the Labour motion seeks to align completely the largely private interests of the owners of businesses in the steel industry—some of them are good; some of them are a bit more dodgy—with the interests of UK taxpayers as a whole. Those interests may overlap, but they are not identical. The motion is an incoherent gesture, not a viable strategy for the UK steel industry, demonstrating the superficiality of Labour’s approach to the steel industry, just as Labour’s call to put taxpayers’ money into a firm that is now under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office was a few weeks ago If the UK wishes to have a vibrant steel industry, it needs the sort of thorough review that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is undertaking. Should the industry require additional investment by the UK taxpayer, the case for that will have to stand up well to Treasury scrutiny. The context for the Treasury includes: that the UK economy is already being taxed at its highest rate since the 1960s; that Government debt is already at nearly 100% of GDP; that last year the UK ran its largest ever peacetime deficit of £303 billion; that, worryingly, £303 billion means that we are borrowing one third of all public expenditure; and that, in 2020, the Bank of England bought approximately 80% of that borrowing. Quantitative easing to finance Government expenditure rather than to meet an inflation target is an emergency tactic, not a regular tool of fiscal policy, and the benign period of its availability is coming to an end This Parliament needs to start making tough decisions if we are to make space to support our UK steel industry’s green transition. If we can address bigger issues along the lines of infrastructure projects, we can support the green change in the steel industry.