Sarah Jones

I hope the hon. Gentleman understands that the interventions that we made in this case were different for a number of reasons. When we were in Opposition, we worked with Tata to try to get it to change its plans, but we were unsuccessful. When we came into Government, we improved the deal that the previous Government had negotiated and we improved the redundancy offer. We got Tata to commit to invest in assets and free up land for other things, and we got it to provide a package of measures to improve that situation. The hon. Gentleman is right that that package meant the closure of the blast furnaces and the building of an electric arc furnace, with the closure happening before the electric arc furnace arrived, and because of the way that electric arc furnaces work, they are more efficient and need fewer people. We have been working really hard through the transformation board, led by the Secretary of State for Wales and the Welsh Government, to ensure that everybody has a significant package of support to try to ensure they transition to other jobs. That work is ongoing and progressing well, and we will continue to focus on it. The two situations were fundamentally different. In Scunthorpe, British Steel was in the middle of a consultation on potential redundancies, and it failed to secure the materials to keep the blast furnaces going, which would have completely broken what British Steel should have been doing during that consultation. We could not allow that to happen, those blast furnaces to close and thousands of people to be suddenly made redundant, which is why we intervened in the way we did.