Greg Smith

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham set out, the last Conservative Government took many concrete steps to support our steel sector. I gently remind Members on the Government side—there is no sugarcoating this for Members on my side—they won the election. They are responsible now and have to take decisions for the future of steel; it is no good constantly coming back and trying to do the political point scoring that we have seen time and again in the Chamber. The other side is in charge now, so they can make the decisions. If this Minister wants to stand at the Dispatch Box in a few moments and make those commitments to virgin steel, to steel production in this country, to Scunthorpe and Port Talbot, that will be welcomed by both sides of the House, because both sides of the House want the future of steel to be secured in this country. What we are seeing on the ground right now is something different, however, because we have returned to the Labour party playbook: scrap jobs, scrap production and become reliant on higher-polluting countries for imports. That is not what I call decarbonisation, so I ask the Minister to come clean. What has gone wrong so early in this Government’s tenure? Why are she and the Secretary of State unable to fulfil their manifesto commitments? Can the Minister explain what will happen to those thousands of jobs in the steel sector across our country? We need the steel strategy now, not a promise of it for the future. Time is running out.