Andy McDonald

I warmly welcome the Bill and the action that the Government are taking to protect Britain’s steel industry. I congratulate the Minister for Industry on his sterling work to bring this legislation before the House. Steel manufacturing is a strategic national asset; it underpins our infrastructure, transport system, energy, security, defence capability and industrial future. It is too important to be left entirely to the private sector. For many of us who represent industrial communities, this debate is deeply personal. On Teesside, iron and steel built towns, livelihoods and identities from the early 19th century onwards. Generations of skilled workers helped forge modern Britain with Teesside steel, and as Chris Rea said: “The ships and bridges they were all delivered From Sydney harbour to the Cisco bay”. Over the decades, however, those industries were systematically weakened. The deindustrialisation of the 1980s and 1990s hollowed out communities across the north and across Britain. Then, in 2015, the Conservative Government allowed the Redcar steelworks to close, with devastating consequences for 3,000 workers, families and a further 6,000 in the wider Teesside economy. Whereas with ILVA’s Taranto plant the Italians intervened to save that, and the French did the same for Florange, the previous UK Government sat on their hands. The truth is that a different choice could have been made in Redcar, just as a different choice is being made now. The Government could have intervened back then to preserve strategy industrial capability. The Bill signals something important: a Government once again willing to play an active role in shaping industry and growing the economy, and doing so pragmatically. It will create a framework for the state to step in when markets fail to protect industries of strategic national importance. It will allow intervention, including public ownership where necessary, when the loss of industrial capacity would damage the national interest. It is common sense: people understand that there are sectors in which the public interest must come before narrow private gain. We have already seen this Government adopt new models of public intervention elsewhere. We need a serious strategy for reindustrialisation and growth. That means backing British business through a strong public procurement strategy and delivering a long-term pipeline of orders. If public money is funding railways, schools, hospitals and so on, then wherever possible the steel for those projects should be made here, in Britain, by British workers.