Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)

My Lords, yesterday there was cross-party concern in the other place, including from government Back-Benchers, that these steel measures risked doing real damage to downstream businesses. Of course, we all want to protect British steel-making, but the Government have designed a regime that risks penalising British manufacturers for importing specialist steels that are not made in this country, or not made here to the grade certification or volume that is required. That is not protecting British industry; it risks pushing value-added manufacturing jobs and contracts overseas. The Minister in the other place said that this was necessary to respond to overseas tariffs and job losses, but the Government have had plenty of time to reduce the structural costs facing steel and manufacturing businesses, from energy and carbon costs to business rates and employers’ national insurance. Will the Minister therefore accept that the Government need not only emergency tariff measures but a proper, comprehensive steel strategy? Will they now revise the proposed quotas so that specialist steel products desperately needed by downstream manufacturers can be imported tariff-free where there is no realistic UK supply?