Jonathan Reynolds

I thank the hon. Lady for her questions. I entirely endorse what she said about the centrality of steel to security and infrastructure, and, indeed, I echo her words. This is entirely pragmatic. I am seeking to resolve a series of long-running problems, which a great many of my Conservative predecessors—and there were a great many—ignored, considering them to be too difficult. That is the central lesson that I would learn: we have to be willing to confront these hard problems. We might think that we can pass them on to the next person, but that is not serving the country in the way that is required. Let me now deal with the hon. Lady’s specific questions. I expect this process to take between four and six months, but I want it to be resolved as quickly as possible. I think it important to point out that there are costs either way: there are costs involved in running the business in public ownership, and there would also be costs to the state from the remediation and regeneration, partly because of the legacy of public ownership but also because such big steel industrial sites come with so many issues to resolve if they are remediated that some of that would fall on the Exchequer. If this were a matter of public ownership, we would have to pay off the creditors, reach an accommodation with them, acquire the assets, and then inject some working capital over a period of between one and three years. I would expect the cost of that to be about £350 million, and I would expect something comparable were the option to be regeneration and remediation. The hon. Lady asked about existing budgets. We knew when we came to power that we needed to pay attention to the steel industry. There was a commitment in our manifesto for £2.5 billion, on top of on top of the £500 million that was granted to Tata in Port Talbot under the previous Government. We have spent some of that, although the lion's share of the sum has gone to British Steel, but the support for Tata has continued. Some of the money has gone on the official receiver process here. We have that existing budget in which to commence this work. These are obviously significant assets, and I think that this is an entirely appropriate use of them. The hon. Lady also mentioned the relationship with Europe. She will know that when the European Union changed its own trade defence measures on steel, that had some adverse consequences for us. My call to Commissioner Šefčovič was one of my first in the job, for a number of reasons. We talked explicitly about this, and are seeking a resolution specifically on steel, which I believe would be in our interests and those of the European Union.