Defining moment

The crisis in the UK steel industry is a defining moment for the Conservative government. Having talked up the ‘March of the makers’ and the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ the past few weeks have seen the closure of SSI in Redcar and massive job losses proposed by Tata Steel in Scunthorpe and in Scotland as well as the collapse of Caparo industries.

The Steel Summit in Rotherham last week heard proposals from the industry and unions in regard to the steps that urgently need to be taken to stem these job losses and save the our Steel industry.

These include urgent action to stop the importation of cheap Chinese steel, urgent assistance with high energy prices which have crippled the industry and not least a strategic vision for the UK’s manufacturing sector.

Since then it seems the Conservatives have decided to simply repeat the mantra of not having a silver bullet to solve the problems of the steel industry in the face of pressure from our unions and bodies like UK Steel who have provided the ammunition for secretary of state for BIS, Sajid Javid, but to no avail.

No wonder the Daily Mirror’s Kevin Maguire described this hands off secretary of state as “as much use as a plastic poker in a blast furnace”.

The so called Minister for “the Northern Powerhouse” James Wharton has equally become the invisible man with Middlesbrough FC Chairman describing him as “an absolute clown”.

Mr Wharton didn’t attend the Steel Summit in Rotherham.  He was busy hosting a £30 a-head breakfast meeting (bacon roll and coffee) in the North East promoting the “Northern Powerhouse”. You couldn’t make it up!

The industry is united and has come together to make the case for urgent action.

Our main demands are that the government urgently addresses the issue of the meltdown in the UK steel industry by taking measures that we have proposed including a compensation package for the energy intensive industries, including steel and the need to put pressure on the European Union to speed up its investigation of dumping of Chinese steel in the European market.

As we have warned the government, we now have weeks not months or years and cannot wait for Inquiries and Summits that will take us nowhere.

Our plea to the government is that we need help and we need it now!