Steel future snubbed

The steel crisis is so important that fewer than two dozen Tory MPs bothered to attend the Parliamentary debate yesterday (October 28) demanding emergency government action. But then again secretary of state Sajid Javid didn’t turn up again either.

Any more no shows – he missed giving evidence at the business select committee the day before – and people really will start to talk. It all adds to the accusations that the Tories have not been putting their full weight behind a UK steel industry in crisis.

Labour’s John McDonnell was quick to pounce on yet another no show by the business secretary. He branded him: “a waste of space. It’s almost as if he’s just passing through that department.”

Rebuke

It was mildly better than the Speaker’s rebuke to Javid after he was hauled in front of the House and forced to make a statement. Speaker Bercow dismissed Javid at the time as “discourteous and incompetent”.

In the debate Labour’s Angela Eagle led an onslaught on Tory inaction: 2,000 jobs lost at SSI Redcar, another 1,000 contractors laid off, another 6,000 jobs gone in jobs linked to the steel works.

Tata steel flagging up another 1,170 job losses at Scunthorpe, Motherwell and Cambuslang.

Caparo going into administration putting another 1,700 jobs at risk. For every three jobs lost in direct steel employment, three are lost as a result.

The reluctant Tories, said Eagle, had only been pressed into action by Labour backbenchers furious at their feet-dragging. She called for a range of immediate action to protect the steel industry by providing help with energy costs, tackling the dumping of artificially low priced Chines steel, help with business rates which effectively tax capital investment, and using UK steel on UK infrastructure projects.

And she called for a full industrial strategy setting out future demand for UK steel and how the government was going to protect the industry from unfair competition.

 

Jeremy Corbyn shows his support

She accused the Tories of being seemingly “unwilling to do anything practical” about the crisis and had overseen “the effective destruction of its steelmaking assets, including what was the second largest blast furnace in Europe.”

Sacrificed

Specialist local skills were being destroyed and the Tories had sat back and watched the effective end of steelmaking in Scotland. There was a real worry she said, “that the UK’s steelmaking capacity is being sacrificed on the altar of laissez-faire economics by a government who simply will not act to preserve our country’s strategic assets.”

Labour, she said believes that steelmaking in the UK is an industry of national strategic importance and should therefore be supported by the government.

Steel is important for UK manufacturing as it helps our balance of payments, and it is vital for our defence and security. If we are about to embark on the huge infrastructure investments that the Chancellor is so fond of boasting about, surely we should ensure that UK steel has every chance to compete and win those contracts.

To do that, we must ensure that the UK steel industry still exists when those contracts come up for competition.

“As the industry has lurched deeper into this wholly foreseeable crisis, the government have been quick to come up with expressions of sympathy, but noticeably reluctant to take any decisive action,” she continued.

Ideological aversion

“It is hard, to avoid the conclusion that the government have been so slow to act because they have an ideological aversion to any government intervention. We have a secretary of state who will not let the phrase ‘industrial strategy’ cross his lips.

“We on the Labour Benches support international trade, but free trade must also be fair. China is currently responsible for a tsunami of cheap steel, which is being dumped on European markets. The UK should be at the forefront of demanding rapid and effective action to stop it.”

The Tories did put up a secretary of state to respond – but it was the Welsh secretary, Stephen Crabb. His contribution was, to say the least, forgettable, hinging on a complaint that Labour was using steel as a political football.

The business minister Anna Soubry, who is starting to look and sound like she is getting fed up with her no show boss Javid, did her usual tick box list of things the government hasn’t quite finished getting around to yet.

But trying to help the steelworkers of Redcar into new jobs is apparently one they have been ‘successful’ at. The Commons was told by local Redcar MP Anna Turley that Subway – the sandwich maker and retailer had been at the jobs fair.

Sandwich makers

Last week I had been half-joking when I wrote (attacking Osborne) and the lack of response to saving steel jobs at Redcar and elsewhere: “His ‘march of the makers’ trumpeting manufacturing has become a joke as has his ‘northern powerhouse’…. We’ll be left as the sandwich makers and the skinny latte, almond syrup and sprinkles on top makers.”

It was half joking, half serious. And took just two weeks to become a reality.

A northern powerhouse would be brilliant if it were more than an Osborne slogan touted around by a northern powerhouse minister – Harry Wharton – branded as a ‘clown’.

Any more help from no show and sloganising Tories – overseeing higher paid skilled jobs being replaced by minimum wage sandwich makers – and the northern powerhouse could rapidly become the northern poorhouse.

But the dwindling band of Tories who actually attended the steel debate were then reinforced by 280 colleagues who turned up to vote down Labour’s attempt at creating a strategy.

Unite assistant general secretary Tony Burke was appalled at the move. He said, “The Tories had the chance today to send the clearest signal possible that they supported the steel industry.  They did not have to vote against the Labour amendment.

“What a sad end to the debate and for the steelworkers today who go back to their communities after a day fighting for this vital industry, they will do so with a heavy heart.

“We will continue to do everything we can to make the case for a better deal from this government for this core sector.  Today is not the end of this fight, not by any means.

“I sincerely hope that the Conservative think again about hailing themselves as the party of the working people as this is now causing anger among actual working people.”

Pics by Mark Thomas