More than ‘tea and sympathy’

Three days after news broke that Tata Steel would be selling its entire UK business, business secretary Sajid Javid has finally returned from his trip to Australia and today (April 1) faces Port Talbot steelworkers, 4,000 of whom risk losing their livelihoods.

“I want to reassure them myself that the Government is on their side in working hard to achieve a long-term solution for them, for the region and for the wider UK steel industry,” Javid said.

Nationalisation

Despite Javid, prime minister David Cameron and business minister Anna Soubry all highlighting in recent days that they would look at “all options” to save the industry, the government backpedalled on the most obvious solution – nationalising Tata Steel’s UK business while it searched for a buyer.

“I don’t think nationalisation is going to be the solution,” Javid said yesterday, echoing Cameron’s insistence that the government taking a stake in Tata Steel’s business was “not the answer”.

While Javid belatedly left Australia to meet with Port Talbot steel workers this afternoon, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was on the scene less than 24 hours after the news from Mumbai hit that Tata Steel would be pulling out of the UK.

Calling for at least temporary nationalisation, Corbyn pledged support for “immediate government intervention to protect our steel industry and not see it destroyed on the altar of a global corporation that decided somewhere along the line that Port Talbot is expendable”.

“Sorry, it’s not,” he noted. “We’ve got a different story.”

Critics have argued that the government taking over Tata Steel’s UK operations would be prohibitively expensive for the taxpayer – it’s been estimated that the annual operating costs for Tata Steel sites in Britain would amount to £1.5bn each year.

But the Guardian showed today how relatively small a sum this is compared to other areas of government expenditure.

For example, the bank bailout during the financial crisis alone cost about £995bn. Running Tata’s steel operations for a year is also equivalent to about only one-fifth of the cost of a new submarine, and one-thirty sixth the cost of building HS2.

A new Sky poll released today showed that more than two-thirds of the public were in favour of the government nationalising the steel plant in Port Talbot.

Tariffs

Ahead of business secretary Javid’s visit to Port Talbot, European leaders have slammed the government for blocking measures that would support the UK’s own steel industry as well as steel industries across the continent.

Italian and French officials joined industry group the European Steel Association (ESA) in criticising the government for failing to stand up to cheap Chinese steel imports flooding European markets.

“The UK is the ringleader in a blocking minority of member states that is preventing a European Commission proposal on the modernisation of Europe’s trade defence instruments,” ESA head Axel Eggert told the Financial Times.

Eggert referred to the UK government voting against the “lesser duty rule” – a move that would allow the EU to significantly raise tariffs on imported steel. At the moment, Chinese steel faces only a 16 per cent tariff; in the US, tariffs on cheap imported steel are as high as 200 per cent.

Tata Steel itself warned a Commons committee only weeks ago that the UK’s failure to stand up to China on steel would lead to an “even greater steel crisis”.

‘PR stunt’

As the business secretary arrives at Port Talbot, Unite Wales secretary Andy Richards warned that Javid’s visit risks being nothing more than a ‘PR stunt’ if his trip to Wales isn’t followed urgently by action.

“Steelworkers at Port Talbot and across Tata Steel will want to know just exactly what Sajid Javid intends to do to safeguard their industry, their livelihoods and their communities,” he said.  “So far all they have received is tea and sympathy from afar with no real concrete solutions for the industrial crisis facing the nation.”

“We’ve been here before when the business secretary visited Redcar,” Richards added. “Lots of noise and promises to deal with the symptoms of the steel crisis, rather than the causes as thousands of livelihoods went to wall because of government inaction.

“When he meets steelworkers, Sajid Javid needs to commit to ensuring British steel can compete on a level playing field by promising to drop his opposition to higher EU tariffs of cheap Chinese steel and honour the commitments to help with energy costs which were quietly watered down by George Osborne in his budget.

“But most of all he needs to signal his commitment to steel and manufacturing by promising to back British steel with a line of financial support to get it through these dark days,” Richards went on to say. “He needs to look workers in the eye, not just at Port Talbot, but at sites across Tata Steel from Shotton and Llanwern, to Rotherham and Corby and say ‘your government backs you’.”

Unite Shotton works branch chair Anthony Simpson explained just how devastating the uncertainty is as steelworkers in Shotton wait for Javid and his government to take action. Shotton works is among the steel sites in the UK that remains substantially profitable.

“Shotton employees are committed to and proud to work at Shotton steelworks,” Simpson said. “We have always strived to provide word leading, quality differentiated market leading products for our loyal customer base.

“We as a plant are left in an uncertain situation with no idea what the future holds for us,” he added.

But Simpson highlighted, too, that the workforce remains hopeful.

“It is clear the announcement will mean change but that is nothing new at Shotton who have repeatedly managed change in our history and continued to push forwards to succeed to the world class plant we are today,” he said.

Stay tuned on UNITElive for the latest following business secretary Sajid Javid’s visit to Port Talbot.