UK lawmakers held a rare Saturday parliamentary debate as the government seeks to pass emergency legislation to stop the last British factory that can make steel from scratch shutting down.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said his administration plans to “take control” of the struggling Chinese-owned British Steel plant to prevent its blast furnaces going out and save the country’s steel industry.
The MPs were due to vote Saturday on the bill to take over the running of the Scunthorpe plant, which employs around 2,700 people.
British Steel’s Chinese owners Jingye have said it is no longer financially viable to run the furnaces at the unit in northern England.
But amid speculation the move could pave the way to nationalisation, business and trade secretary Jonathan Reynolds told parliament “the bill does not transfer ownership to the government,” and that would have to be dealt with at a later stage.
He said “the effective market value of this company is zero,” and that Jingye had wanted to maintain the operation in the UK but supply it with steel from China to keep it going.
Labour MP and leader of the House of Commons Lucy Powell told parliament on Saturday: “We meet in these special circumstances because the government needs to act decisively, at pace and with urgency to ensure that the steelworks, blast furnaces of British Steel are maintained and kept going, saving thousands of jobs and securing our domestic production of virgin steel.”
Earlier, the UK’s industry minister said no private company had been willing to invest in the plant.
Sarah Jones told the BBC that talks about the future of the site had broken down, saying Jingye had rejected an offer of government funding and “stopped acting in… good faith.”
Jones also said there was “not at the moment … a private company that is there willing to invest at this point.”
She added that Saturday’s emergency legislation would provide for criminal sanctions if executives fail to comply with instructions to keep the blast furnaces open.
The 10-page bill allows the government to instruct steel companies to keep assets running, and to take over those assets if they fail to comply with those instructions.
It also provides for a compensation scheme for costs incurred by a company following the government’s instructions, and criminal sanctions for executives who disregard them.
Trump tariffs
MPs left for their Easter holidays on Tuesday and were not due to return to parliament until April 22.
The lower house of parliament was last recalled from recess in August 2021 for a debate about the situation in Afghanistan as the western-backed government fell to the Taliban.
In an indication of how seriously the government is taking the plight of British Steel, the last Saturday sitting of parliament was in October 2019 to vote on former prime minister Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal.
Before that MPs last sat on a Saturday recall at the start of the Falklands War between Britain and Argentina in 1982.
British Steel said US President Donald Trump’s tariffs on the sector were partly to blame for the plant’s difficulties.
However, fierce competition from cheaper Asian steel has been blamed for heaping pressure on Europe’s beleaguered steel industry in recent years.
Scunthorpe in northern England is British Steel’s primary site, and Britain’s last virgin steel plant — which produces steel from raw rather than recycled materials — after Tata’s Port Talbot shuttered its blast furnace last year.
