14:00 Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)

We also need to pay tribute to North Lincolnshire Council and Baroness Redfern, who have really engaged with the Government on every level. In particular, they have made some innovative proposals on how we can make better use of what is a very large site at Scunthorpe. I always remind the hon. Member for Scunthorpe that the site is so big that it is split across our constituencies. He has all the plant, but an awful lot of the site that is not utilised lies in my constituency and it could help secure its future, whether that is through looking at a use for renewable energy or at a business and enterprise zone. The council has been open to that and it has been impressive to hear how much other parties have welcomed its approach. The Minister and everyone involved in the ongoing discussions can be assured that whatever the council can do, it will do, to realise the asset in that site, which we hope will give some comfort to Greybull, the preferred bidder at the moment.

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14:11 Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)

The Government recognised late in the day that when they imposed carbon taxes three or four years ago—I say this as a strong environmentalist—they did not put in place the mitigation measures needed for energy-intensive industries. That should have been done at the same time for not only the steel industry, but ceramics, the paper industry and others. A thinking Chancellor would have worked that out and not waited three years. The approach has damaged the steel industry, and we need to put it right.

Indeed; my hon. Friend makes a wise point. I commend the Government for their high-level negotiations at COP21 in Paris—tremendous. The UK led the high-level coalition of ambition. The EU led as well, and yet we could end up in a situation in which we are not only offshoring jobs, but offshoring them to countries that do not have the same standards of energy efficiency that we have at Tata Steel in Port Talbot and throughout the UK. It is in the interests of the climate to keep those jobs here in this country.

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14:49 Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)

In the Chancellor’s autumn statement we heard that an announcement to the stock exchange had been made about the withdrawal of the last £1 billion to support carbon capture and storage. That is integral to any future of shale or non-conventional gas. In a world in which oil has fallen below $30 a barrel and the world market will retrench and retain fossil fuels for the current period, CCS should, in many ways—mainly because of the emissions targets that we are all now signed up to—precede renewables as the step for any nation to take to develop its power generation if, indeed, that country is going to buy in cheap fossil fuels while shale, oil and conventional gas all fight one another for customers. That is a massive opportunity for the steel sector to take hold of.

I have spoken so much about the steel sector, in relation to my local area and the whole UK. There is a positive story to be made for British steel, if we have an integrated industrial strategy. The Government could roll up their sleeves and actively engage with bodies, partners, business and finance to invest in the country. The right and adequate policy could be put down, with long-term futures secured, so that people know that their investments are sound and can deliver. However, in every single situation—for example, after the Paris climate change talks, when the world is looking at CCS as the future, and it is going to develop, the Government removed funding for it—we run away and concede the ground to competitors, which gives completely the wrong message to the industry we are talking about today.

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15:03 Stephen Doughty (Labour)

I would certainly be interested to hear the Minister’s response to that point. My hon. Friend rightly talked about an industrial strategy and having an overall strategic look at these industries and their interaction in the globalised economy that we face. There are tensions in government between the Treasury, BIS and the Department of Energy and Climate Change. The Minister may shake her head and wave her hands, but she knows that those tensions are there, and that there is not one voice on these matters in government. She works for a Secretary of State who, as we know, would not utter the words “industrial strategy”.

I made this point in an intervention, but I cannot emphasise it enough. As somebody who believes in tackling global climate change, operating sustainably and having responsible industry, I find it absurd that we would offshore from this country steel jobs and production involving the most carbon-efficient methods, because that will result in more global carbon production and an increased chance of climate change, less security of steel supply in our own country, and less quality and safety of supply. Those are serious points that we must be aware of, which is why a strategic approach is required across Departments, with people all singing from the same hymn sheet.

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15:17 Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)

What is inspiring today is the fact that we are all here doing that—fighting tooth and nail. I know the Minister. We have worked together on defence matters and have a history of sparring across the Chamber, but we also have a history of working together constructively. I hope we are able to carry that on, because there is an unfairness of status in this situation. China can ignore climate change in a way we cannot. It is not bound by the high cost of energy, because it subsidises its companies in the use of energy. It has quadrupled its output of steel since 2000, so its plan has been quite a long-term one. We must deal with the market distortion and think about how we protect our own industries.

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15:30 Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)

The Scottish Government have also looked at the efforts of other steelworks to reduce energy costs by using renewable energy and investing in energy-efficient furnaces. Scottish Enterprise has been invaluable in that process. It has been working with Tata since before the plants’ closure in an effort to bring down energy costs.

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15:43 Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)

The next speech was a passionate one by my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies). He will be a great loss to this place when, we hope, he becomes the Assembly Member for Ogmore in the near future. He spoke well about why the Government had not introduced the necessary mitigating measures at the same time as the carbon tax. They should have been introduced at the same time, and he outlined the scale of the consequences if market economy status is awarded to China without any attempt to leverage from the Chinese an end to the dumping of steel in European markets.

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16:07 The Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise (Anna Soubry)

I get slightly cheesed off at nonsense about the Government not being joined up and not working together. That could not be further from the truth. The current level and degree of co-operation within Government has never been seen before. I can give many examples of exactly where the Government are joined up. I am particularly proud of my working relationship with Ministers in the Department of Energy and Climate Change, for example. We get on well and work well together. At the moment we are looking at why too few of our steel fabricators buy British steel. We are doing a piece of work on the supply chains to see how we can ensure that British steel is bought all the way through the supply chains.

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