ENERGY Secretary Ed Miliband was humiliated yesterday after his Net Zero policies were blamed for leaving British Steel on the verge of collapse.
MPs dashed back from their holidays to pass emergency laws allowing the Government seize control of the firm’s Scunthorpe plant from its Chinese owners Jingye.
The Government has seized control of British Steel’s Scunthorpe plant from its Chinese owners JingyeGetty
Ed Miliband’s Net Zero policies have been blamed for leaving British Steel on the brink of collapse
The Chinese owners of the plant had threatened to extinguish furnaces that had remained active since 1954
It came amid warnings the steel plant was just 48 hours away from being forced into a total shutdown.
In a day of political drama, Mr Miliband was accused of leaving Britain’s steel industry on the edge of extinction with his eco policies.
Shadow Business Secretary Andrew Griffith said our steel industry was being clobbered by energy costs twice as high as Germany’s owing to the barmy policies.
He raged: “No one is more responsible for this than the Energy Secretary and the Prime Minister who appointed him.”
In extraordinary scenes, steel workers blocked Chinese management from entering the Scunthorpe site yesterday and British officials seized control at 4pm.
MPs then unanimously approved the emergency law.
PM Sir Keir Starmer said it would “give the Business Secretary the power and control necessary to do everything possible to protect the steel industry and steel jobs”.
He added: “We are acting with urgency. We are acting in the interests of Scunthorpe and the nation. And we are acting to deliver security for working people.”
Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds admitted it is likely British Steel will be fully nationalised in the coming weeks.
Owner Jingye threatened to “starve” the plant — cooling blast furnaces so much they could never be switched on again.
This would have meant the loss of 3,000 jobs and left Britain as the only G7 country unable to produce its own steel.
Emergency stocks of coking coal were being rushed from Japan to Scunthorpe last night to keep the furnaces roaring.
Unveiling the emergency legislation in a rare Saturday sitting, Mr Reynolds said the clock was “being run down” on British steel and doing nothing “was not an option”.
He told Parliament: “Steel is fundamental to Britain’s industrial strength, to our security and our identity as a primary global power.
Today’s legislation will help ensure we can retain that steel-making capacity here in the UK, both now and for years to come.”
The plant is haemorrhaging around £400million a year — meaning the taxpayer could be on the hook for billions in bailout and running costs over the next few years.
Scunthorpe is the victim of a dishonesty that pretends it is better for the environment to ship coke halfway around the planet than from down the road — and an energy policy that has driven costs higher than any competing nation.
Andrew Griffith MP
Trading blows, Mr Griffith accused Labour of dithering over the steel rescue package.
In a fiery Commons showdown, he roared: “Will he change course today and cut energy costs now — not in ten years’ time when it is too late?”
He savaged ministers for blocking a new coal mine from opening in Cumbria last year, leaving us hooked on foreign coal to feed our steel plants.
Mr Griffith declared: “There is no steel strategy, there is no industrial strategy, there is no export strategy, and now we have this botched nationalisation.
“Scunthorpe is the victim of a dishonesty that pretends it is better for the environment to ship coke halfway around the planet than from down the road — and an energy policy that has driven costs higher than any competing nation.”
MPs dashed back to Westminster to pass emergency laws to protect British Steel from destructionPA
Tory MP Graham Stuart also stuck the boot in over the dash for Net Zero.
He fumed: “We have a government which is shipping coking coal from Japan when it was perfectly possible to have the greenest production of coking coal in the world in Cumbria with thousands of jobs.
“It’s a disgrace this government turns its back on jobs in Cumbria and in the North Sea because it puts ideology ahead of practicability and even ahead of the environment.”
In an astonishing snub to British steel workers, Mr Miliband walked out of the debate after just over an hour.
His team refused to say why he refused to stay to hear all the contributions.
Tory MP Sir Edward Leigh, whose Gainsborough seat neighbours Scunthorpe in Lincolnshire, called him out for leaving early.
However, Business Secretary Mr Reynolds slammed the Tories for doing a deal to hand Scunthorpe over to China.
Issuing a rallying cry to pass the emergency legislation and back UK jobs, he said: “The question is whether we as a country want to continue to possess a steel industry.
“Do we want to make the construction steel and rail we need here in the UK, or do we want to be dependent on overseas imports?”
He told MPs: “A transfer of ownership to the State remains on the table. It may well, at this stage, given the behaviour of the company, be the likely option.”
Reform UK MP Richard Tice called for full nationalisation — while wearing a trade union “Save British Steel” badge.
MPs scrambling for a solution
By Andrew Griffith
LABOUR has landed itself in a crisis of its own making.
Nationalisation should be a last resort, but steel is vital for our security, resilience and economy.
Yesterday laid bare the madness at the heart of Labour’s policy, and the incompetence which seems endemic to its government.
As with many of the policies, it doesn’t have a plan. It has been left scrambling for a solution and the future for British steelmaking now hangs in the balance because of it.
History often has a habit of repeating itself. Neil Kinnock once pointed out the stupidity of “hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers”, and Labour’s eco madness has hit similar heights.
Red Ed Miliband closed our last coal mine months ago, only to then be forced into importing coal from abroad to keep the Scunthorpe blast furnaces open.
Net Zero will not work in its current form. And this government continuing to peddle its dogma is putting things like our steel industry at risk.
Of course, we all want to stop climate change. But given Britain only contributes to one per cent of global emissions, the best way to do that is by having a thriving private sector that can innovate and develop cutting- edge technology.
It’s businesses, not the state, that will do this. But clearly this hasn’t yet dawned on Keir Starmer.
Now the wheels are coming off. Having broken more than 100 promises since becoming Labour leader, he once again proved he is the master of saying one thing and doing the opposite.
He now says “the world as we knew it has gone”, claiming we are in a different world. In some ways he is right, but only because he lives in a completely different world to the one the rest of us do.
He is completely out of touch and needs to get real.
On the economy, on tariffs and Net Zero, he can’t stop scoring own goals.
He must urgently change course. If Starmer meant what he said about living in a new world, he would be able to see sense as the Conservative Party has on Net Zero.
The PM must admit that Net Zero by 2050 is impossible without crippling businesses and punishing families with higher costs and higher bills.
Starmer’s much-vaunted electric vehicle changes, which only brought us closer to where we were a year ago, is tinkering at the edges.
Continuing to enforce extra levies, increasing burdens on businesses and shackling industry with sales bans, these minor changes are not equal to the challenge.
It’s about time the PM used Brexit to our advantage.
We all know Starmer is an arch Remoaner. He energetically campaigned for a second referendum, and he voted to block the UK making its own laws 48 times in Parliament.
But as a result of Brexit, he has been dealt a good hand of cards and now is his chance to seriously play it in the national interest.
Given his Chancellor has crushed growth, a US trade deal would be the ultimate prize.
For anyone who doesn’t have a thinly veiled desire to rejoin the EU, this deal would unleash opportunities for British businesses to benefit from international trade like never before.
We laid the foundations for it, negotiating with President Trump in his first term.
Now he’s back in the White House, the appetite for it in Washington is there. Starmer must pick up and dust off what we’ve already hammered out.
But despite tariffs hammering our car sector and punishing British businesses, they seem very half- hearted.
Britain deserves better than managed decline masked as progress.
If Starmer truly believes we are living in a new world, then it’s time he started acting like it.
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