Kevin Brennan – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kevin Brennan on 2016-04-15.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what meetings he has initiated on steel in the last two years.

Anna Soubry

It is an established convention that Ministers of one Administration cannot see the documents of a previous Administration. I am therefore unable to provide the information requested by the hon Member for the entire period given in his Question.

I first met with Gareth Stace on 01 June 2015 and discussions with steel industry stakeholders continued thereafter to identify the policy priorities for dealing with the considerable challenges facing the sector. We convened a Steel Summit on 16 October 2015 which brought together all the major stakeholders, including key Government and industry participants as well as constituency MPs, recognising the significant part steel companies play in local communities. This led to the formation of three Ministerial Working Groups which took the lead on our efforts to deliver on the five key ‘Asks’ put to us by our partners in the steel industry.

To ensure a sustainable future we set up the Steel Council, co-chaired by my Rt Hon Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, to build on the achievements of the three previous Ministerial working groups, by looking at the longer term future of the sector and how we can strengthen the capability and competiveness of the UK steel industry both at home and globally. The Council met for the first time on 2 March.

Since this Government took office, BIS Ministers have undertaken a number of visits to steel-producing sites across the UK, including: SSI Redcar; Tata Steel facilities at Port Talbot, Scunthorpe and Rotherham; Celsa in Cardiff and the former-Tata Steel site at Motherwell recently re-opened by Liberty Steel.

To date we have made significant progress in addressing the challenges faced by the industry, including:

• Paying compensation towards their energy costs: the Steel industry has received £80m in compensation since 2013;

• Exempting the steel industry from renewable energy policy costs passed through in energy bills: this will save the steel industry hundreds of £millions over the course of this parliament.
• Securing flexibility over EU emissions regulations.
• Making sure that social and economic factors can be taken into account when Government procures steel;
• Continuing to tackle unfair trading practices at an EU and an International level.