Steel Industry (Nationalisation) Bill
13 Jul 2026 · Commons Chamber · 17 speeches · Official record
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I am grateful to their lordships for their work on the Bill. We support the amendments before the House. Let me be plain from the outset: our objection has never been to steelmaking, or to the men and women who make steel; it is to a Government who have crashed around and used blunt instruments without ever having a detailed plan. Hope is not a strategy, and a blank cheque is not a plan. Nationalisation is a bad idea, and nothing that has yet been said at that Dispatch Box has told the House whe... Full speech
We have a duty to stand by the steel sector, especially as it navigates unprecedented challenges, including President Trump’s unfair steel tariffs, China’s anti-competitive state aid practices, and the transition to environmentally sustainable production methods. If we are going to foster a thriving steel industry, we cannot allow more producers to collapse, more jobs to be lost, or the risk of our last blast furnaces going cold. That is why the Liberal Democrats broadly welcome this legislation... Full speech
Speaker
We support Lords amendment 1, which limits by two years the power for Ministers to bring further steel businesses into public ownership without coming back to this House. Powers this sweeping should never have been handed to Ministers without limit. We support Lords amendments 2 and 3, tabled by the Liberal Democrats, which would require the Secretary of State to weigh the likely costs before making share transfer or property transfer regulations. That is a modest ask, and it is hugely damning t... Full speech
Speaker
We support Lords amendments 4 and 5, which were laid on a cross-party basis. They shift the regulations governing continuity obligations and their enforcement from the negative procedure to the affirmative. If Ministers wish to bind steel undertakings and their suppliers, let them do so in daylight, with the consent of this House-not by regulations that slip through unseen without the scrutiny of Parliament. Full speech
Speaker
We welcome the Government’s Lords amendments 6 to 18, which would require, rather than merely permit, the compensation scheme to provide for an independent valuer and would set out plainly the role that the valuer must perform. When the Government listen and act sensibly, we support them-and we have. It is a pity that the Government did not extend this House the same courtesy on the one amendment that mattered the most: the cap on an otherwise unlimited bill for the taxpayer. Full speech
Speaker
For all the hours we have now spent debating the future of steelmaking in the UK, the Government still refuse to confront the real issue-they know what it is, but they refuse to confront it. It is the Secretary of State for Energy and his addiction to ruinously high energy prices. It is not me who says that but Unite the union’s general secretary, who described this as a “noose around the neck” of job creation. Full speech
Speaker
There is no path to profitable steelmaking of any kind in the UK while energy prices here are four times higher than in many of our competitor nations. There is no tariff damaging enough to manufacturers and steel users to compensate for that, even though the Government’s botched attempts are clearly already causing manufacturing jobs to shift offshore. Full speech
Speaker
The Government will talk about their British industrial competitiveness scheme, which is welcome, but it is just a sticking plaster on a gaping wound-and the Minister knows it. It is nonsense to claim that their strategy is one of security of supply when the same Government refused to open a coking coal mine, meaning that every furnace is reliant on imports, without which they would close in a matter of hours. Full speech
Speaker
Only the Conservatives have a plan to get Britain drilling and reduce energy costs. We will remove legal obstacles blocking new oil and gas projects like Rosebank and Jackdaw and scrap the energy profits levy to make them viable. We will increase private investment in oil and gas extraction, and we will scrap the carbon taxes and industrial levies that expensively subsidise intermittent renewables that do not generate when the wind does not blow or the sun does not shine. Full speech
Speaker
We will not stand in the way of these amendments. Many of them are ours, and the rest improve a flawed Bill, but let no one mistake improvement for endorsement. The amendments warrant our support, but the so-called plan and the botched decisions behind them do not. Full speech
I can inform the House that nothing in the Lords amendments engages Commons financial privilege. Full speech
I beg to move, That this House agrees with Lords amendment 1. Full speech
I welcome the Government’s acceptance of the Lords amendments. As hon. Members will know, part of my constituency takes in the Scunthorpe steelworks, and hundreds of my constituents work there. My aim throughout the rather tortuous and long saga about the future of the steelworks has been to ensure that their jobs are retained. As the shadow Secretary of State outlined, the Bill could have been further improved, but I am delighted that we have at least reached a conclusion. There will be a sigh ... Full speech
Speaker
Sunset for exercise of principal transfer powers Full speech
It is a pleasure to be back in the House today to see through the final stages of this Bill. The Government support all the Lords amendments before us. I wish to pay tribute to my colleague Minister Leong for so expertly guiding the Bill through its passage in the other place. I also wish to place on the record my thanks for the constructive approach taken by peers to the scrutiny of the Bill during its passage through the upper House, including the constructive and careful consideration from Hi... Full speech
I have listened carefully to the shadow Secretary of State’s remarks and those from the shadow Minister, and I will address them in a moment. I am grateful for the support of the Vice-Chamberlain of His Majesty’s Household, my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Sir Nicholas Dakin), and of the Minister without Portfolio, my right hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Anna Turley), both of whom are unable to speak in the debate as a result of their positions elsewhere in the House. I opened by re... Full speech
With this it will be convenient to discuss Lords amendments 2 to 18. Full speech