An emergency bill to save British Steel’s Scunthorpe blast furnaces has become law.

The urgent legislation gives ministers the power to instruct British Steel to keep the plant open.

The bill was rushed through the House of Commons and House of Lords in one day, with MPs and peers being recalled from recess to take part in a Saturday sitting for the first time in over 40 years.

Emergency bill becomes law – follow the latest reaction here

After passing through both houses of parliament, the Steel Industry (Special Measures) Bill was granted royal assent by the King.

The bill gives the government the power to take control of British Steel – or any other steel asset – “using force if necessary”, order materials for steelmaking and instruct that workers be paid. It also authorises a jail sentence of up to two years for anyone breaching this law.

Sir Keir Starmer hailed the legislation for “turning the page on a decade of decline”, adding “all options are on the table to secure the future of the industry”.

It will mean the steel plant in Scunthorpe will continue to operate as the government decides on a long-term strategy, and steelmaking in the UK more broadly.

Officials from the Department for Business and Trade arrived at the site before the bill had even passed, Sky News understands.

Earlier, staff from the plant’s ousted Chinese owners Jingye were denied access, with police called over a “suspected breach of peace” – though officers found “no concerns”.

Ministers took the unusual step of recalling parliament from its recess to sit on Saturday after negotiations with Jingye appeared to break down.

Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said the measures within the bill were “proportionate and necessary” to keep the Scunthorpe blast furnaces open and protect both the UK’s primary steelmaking capacity and the 3,500 jobs involved.

The emergency legislation stops short of full nationalisation of British Steel, but Mr Reynolds told MPs that public ownership remained the “likely option” for the future.

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During the debate, several Conservative MPs, Reform UK’s deputy leader Richard Tice and the Liberal Democrats’ deputy leader Daisy Cooper all spoke in favour of nationalisation.

MPs had broken up for the Easter holidays on Tuesday and had not been due to return until Tuesday 22 April.

The business secretary accused Jingye of failing to negotiate “in good faith” after it decided to stop buying enough raw materials to keep the blast furnaces at Scunthorpe going.

But the Conservatives said the government should have acted sooner, with shadow leader of the house Alex Burghart accusing ministers of making “a total pig’s breakfast” of the situation regarding British Steel.

The government was also criticised for acting to save the Scunthorpe plant but not taking the same action when the Tata Steel works in Port Talbot were threatened with closure.

A major incident has been declared in Nottinghamshire after a gas explosion caused a house to collapse.

There is still a “substantial emergency service presence” in place after the explosion in John Street, Worksop just after 7.30pm on Saturday.

Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service (NFRS) declared it a “major incident” and said “multiple houses in and around John Street have been evacuated”. Nearby Crown Place Community Centre has been opened as a “place of safety”, the service said. Around 20 people have sought refuge there, Sky News camera operator James Evans-Jones said from the scene.

Videos posted on social media showed the front of a terraced house blown out with the roof collapsed, while neighbouring houses had their windows damaged.

NFRS said in a statement late on Saturday: “This has now been declared a major incident, and we are likely to be on scene throughout the night and even into Sunday morning.”

The fire service said it was called to the scene at 7.39pm.

“This is a gas explosion involving a house that has been significantly damaged,” the service said in a previous statement.

One person posted on Facebook that they heard “a terrific bang, like a very loud firework” as they turned into Gladstone Street from Gateford Road.

“I thought the back end had blown off my car,” they said. “A house in John Street has had, presumably, a gas explosion!”

NFRS said it was also called to a separate incident shortly afterwards but does not believe the two are connected.

Ten fire engines were sent to the scene of the industrial fire in nearby Holgate Road in The Meadows, Nottingham.

“The building has been severely damaged but there are no reports of any injuries,” NFRS said.

Having been called to the incident at 8.11pm, NFRS said at around 10.30pm that it was scaling its response down with the flames “now under control”.

NFRS’s group manager Leigh Holmes said from the scene just after 11pm: “We will begin to relax the cordon in the next hour as we continue to scale down this incident.”

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Sir Keir Starmer was flying the flag for domestic steel production on Saturday as his government passed emergency legislation to give itself extraordinary powers to intervene in the running of the steel works in Scunthorpe and elsewhere.

He wants voters to notice that his intervention-friendly government has stepped in to save virgin steel production which was days away from dying out for good because of what ministers call the bad faith behaviour of Chinese owners.

The politics and optics of Saturday’s intervention seem relatively simple. What happens next, however, is not.

Follow live updates: Emergency law to keep British steel plant open

Even before the emergency bill had made its way through parliament, officials had turned up at British Steel in Scunthorpe.

There’s a nervousness about what happens next. As one person close to the talks told me, keeping the blast furnaces alive is far from a foregone conclusion and there are difficult times to come.

“We’re in for a very hard few days and week while government and UK management secure and ensure the vital loads of raw materials needed,” said a source.

“You can’t just do next day delivery on Amazon. Until this is in the blast furnaces keeping them going this won’t be a job done.”

It stands to reason the government will pull out all the stops and the furnace for now will be kept alive, whatever the cost, because the political cost of failure at this point is too high.

Future not secure

But the medium term prospects for virgin British steel are far from secure.

The blast furnaces being saved only have a few years life at best – but it remains unclear who will fund a transition to the new-style electric blast furnaces.

Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, said: “The action I seek to take today is not a magic wand or a panacea.

“The state cannot fund the long term transformation of British Steel itself, nor would it want to do so.”

Nor would he say that steel production is an overriding national security issue, effectively guaranteeing future production. The wiggle room will be noted in Scunthorpe and beyond.

The government has provided a sticking plaster not a solution.

But this is about so much more than what’s going on in Lincolnshire, this is about Britain’s place in the world – and its resilience.

Is dependence on China inevitable?

Can our domestic steel industry survive if Trump continues to impose 25% tariffs on steel going from the UK to the US?

Can we make our own weapons for years to come – as part of Mr Starmer‘s newfound commitment to spend 3% of GDP on defence – without British steel?

Is the eventual dependence on Chinese steel an inevitability?

Yet one of the fascinating features of Saturday’s debate was the most strident attack on a Chinese entity by a minister – the toughest assault since Mr Starmer’s government entered office.

Mr Reynolds said: “Over the last few days, it became clear that the intention of Jingye was to refuse to purchase sufficient raw materials to keep the blast furnaces running.

“In fact, their intention was to cancel and refuse to pay for existing orders. The company would therefore have irrevocably and unilaterally closed down primary steelmaking at British Steel.

“Their intention has been to keep the downstream mills, which colleagues will know are fundamental to our construction steel industry, and supply them from China rather than from Scunthorpe.”

This attack – at a time when ministers (most recently Ed Miliband) have been heading to Beijing to repair relations.

However, the accusation that a Chinese entity has been acting in bad faith in order to effectively scupper domestic steel production is a serious charge.

It also comes before we find out whether Donald Trump is going to make it harder for allies to trade with China.

The government has succeeded in protecting the domestic manufacturer of virgin steel for the short term.

But what happens in the long term, and where we might get it from, remains as murky today as it did before.