“Workers united, will never be defeated!” a man shouts into a loud hailer. He is part of a crowd marching through the streets of Manchester in a May Day parade, organised by some of Britain’s biggest trade unions.

The sun is shining and there’s a festival atmosphere, as his fellow marchers hold aloft placards about workers’ rights and fair pay.

Among the marchers is Jason Wyatt, a steelworker from South Wales. He is here to shine a spotlight on what’s happening in his hometown of Port Talbot, where several thousand of his colleagues are facing redundancy.

There’s applause as Jason takes to the stage.

“They are trying to destroy the livelihoods of 2,800 people,” he says. “Port Talbot is the last bastion of heavy industry in South Wales. We have to fight.”

There has been a steelworks in Port Talbot, which sits on the south coast of Wales, for 125 years.

These days the large, sprawling site is owned by Tata Steel, an Indian company which employs around half of its 8,000 workforce in Port Talbot.

The local economy is heavily reliant on the manufacturing sector, which provides approximately a fifth of jobs in the area, according to Welsh government figures.

But the British steel industry has struggled to remain competitive in a fierce global market, and that means uncertain futures for communities like Port Talbot.

In 2019, the UK produced seven million tonnes of steel, behind seven EU nations – including Germany’s 40 million tonnes. Meanwhile, China produced 996 million tonnes.

Steelworks also cost huge amounts to run because they use massive amounts of energy.

The Port Talbot plant has, by far, the biggest bill and uses as much electricity, for example, as the whole of the city of Swansea a few miles along the motorway.

The sums do not add up, says Tata Steel. It claims its UK business loses £1m a day.

The other huge issue facing the company, and its Port Talbot plant, is how polluting it is. The steelworks is the single biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in Britain.

And Tata thinks that by moving away from its existing coal-powered blast furnace to a greener way of making steel – using scrap metal as fuel – it could reduce the UK’s entire carbon emissions by around 1.5 per cent.

The UK government has agreed to pay Tata £500m towards the building of a new electric arc furnace.

But to do that, Tata says it needs to shut down the two remaining blast furnaces, resulting in the loss of 2,800 jobs.

The drive to go green is costing jobs in Port Talbot. And that’s a dilemma that companies across the UK – and around the world – are facing.

“Tata are asking people to save the business with a forfeit in their jobs. It’s awful,” says Jason, who has worked at the Port Talbot plant for 25 years.

It is estimated that around 1.3 million workers in carbon-intensive so-called “brown” jobs will need to adapt to cleaner technologies and processes, according to the Resolution Foundation think tank.

But the numbers on the cost of going green are disputed.

The TUC estimates that 800,000 manufacturing and supply chain jobs could be axed without support from the government.

While the Climate Change Committee, an independent body set up by the government in 2008, says anywhere between 8,000 and 75,000 jobs could go in the transition.

The government says the UK is the first major economy to halve its emissions – and is leading the way in the transformation of the energy industry, with over 80,000 green jobs currently supported or in the pipeline since 2020.

“Much of the transferable expertise from industries such as steelworks and oil and gas will be crucial for the transition to net zero,” a government spokesperson said.

“And our Green Jobs Plan will ensure we have the sufficient skills to tackle emerging and future workforce demands across the economy.”

Inside the plant, it’s hot and the smell of sulphur hangs in the air, a by-product of the manufacturing process. Peter Quinn is leading Tata’s move to green steel.

He says the idea that its arc furnace could be up and running in four years is still “approximate” and that consultations with stakeholders, including the workers, would need to be completed first.

The unions and local politicians have called on Tata to keep one blast furnace operational while the new one is built. But Tata says that is not cost-effective.

Quinn says the only other option is abandoning steelmaking in Port Talbot altogether.

Jason thinks Tata should opt for a more gradual transition that would avoid the need to make redundancies.

“We’re not opposing the green steel agenda,” he says. “What we’re opposing is the way in which we’re transitioning.”

This shift is already impacting his family. His son, Tyler, is 19 and had hoped to apply for an apprenticeship at Tata.

“I’m at a point in my life where I need to start securing my future, buy a house and settle somewhere,” says Tyler. “But it’s too risky now to think that there are opportunities [at Tata] for me.”

As Jason and his family take a windswept walk on the town’s beach with their dogs, their gaze is drawn towards the harbour where the cranes used to unload iron ore from around the world, dominate the view.

But out to sea, hope could be on the horizon. There are plans for a huge wind farm in the Celtic Sea with enough wind turbines to power four million homes.

And Tata hopes it can make the football pitch-sized platforms that the turbines will sit on.

But this potential new chapter in the story of Britain’s journey to a greener economy still seems too far away for the steelworkers.

Ashley Curnow, a divisional manager for Associated British Ports in Wales, hopes the towns along the shore like Port Talbot will benefit from the new development.

“I understand there’s an immense amount of worry at the moment throughout the community, and I think our role in this project is to deliver the project, as soon as we can and bring those job opportunities forward.”

At home, Jason and his family reflect on what the future might hold.

His wife, Stacey, thinks Tata is treating its workers unfairly.

“I think it’s wrong what Tata Steel are doing to their workers. They don’t really care about how it’s going to affect people and their families.”

“It’s a hard time for all of us,” Jason adds. “We’ve got to fight to protect our livelihoods”.

Traders are facing increased costs and more paperwork due to Brexit border controls, according to a new report from the independent public spending watchdog.

The government is estimated to have spent £4.7bn so far but some of that spending was not necessary, the National Audit Office (NAO) has said.

Despite the UK voting to leave the European Union in 2016 – and officially exiting in 2020 – many border control checks are yet to be implemented.

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It is “not clear” when the checks will be fully in place, said Parliament’s spending authority in its trade border report, and there is no timetable for government to achieve its “world’s most effective border” target.

This lack of certainty, as well as “repeated delays” in bringing in import controls, resulted in spending on infrastructure and staff that was “ultimately not needed”, according to the NAO.

Those delays and the associated uncertainty have also impacted businesses by adding extra cost and admin burdens, the watchdog added.

Late policy announcements have reduced the ability of businesses and ports to prepare for changes, the report said.

After five delays, the first phase of border barriers – requiring additional certification – came into force on 31 January this year, with a second phase having started on 30 April when physical checks were introduced at ports.

A third phase, requiring safety and security declarations, is scheduled for 31 October. These phases are partial import controls.

‘Increased biosecurity risk’

The UK is at “increased biosecurity risk” due to the phased implementation approach and having lost access to EU surveillance and alert systems after Brexit, the NAO said.

There is reduced awareness of “impending dangers”, such as African Swine Fever, it added.

Customs declaration work borne by businesses had been estimated to cost organisations a collective £7.5bn, according to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) figures in 2019, which the NAO notes has not been updated despite 39m customs declarations being made on goods moving between Britain and the EU in 2022.

The government’s £4.7bn figure is an estimate of post-Brexit border management and does not factor in the full, eventual cost.

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Strategy ‘lacks clear timetable’

It has not specified when a full regime will be in place but said it intends to introduce most of the remaining import controls during 2024.

The NAO said the 2025 UK border strategy “lacks a clear timetable” and cross-government delivery plan, with individual departments leading and implementing different parts.

It added that annual reports on progress will not be published until 2025 “at the earliest”, despite the government saying in its border strategy in 2020 that it would publish yearly progress reports.

The NAO recommended full border controls operate at all ports “as soon as possible”.

Sajid Javid, the former chancellor of the exchequer, has been approached about taking a role at Shein, the online fashion giant which is progressing plans for London’s biggest stock market float for years.

Sky News has learnt that Mr Javid is among a number of senior City figures who have held talks with Donald Tang, Shein’s executive chairman, in recent weeks.

City sources said that if the appointment of Mr Javid proceeded, it could see him either join Shein’s board or become an adviser to the Chinese-founded company.

They added that Baroness Fairhead, the former BBC Trust chair, was also on a list of candidates drawn up by headhunters advising Shein.

One person close to the company said the identities of those being approached reflected both the seriousness with which Shein was taking the issue of corporate governance and the extent of its focus on a London listing.

Since leaving the government, Mr Javid has taken a role with Centricus, an investment firm which tried unsuccessfully to structure an offer for Chelsea Football Club in 2022.

A spokesman for him, who had insisted that Mr Javid would stand for re-election in his Bromsgrove seat a week before publicly announcing the opposite, did not respond to a request for comment from Sky News.

In recent weeks, several reports have repeated Sky News’ revelation that Shein has turned its attention to a London flotation amid difficulties in securing approval from US regulators.

An initial public offering would be likely to value Shein at around £50bn or more.

Paris is also understood to have been considered by the company as a possible listing venue.

Earlier this year, Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, held talks with Donald Tang, Shein’s executive chairman, to persuade the company to commit to what would be one of London’s biggest-ever corporate flotations.

The meeting between Mr Hunt and Mr Tang underlined the importance that British officials are attaching to the idea of trumping the US in an effort to land the Shein IPO.

If it proceeded, Shein could become the London Stock Exchange’s second-largest IPO in history, behind the 2011 stock market debut of Glencore International, the commodities trading and mining group.

Mr Tang has also met executives from the LSE as well as more junior ministers as part of its IPO preparations.

Shein filed documents for a New York listing last year, but has grown concerned that its application may be rejected by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley are advising on the deal.

Based in Singapore, Shein has become one of the world’s largest online fashion retailers, although its growth has not been untroubled amid mounting concerns about labour standards.

Last year, Sky News revealed that Shein was in talks to buy the British fashion brand Missguided from Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group.

While the transaction itself was worth only a modest sum, retail analysts said that it could pave the way for Shein to build a more meaningful profile in the UK, potentially through a broader collaboration with Frasers.

Founded in China in 2012, Shein was valued at over $100bn last year, at which point it was worth more than H&M and Zara’s parent company, Inditex, combined.

The company’s valuation was slashed to $66bn as part of a share sale last year.

Shein operates in more than 150 countries.

It has also struck an agreement with SPARC Group, a joint venture between the Ted Baker-owner ABG and Simon Property Group, a US shopping mall operator.

Under that deal, SPARC’s Forever 21 fashion brand gained distribution on the Shein platform, which boasts 150m users globally.

Shein acquired a one-third stake in SPARC Group, while SPARC Group also took an undisclosed minority interest in Shein.

The LSE’s efforts to court Shein come during a challenging period for the City as a listing venue for large multinationals, with ARM Holdings, the UK-based chip designer, opting to float in New York rather than London.

Other companies, such as the gambling operator Flutter Entertainment and drug company Indivior, are planning to shift their primary listings to the US, citing higher valuations and more liquid markets.

In recent weeks, however, London has landed the prospective IPOs of Raspberry Pi, the personal computer maker, and AOTI, a medical technology provider.

Mr Hunt last week hosted a summit at Dorneywood attended by technology companies looking at listing in the UK.

Shein declined to comment.