Minister says he wouldn’t bring China into ‘sensitive’ steel industry again
The business secretary has told Sky News he would not bring a Chinese company into the “sensitive” steel sector again – after the government was forced to take control of British Steel.
Urgent legislation rushed through the House of Commons and House of Lords on Saturday gave ministers the power to instruct British Steel – owned by Chinese company Jingye – to keep the plant open.
The Steel Industry (Special Measures) Bill essentially allows the government to take control of British Steel “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.
Emergency bill becomes law – follow the latest reaction here
British Steel’s Scunthorpe plant. Pic: Reuters
Jonathan Reynolds told Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips that he would not “personally bring a Chinese company into our steel sector” again, describing steel as a “sensitive area” in the UK.
The business secretary agreed there is now a high trust bar for Chinese companies to be involved in the UK economy.
He said: “I think steel is a very sensitive area. I don’t know… the Boris Johnson government when they did this, what exactly the situation was. But I think it’s a sensitive area.”
Jingye stepped in with a deal to buy British Steel’s Scunthorpe plant out of insolvency in 2020, when Mr Johnson was prime minister.
But the company recently cancelled orders for supplies of raw materials needed to keep blast furnaces running at the site – the last in the UK capable of producing virgin steel.
This threw the future of the steel industry into question, and ultimately led to MPs and peers being recalled from parliamentary recess to take part in a rare Saturday sitting when negotiations with Jingye appeared to break down.
An emergency bill to save the plant became law later that day.
Public ownership currently ‘likely option’
It stops short of full nationalisation of British Steel, but Reynolds told Sky News that public ownership remains the “likely option” for the future.
He said: “Well that remains an option. And to be frank, as I said to parliament yesterday, it is perhaps at this stage the likely option.”
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However, the minister said he believes there is “potential” for a commercial private sector partner.
He said: “That is my preference, but I feel we’ve got to find a bridge to that. The kind of investments required for the transition to new steel technology, whichever technology that is, it’s a lot of money, a lot of capital.”
Andrew Griffith, the shadow business secretary, said the government’s emergency bill amounts to a “botched nationalisation”.
He told Sky News the Conservatives supported the “least worst” option in the Commons on Saturday.
“There’s clearly still more work to do because the taxpayer is now picking up the bills for a business that is still owned by its Chinese owner,” the Tory frontbencher said.
“I hope the government will very quickly come back and clarify that situation.”
At a press conference today in which Reform UK announced the Tory police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire was joining their ranks, as well as former prison governor Vanessa Frake, I asked Nigel Farage a simple question.
But his answer wasn’t what I expected.
I asked the Reform UK leader if the six-week campaign on law and order, with the tagline “Britain is Lawless”, was in fact project fear scaring people into voting for his party.
He utterly rejected that claim and responded to me saying: “No, they are afraid. They are afraid. I dare you, I dare you to walk through the West End of London after 9 o’clock of an evening wearing jewellery. You wouldn’t do it. You know that I’m right. You wouldn’t do it.”
I am not afraid to walk in the West End of London after 9pm wearing jewellery.
I have done it many times before and will continue to do so… but perhaps that is because I do not own a Rolex.
However, just because Farage is wrong on that point, doesn’t mean he isn’t tapping into other legitimate fears across the country.
Snatch theft does worry me, hence why I now have a phone case with a strap attached to it that I can put around my body.
And I worry about knife crime in my area and what the impact could be if I were to have children – on the weekend someone was stabbed to death a stone’s throw from my house.
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Farage ‘not mincing his words’
However, if we look at the statistics, it is invariably a more nuanced picture than Farage or social media might have us believe.
According to police reports, thefts from a person in London are almost five times the national average, and they’ve been going up since the pandemic.
And the Office for National Statistics (ONS) also notes that thefts outside of the home, eg phone snatching, has increased.
However, possession of weapons has fallen in London by 29% over the last three years.
And according to the ONS, crime in England and Wales is 30% lower than in 2015, and 76% lower than 1995.
And it is a similar picture for violent crime.
In short, am I right to be more worried that snatch theft and knife crime in London is increasing? Yes, and no.
But Nigel Farage is tapping into voters’ emotions – their feelings that the country is broken. It’s a picture the Conservative Party helped to create and the Labour Party happily painted to great effect during the general election campaign of 2024.
And the more politicians of all colours tell voters that “the system is broken”, the more voters might start to believe them.
That is what Nigel Farage is banking on.
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