Mark Drakeford ‘genuinely baffled’ Rishi Sunak did not call him to discuss Tata job losses
Wales’s first minister Mark Drakeford has said he was “genuinely baffled” Rishi Sunak did not call him to discuss plans to support people affected by job losses in Port Talbot.
Last week, Tata Steel said it would cut up to 2,800 jobs in the UK.
The majority of those will be in the UK’s largest steelworks in the South Wales town as the company replaces its blast furnaces with electric arc furnaces.
During first minister’s questions on Tuesday, Mr Drakeford told the Senedd he contacted the prime minister’s office last Thursday, when it became clear Tata would announce the closure of both blast furnaces in the town.
The first is expected to shut sometime in the middle of 2024 and the other during the second half of the year.
Tata said the move will cut carbon emissions by about 85% and the UK’s overall CO2 output by about 1.5%.
It also said its plan will reduce costs, but unions have called for Tata and the UK government to reconsider and warned of a “major industrial dispute”.
Tata received £500m of taxpayer cash to support the transition to cheaper, greener steel production.
“I wrote immediately to the prime minister, asking for a telephone call with him on Friday, so that we could jointly discuss how we could best respond to the emerging picture,” Mr Drakeford said.
“And by eight o’clock, 8.30, in the morning on Friday I’d had a reply from the prime minister saying that he couldn’t find time to meet me or talk to me that day and I do think that is genuinely shocking.”
His comments come after the Welsh government’s economy minister, Vaughan Gething, told a news conference on Tuesday that the final whistle had “not been blown” on Tata Steel jobs at Port Talbot.
The steel giant has said 2,500 jobs could go in the next 18 months, while a further 300 might be axed in three years’ time.
Statutory consultation on the cuts is yet to begin, and a date for that has not been fixed.
The Tata Steel workforce currently accounts for 12% of Port Talbot’s entire population.
Nearly three-quarters of the 4,000 staff on site could be out of work following the redundancies.
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Mr Drakeford said Mr Sunak‘s response contrasted “very vividly” with that of former prime minister Theresa May a few years ago.
“On the day that Ford announced that they were leaving Bridgend, my office contacted the office of the prime minister that day and before the end of that day, I was in a conversation with the prime minister about what we could do together to help people who were affected,” he said.
“That’s what I was looking for from the prime minister and I am genuinely baffled that he did not feel it was a priority for him to find the small amount of time he would have needed that day to have that conversation.”
The leader of the Welsh Conservatives, Andrew RT Davies, said he believed there was a “route to keep that blast furnace open”.
“I was as surprised as anyone when it came out that they were going to shut both blast furnaces,” he added.
In response to Mr Drakeford’s comments, Welsh Secretary David TC Davies said he was “disappointed” the first minister had not responded to his own invitation to discuss Tata’s announcement.
“To date, the Labour Welsh government has not offered a single penny towards the transition board,” he added.
“However, the invitation is there still for the first minister to speak to me to discuss the latest announcement .”
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The UK economy grew by 0.1% between July and September, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
However, despite the small positive GDP growth recorded in the third quarter, the economy shrank by 0.1% in September, dragging down overall growth for the three month period.
The growth was also slower than what had been expected by experts and a drop from the 0.5% growth between April and June, the ONS said.
Economists polled by Reuters and the Bank of England had forecast an expansion of 0.2%, slowing from the rapid growth seen over the first half of 2024 when the economy was rebounding from last year’s shallow recession.
And the metric that Labour has said it is most focused on – the GDP per capita, or the economic output divided by the number of people in the country – also fell by 0.1%.
Pic: Reuters
Reacting to the figures, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said: “Am I satisfied with the numbers published today? Of course not. I want growth to be stronger, to come sooner, and also to be felt by families right across the country.”
“It’s why in my Mansion House speech last night, I announced some of the biggest reforms of our pension system in a generation to unlock long term patient capital, up to £80bn to help invest in small businesses and scale up businesses and in the infrastructure needs,” Ms Reeves later told Sky News in an interview.
“We’re four months into this government. There’s a lot more to do to turn around the growth performance of the last decade or so.”
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The sluggish services sector – which makes up the bulk of the British economy – was a particular drag on growth over the past three months. It expanded by 0.1%, cancelling out the 0.8% growth in the construction sector.
The UK’s GDP for the most recent quarter is lower than the 0.7% growth in the US and 0.4% in the Eurozone.
The figures have pushed the UK towards the bottom of the G7 growth table for the third quarter of the year.
It was expected to meet the same 0.2% growth figures reported in Germany and Japan – but fell below that after a slow September.
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The pound remained stable following the news, hovering around $1.267. The FTSE 100, meanwhile, opened the day down by 0.4%.
The Bank of England last week predicted that Ms Reeves’s first budget as chancellor will increase inflation by up to half a percentage point over the next two years, contributing to a slower decline in interest rates than previously thought.
Announcing a widely anticipated 0.25 percentage point cut in the base rate to 4.75%, the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) forecast that inflation will return “sustainably” to its target of 2% in the first half of 2027, a year later than at its last meeting.
The Bank’s quarterly report found Ms Reeves’s £70bn package of tax and borrowing measures will place upward pressure on prices, as well as delivering a three-quarter point increase to GDP next year.
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