Column: Saving British Steel

That plan is now in motion, and I wanted to explain what’s happening—and why it matters so much.

The British Steel plant in Scunthorpe is the only site in the UK equipped to produce virgin steel – stronger steel made from raw materials like iron ore rather than recycled scrap steel. You can imagine how strategically important this makes the plant.

This steel is critical for defence manufacturing, railways and infrastructure – all essential to our plan to grow the economy.

The plant also employs thousands of staff, contributing massively to the local economy.

Since taking office, the Government has been in negotiations with the plant’s Chinese owners, Jingye.

We have offered public investment to support keeping the plant open, but insisted on fair terms to protect workers and plan for the site’s long term sustainability, which the owners rejected.

Despite our continued attempts to negotiate, Jingye recently accelerated plans to bring redundancies and shut down the blast furnaces.

This is important because blast furnaces are operated 24/7 – when they go out it is incredibly difficult and expensive to restart them.

That’s why we acted.

The emergency legislation which was passed gave the Government the power to direct operations at British Steel to safeguard its future and to invest money in keeping it operational.

This is keeping with our manifesto promise that we would invest £2.5 billion to get the British steel industry back on its feet.

The next challenge was to find the raw materials - iron ore and coke - to keep the furnaces fed.

Not only had Jingye stopped ordering new raw materials, but they had actually started to sell off the stockpiles that they had in anticipation of shuttering the furnaces.

Thankfully, we’ve now secured supplies to run the site for the coming weeks, avoiding a full-blown crisis.

There’s still a road ahead for British Steel and we’re keeping all options on the table.

But we are clear that Britain needs a steel industry for our defence, our economy, and the communities whose livelihoods depend on it.

We won’t be content with overseeing the decline of steelmaking in this country, we’re going to fight for its future.