We must protect British steel, but the Government is missing in action - Marie Tidball

The steelworks in Stocksbridge have been the beating heart of the local community and economy since the 1840s – over 180 years. When I was growing up in Penistone, we used to go swimming in Stocksbridge every Saturday and drive past the vast steel works rising up at the bottom of the valley. In my late teens, we lived opposite Stocksbridge Speciality Steels, on Unsliven Road. An iconic part of the landscape, the thrum of noise and activity, of buses of workers arriving in the early morning.

To this day, in Stocksbridge and the surrounding area, hundreds of local people rely on Stocksbridge Speciality Steels for their livelihood. Yet when it comes to British steel, the Conservative government is missing in action, risking huge damage to our communities.

Over the last decade, the government has failed to back Britain’s steel industry, to invest in green steel and protect our steelworks from foreign competition. Compare this to other governments around the world, who have committed to long-term strategic investment in the industry.

British businesses are crying out for more support to make the transition to a low carbon economy, but the government is asleep at the wheel. There are 23 clean steel projects across Europe, but none in the UK.

At the exact moment the Conservatives should urgently address our unaffordable energy prices by supporting the greening of our steel industry, they are doing nothing.

Their failure to invest in gas storage and manage energy prices also means that these plants have been working on reduced capacity, despite the global high price of steel.

The Conservatives are yet to do anything about a Carbon Border Adjustment mechanism - which would be a vital levy on imported steel which keeps pricing competitive and prioritises steel made in the UK. Due to a combination of energy costs and the lack of a levy on imported steel, it is cheaper for manufacturers to import steel from Mexico than it is to buy it from British producers.

Only last week the government agreed a £500m package for Tata Steel, which could result in thousands of redundancies of British workers. As Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Business and Trade, Jonathan Reynolds, said: the transition to Green Steel should be about more jobs, not less. It should be an optimistic and exciting moment for steel communities, but instead this has caused anxiety and anguish.

A debate around the future of Tata Steel took place in Westminster this week, yet the current MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge was silent. If I was the Labour MP for our constituency, I would have been asking for answers on what recent events at Tata Steel means for the future of steel in Stocksbridge, across South Yorkshire and the UK, and solutions for how we protect this vital industry.

The Liberty plant in Stocksbridge has a rolling mill which is one of the best in the country and can produce specialist steel for the aerospace industry. It’s a scandal to risk losing the specialist skills and means of production because of a lack of strategic planning and long-term investment in this plant.

Britain needs an Industrial Strategy and plan for steel that covers the whole industry - not last minute deals site by site.

We need investment in the steel industry and collaboration with UK steelmakers in order to ‘green’ steel as part of our route to net zero. This is an opportunity to create thousands of new, well-paid jobs.

We need a long term plan for steel that invests alongside industry but delivers a return on taxpayers investment and protects our national capabilities and workforce.

Labour has pledged investment of £3bn alongside industry over the next decade to decarbonise the steel industry - crucially looking at the whole industry, not this site by site approach.

Labour’s plans will decarbonise the steel industry by working with workers and industry to invest in a range of technologies, ensuring we have the clean steel we need to rebuild Britain. This is essential to ensure steel has a sustainable future.

The Liberty Steel sites across South Yorkshire, in Stocksbridge and Rotherham, should be part of the answer to energy storage and growing the green economy locally.

The government must protect this hugely important local asset so it can continue to operate. The party that alleges it wants to level up the areas where I grew up, is allowing these industrial giants to be at risk of winding up. It doesn’t need to be this way.

Marie Tidball is Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Penistone and Stocksbridge.