Sir Keir Starmer: Steel industry is “the future, not the past”

It was announced last month that Tata Steel would receive a £500m boost from the government, although the plans to move to less polluting electric arc furnaces (EAFs) at the enormous plant in South Wales would mean 3,000 job losses across the business. Half of the Indian-owned company’s 8,000 strong workforce is based in Port Talbot.

Sir Keir met representatives of the three main steelworkers’ unions during his visit - Community, GMB and Unite - and outlined the Labour Party’s “ambitious” plans for the industry.

“We see this as the future, not the past,” he said. “That requires strategic thinking about our economy. We want to go to clean power, that will bring down energy costs,” Sir Keir said.

He added: “If we are able to put in place our mission for clean power 2030, that will require more steel – and therefore we want the demand for steel to go up. Of course, we need to transition to green steel. But we must do this transition very carefully, protecting the jobs and the skills and the history that we have here in South Wales. Connecting and bridging that to the future, which is green steel.

“We have been having productive discussions this morning about what I think will be a very bright future for steel. But only with strategic thinking around it.”

EAFs use a feedstock of scrap steel and can use lower carbon energy to produce finished steel, as opposed to traditional coal-fired blast furnaces which create so-called “virgin” steel.

It was reported on the weekend that the government was in discussions with British Steel’s Chinese owners, Jingye, to confirm a similar package to help them decarbonise.

Around 2,000 jobs are thought to be at risk at British Steel as the firm attempts to decarbonise and shore up monthly losses thought to be in the region of £30m.

The enormous Scunthorpe works employs a workforce of around 4,500.

Jingye has been offered £300m by the government to help change its production to EAFs, although details about the conditions have yet to be agreed. It’s thought the deal is contingent on protecting jobs, and investment from the Chinese firm of around £1bn.

A government spokesperson said: “We continue to work closely with industry, including British Steel, to secure a sustainable and competitive future for the UK steel industry.”

Unions are concerned about the likelihood of less labour-intensive EAFs leading to job losses, as well as the fact that current blast furnace workers lack the training and skillset to operate the replacement furnaces.

Alun Davies Community Union’s National Office for Steel said: “We’re deeply concerned by the reports around the potential 2,000 job losses at British Steel. The companies have not approached the unions regarding any decarbonisation plans or redundancies.

“Once again, the futures of UK steelworkers are being discussed in the press through leaks and hearsay.”

“All this does is create uncertainty and worry for our members. Any plans for the future of our steel industry should be discussed with the Unions and the workers they represent.”