Government officials are locked in crunch talks at the British Steel plant in Scunthorpe in a desperate race against time to keep it open.
The Royal Navy was on alert to help secure vital raw materials to keep the two furnaces burning before it is too late. Iron ore and coking coal are needed within days to save around 2,700 jobs after the Government passed emergency legislation to take control of the Chinese-owned plant.
Earlier today Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds refused to guarantee the crucial shipments would arrive on time. But he said the plant has a “fighting chance” after management responsibilities were seized from energy firm Jingye – who he accused of refusing to purchase material to save the furnaces.
Pressed on whether coal and iron would arrive on time Mr Reynolds said: “”We’ve taken action to give us the chance to do that. The situation we have taken on is a challenging and difficult one.”
British Steel staff were yesterday working with senior Government figures to keep the furnaces in operation – with dozens of businesses understood to have reached out offering support. If the two furnaces, nicknamed Queen Anne and Queen Bess, cool too much, it will not be financially viable to save them.
Mr Reynolds warned the cost of the facility collapsing would be catastrophic, saying it would “easily” top £1billion. On Saturday MPs were recalled to back a plan to rescue the stricken firm, passing an emergency Bill to put the Government in charge of running the firm.
Mr Reynolds said: “If we hadn’t acted, the blast furnaces were gone, steel production in the UK, primary steel producing, would have gone. So we’ve given ourselves the opportunity, we are in control of the site, my officials are on site right now to give us a chance to do that.”
The emergency Steel Industry (Special Measures) Act came into effect at midnight after a tense day in Scunthorpe. A delegation from Jingye, made up of six to eight members, was blocked by workers on Saturday morning as they tried to access the offices, sparking fears they were going to permanently shut the steelworks.
Insiders branded the actions “heroic” as it bought MPs valuable time to force the legislation through. Senior Government officials waited in nearby hotels until they were able to access the steelworks.
Mr Reynolds said the Jingye Group, which has owned British Steel since 2020, had not been negotiating “in good faith”. He held talks with chief executive Li Huiming, but said an offer of £500million to secure the materials was met with higher demands and no guarantees.
Mr Reynolds refused to accuse the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) of orchestrating efforts to sabotage the business. He said: “To run a major Chinese industrial company, there are always direct links to the Chinese Communist Party.
“You wouldn’t be allowed to run a company in China without that kind of thing. I’m not accusing the Chinese state of being directly behind this.
“I actually think they will understand why we could not accept the proposition that was put to us, in terms of losing that essential national capacity. So I’m not alleging some sort of foreign influence.”
But he did agree there is now a “high trust bar” to bringing Chinese investment into the UK, and said he would not have allowed a Chinese company to invest in the “sensitive” steel sector.
The Labour frontbencher said British Steel lost £233million a year in its last accounts. But he continued: “I would ask the public to compare that to the option of spending a lot more money to reach a deal that would have seen a lot of job losses and Jingye remain as a partner.
“Or the cost of the complete collapse of British Steel, easily over £1 billion in terms of the need to respond from Government, to remediate the land, to look after the workforce.”
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