BORIS JOHNSON must act to ensure that British steel is not wrecked by cheap imports, with industry protections due to expire at midnight, Unite demanded today.

Assistant general secretary Steve Turner said that the Prime Minister’s inaction risks betraying the industry, something steel-making communities would “never forgive.”

The union has urged the PM to intervene after it was revealed that Trade Secretary Liz Truss is planning to walk away from European Union import safeguards, which expire tomorrow.

The Trade Remedies Authority, an arm’s-length government body, has recommended that Ms Truss scrap the limits, which were carried over after Brexit.

The EU has already confirmed that it will extend its protections — introduced after former US president Donald Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese steel — until June 2024.

Last week, Labour introduced an opposition motion calling for ministers to temporarily extend safeguards, but MPs voted 355 to 271 against them, with Tunbridge Wells MP Greg Clark the only Tory to rebel and back the proposal.

Mr Turner, Unite’s United Left candidate in this summer’s general secretary election, warned that from tomorrow British steel-makers will have to compete with a “glut of cheaply made, below-cost imports” which will damage the industry and hit jobs. 

Slamming the Tories’ ideological commitment to free trade, he warned that the “global Britain” brand must not be used to take a wrecking ball to a strategic national industry. 

“Workers, families and voters in UK steel communities will never forgive such a betrayal,” he stressed.

Shadow business secretary Ed Miliband said that the removal of import limits would be a “self-defeating hammer blow to our national interest,” and called on his opposite number Kwasi Kwarteng to act amid reports he opposes Ms Truss’s move. 

Parliamentary reporter

@TrinderMatt