EMERGENCY legislation to give ministers the power to keep the Scunthorpe steel plant running is necessary and welcome.
But this is not yet even nationalisation of Scunthorpe, let alone the wider steel industry. Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds went out of his way to insist these were exceptional, emergency measures, that the government’s preference remains private ownership, indeed that the government had offered to shower public money on the private owners for the privilege of letting them continue to own and control a key sector of our economy.
A strategic approach to British industry this is not. It is a last-minute and limited intervention to keep Scunthorpe running, which the government insists has no applicability to any other situation.
Reynolds seeks to distract us from the key problem at Scunthorpe — private ownership of critical national infrastructure — by hinting that the real issue with Jingye is that it is Chinese. “I personally wouldn’t bring a Chinese company into our steel sector,” he sniffs. “I think steel is a very sensitive area.”
Reynolds does not explain why, if he feels this way, he spent most of the week trying to bribe Jingye with our money to keep the blast furnaces running.
More importantly, does the record of the India-based conglomerate Tata at Port Talbot, or the British-owned corporation Ineos at Grangemouth, show any more concern for British jobs, or the future of British manufacturing?
The problem is private ownership, which by its nature prioritises private profit over the public interest, and particularly private ownership by giant transnationals, whose primary concern is not the viability of their far-flung British operations.
That is the argument which now needs to be forced on government. It was an argument raised by MPs in the Commons.
By Plaid Cymru, which asked why blast furnaces at Port Talbot aren’t worth saving if those at Scunthorpe are. By the Scottish National Party, which raised the government’s reluctance to secure a future for the Grangemouth refinery and chemicals plant.
And by Mother of the House Diane Abbott, who called for full nationalisation of British steel and pointed to the egregious failure of privatisation in other sectors, especially water.
The Starmer government is determined Scunthorpe does not set a precedent.
We must be still more determined to ensure it does — and that this half-way house, which allows the government to take control of the plant without even necessarily taking ownership of it, is turned into full, permanent nationalisation.
Too often, we see ministers bail out failed private operators, piling the costs of their failure onto the public and then handing the rescued company back to the private sector. Equally, the British state spends vast sums subsidising inefficient privatised companies. If we’re going to pay for them, we should own them.
And as Unite demands, we need a more interventionist approach to procurement and construction policy, including by directing use of British steel on all infrastructure projects.
Not only would this help secure our strategically vital steel sector’s future in a global trading environment being rocked by the US shift to protectionism.
It would set a precedent for the wider “buy British” policy rejected in Parliament last week by Chancellor Rachel Reeves, with positive implications for British manufacturing and the environment. This would also be a line of defence against a trade deal with Trump, which might entail relaxing quality, safety and welfare standards on imported produce.
Unite points out too that measures to assist British industry should include tackling sky-high energy costs — making a powerful case for public ownership and control of prices in yet another sector, one in which, as it happens, the union has already provided government with costed blueprints for exactly that.
As Welsh communists put it, Scunthorpe is a crack in the wall Labour has erected against public ownership.
It’s time to take a sledgehammer to that wall.
