What the Government could do for Port Talbot and Tata Steel

Lisa Rapado and Jonathan Tier Neath Port Talbot Geen party

1. Implement the EU 2014 Procurement Directive, which allows the Buyer to measure bids on Socio-Environment as well as economic (price factors) then Steel could be preferred from Port Talbot for example. UKIP take note.

2. Energy subsides (whilst investing and developing Green energy alternatives). Subsidies to increase energy efficiency and reduce business impact of carbon taxes (or ring fence some revenue raised from steel industry carbon taxes to re-invest in green projects).

3. Have a credible industrial strategy, especially for critical industries – Energy and Steel are just two. Sustainable long term strategy, not just policies “for those who vote for us”.

4. Nationalise or subsidise, for the interim. Develop new Public/Private partnerships structures, for The Peoples’ benefit. The Market has obvious weaknesses in unrestrained global commodity prices – oil, steel, gas etc.

What else:

5. Continue to develop high quality products. South Wales was an early leading in coated strip steels (1970s for colour coating), high quality steels (railways, car, aerospace).

6. South Wales plants are researching and developing extraordinary rolled steels e.g. solar cell coatings; even the UK has enough sun light to make this a huge market.

7. Call out EU companies for not supporting EU steel, e.g. I think Siemens uses Chinese steel in its wind turbine division.

8. 

The UK cannot compete against a subsided Chinese industry, UK steel production is insignificant compared to China, with only 1% of China’s capacity. Chinese steel works are being made redundant, recently with 400,000 direct jobs recently lost.

9. Tata are “losing £1M a day” – we’d love to see these accounts!