The steel industry across the UK and indeed Europe is facing very challenging economic conditions: there is overproduction across the world, and the price of some types of steel have almost halved over the past year alone. While the Government cannot fix the price of steel, halt global overproduction, or fix currency rates, it is doing all it can to help the industry and workers.
The Government has already paid steelmakers £76 million in compensation for energy costs, led the charge within Europe to protect the industry from unfairly cheap imports and has changed public procurement rules to help steel suppliers compete with international suppliers for major projects.
I also welcome that the Government will be exempting eligible Energy Intensive Industries, including steel makers, from the indirect costs of the Renewables Obligation and Small Feed-in-Tariffs. This will enable steelmakers to keep their bills down, keep them competitive, keep them here and also give certainty for future investment decisions.
The steel industry's request for flexibility over Industrial Emissions Directive exemptions has also been secured, saving the industry millions of pounds of unnecessary expenditure by offering steel companies more time to comply with this European legislation.
Following recent talks in Europe, we also have encouraging and important commitments to speed up the European Commission's work on unfair trade practices and ensure the effectiveness of State Aid rules.
While there is no straightforward solution to any of the complex issues involved, be assured that the Government has been doing, and will continue to do, everything within its power to support steel communities and the industry in the weeks, months and years ahead.
Additionally, I recently raised this issue in the House of Commons with the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills. A transcript can be found below:
Ben Howlett: I appreciate all the work the Secretary of State is doing to work with steelworkers, and he should be commended for that. I also welcome the fact that he is already looking at what more can be done to relocate some of the employees who might end up needing to find new jobs. As he will know, we have a shortage of engineers and manufacturers in the west of England. Given that I was at Rolls-Royce last week, and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has worked with that company and other companies before to relocate employees who have lost their employment, will he make a commitment today to do the same if employment is lost at Tata Steel in Wales?
Sajid Javid: I am very positive, and I think that if all of us—the Government, the unions, Tata, the Welsh Government and others—work together, we can have a successful conclusion. Of course, my hon. Friend is right to think about the possibility that, even then, we could have some job losses. In such cases, we will do everything we can, first, to regenerate the area, but also to make sure that where there are skills shortages in nearby areas—certainly those within travelling distance—we can be clever and bring the two issues together.