Sector and unions welcome Labour plans to invest £3bn in UK steel industry
Labour’s plans to invest £3bn in the UK’s steel industry over the next decade have been welcomed by unions and the manufacturing sector.
Visiting the Tata Steel plant in Port Talbot, south Wales, Sir Keir Starmer met with bosses and workers as he vowed his party saw the industry as the “future, not the past”.
A £3bn investment over the next decade will be ploughed into the UK’s steel industry across the country if Labour is elected into government, the party says.
It forms part of their plans to achieve net zero by 2030 and make the UK a clean energy superpower with 10m tonnes of steel required for renewable energy, like offshore wind.
Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves has also pledged to deliver planning reform to ensure key national infrastructure like rail and roads can be delivered quickly.
Speaking in Port Talbot, Starmer said: “We have ambitious plans for the steel industry.
“We see this as the future, not the past. That requires strategic thinking about our economy. We want to go to clean power, that will bring down energy costs.”
And he vowed that “protecting the jobs and the skills and the history” of the industry would be crucial to Labour’s mission.
UK Steel welcomed the “continued commitment” and added: “The UK is the only G20 country where steel production has sharply declined over the last decade relative to the size of our economy and manufacturing base; we are a real outlier.
“For our steel sector to not only survive but actually thrive and deliver a massive boost to net zero Britain, we need a strong, long-term partnership between government and industry.”
Unions also praised Labour’s plans, amid uncertainty over steel jobs despite an up to £500m government bailout of the Port Talbot plant which could still see up to 3,000 redundancies.
Charlotte Brumpton-Childs, from GMB, warned the union was “hugely concerned about potential job losses at Port Talbot” and said Starmer “made the right noises”.
Furthermore, she said the government had to “accept [that] simply turning off blast furnaces will destroy the UK’s steel industry and leave the country hopelessly exposed”.
However, Roy Rickhuss from Community trade union backed Labour’s plan for what he said was “an ambitious decarbonisation strategy for the sector and a just transition to green steel for the workforce”.
He added: “It is clear Labour is on the side of steelworkers, and we need a Keir Starmer-led Labour government that will deliver the investment needed for our industry to thrive.”
A Conservative Party spokesperson said: “This Conservative government announced one of the largest government support packages in history to secure the future of steel-making at Port Talbot.
“As usual, the Labour Party’s response is to criticise while promising fanciful and unaffordable sums to keep their union paymasters on-side.”
“The government will continue to work to secure a sustainable and competitive future for the UK steel industry that also gets [the] best value for money for UK taxpayers,” the Conservative Party spokesperson added.